U.S. Electric Vehicle Sales are Down but E.V. Chargers are Booming

Recently a Bojangles restaurant in Savannah, Ga., added a new item to its menu alongside the usual fried chicken and honey mustard sauce.Now customers can also get a helping of electricity for their cars.The bright yellow electric vehicle chargers that Bojangles installed here may seem like an odd pairing with the chain’s Southern fare.

Battery-powered cars are often associated with liberal bastions on the West and East Coasts, not the Deep South.But some of the fastest growth in electric vehicle sales and charging stations is taking place in states like Florida and Texas.In Georgia last month, there were 29 percent more charging ports than there were a year earlier, according to Paren, a firm that tracks electric vehicle data.Companies like Bojangles and Buc-ee’s, the huge travel centers that started in Texas before expanding to other states, sense an opportunity to drum up sales of food, drinks and other wares by attracting more drivers.“We knew that we had a certain percentage of our guests that were E.V.

drivers,” Richard Del Valle, Bojangles’s chief information officer, said at the Savannah restaurant over a plate of chicken tenders.“We see them going through our drive-throughs.

And so we wanted something for them.”Electric vehicle sales have slumped in the United States after Congress and President Trump ended, last fall, a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for people who bought or leased one.But there are still not enough chargers to serve all the electric vehicles on American roads, industry executives say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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