Rove, a company founded to improve the EV charging experience by building “full service” EV charging centers with access to amenities you can use while charging, has now opened its second charging plaza in Costa Mesa, CA, and we got a sneak preview.
Rove opened its first charging plaza in Santa Ana, CA in 2024.
The format is somewhat unique, at least in the US. Rather than just being a couple DC chargers tucked in the back corner of whatever parking lot they could get an agreement with, Rove has created a full travel plaza centered around a huge bank of chargers.
There are plenty of gas stations with amenities for travelers, so why shouldn’t EV chargers have the same or more, given that people are going to be spending a little more time there anyway?
The site includes 400 solar panels providing both energy and shade for cars, 40 DC chargers, a lounge and a convenience/grocery store in partnership with Gelson’s, a regional upscale grocery chain. Rove also plans to install grid-tied batteries in the form of two Tesla Megapacks, but they aren’t installed yet (the grid batteries at the Santa Ana site have taken a long time to come online, due to a long utility approval process).
The chargers come with a variety of options, able to charge just about every EV on the road. The site includes 28 Tesla chargers and 12 Rove-branded ABB chargers with CCS heads. 4 of the ABB chargers have dual NACS/CCS heads, so you can use either, and 2 have CHAdeMO heads, for the few cars out there that still use that plug.
2 of them have 350kW capacity, for the few cars that can accept that much power – but please, if you have a first-gen 50kW Bolt, don’t hog the quickest chargers on the property, it won’t get you filled any quicker.
The 28 Tesla-branded chargers are leased from Tesla but operated by Rove, though still have all the same rules (idle fees and so on) and are operated through the Tesla app. Rove’s 12 chargers don’t have idle fees, memberships or subscriptions, and can be paid for through tap-to-pay or through the Rove app. Rove is currently running a promotion with a special opening price of $.44/kWh, which will last… until they decide to cancel it.
And it even has some of those necessary small things that you never see at EV chargers but are very useful for any place a car stops – squeegees for window cleaning, and trash cans.
And since the site has attendants on the property all the time, that means the trash cans won’t be filled to the brim like they are in so many other charging stations, and the chargers won’t be cracked or broken or offline.
Rove says it has had 100% uptime at its other location on a station-level, but if you look at the chargers themselves, that uptime has been 97-98%. In short, it’s pretty rare that even a single charging head is down (anecdotally, I’ve noticed even Tesla stations, long known for their reliability, have seemed to have more malfunctioning charging heads lately).
The new site does have some differences from the first site in Santa Ana – Costa Mesa doesn’t have a car wash, vacuum/air for tires, or a turf-covered dog area (though pups are allowed in the lounge, but not the grocery store). But it does retain a 24/7 on-site lounge with manned security 22 hours a day, clean bathrooms and wifi.
But it still has plenty of room to host community events, as Rove’s other location has. We’ve been to several EV meetups and ride-and-drives, and Rove has some planned already for the next few weekends.
The grocery store concept is somewhere between a convenience store and a full-size Gelson’s. Gelson’s is calling it “ReCharge by Gelson’s” to differentiate from its full locations, but it still offers a mix of fresh prepared foods, convenience store staples like coffee and hot dogs, grocery necessities like cereal and cleaning supplies, and on-the-road treats like ice cream bars. (I picked up some oat milk while I was there, two birds with one stone)
Gelson’s found that the grab-n’-go offerings from the Santa Ana location were the most popular, so it has expanded their availability here, and added more hot food offerings like breakfast burritos and tamales (I’m really excited about the tamales). It also has a Beer & Wine section, with a walk-in fridge and a pretty good selection of both macro- and micro-brews.
But the station is also next to a bunch of apartments, so should be useful for those who live nearby to walk over if they need to grab some essentials.
The site also shares a wall with a Goodwill next store, so you could go thrifting while you’re parked, if you’re full up on groceries. As long as you’re fueling your car sustainably, you can do some sustainable clothes shopping as well.
The lounge is comfortable to hang around in, but perhaps not so comfortable that you’ll want to spend hours there (intentionally – you’re supposed to charge and leave, after all). And one upgrade from the previous location includes a standing-height table, in case you want to stretch your legs after you’ve been in the car for a while (a suggestion from yours truly).
We attended the groundbreaking for the Costa Mesa site last June, where Rove had planned to have the site online by October. That didn’t happen, but the time between groundbreaking and opening was 2-3 months quicker on this site than the last one, which is an improvement nonetheless.
And Rove is working on more locations – Torrance, Long Beach and Corona should be coming up soon, with additional locations in the planning phases but not yet announced. It hopes to develop these sites in parallel, to help reduce the amount of time it takes to get them online. Each will have slightly different amenities – like larger parking spots for up to class 6 trucks in Corona.
The Costa Mesa site isn’t quite right off the freeway, it’s a few blocks South of the Harbor exit, but still close to the 405, 55 and 73 freeways.
The site has already been open for charging for a couple weeks now, but the Gelson’s and lounge officially open on Wednesday, April 8 (tomorrow). Rove plans a ribbon-cutting at 9am. The first 100 customers to get a charge will also get free swag.
Electrek’s Take
I love what Rove is doing, and I think there’s a lot of room for locations like this in the EV charging space, and I think Rove is doing it as right as anyone else is. That’s why I like to cover them whenever they come up.
There’s a lot of talk about EV charging being difficult, but for those of us who have taken EVs on roadtrips, it’s often a pleasant experience anyway. As long as there are clean chargers with something to do nearby, you really don’t feel restricted by the time you spend charging.
For example, I went on a 2,200 mile roadtrip with no prep, and never felt like I had to wait on my car to charge. This is because I stopped at some excellent charging stops which really improved the process.
The thing is, EV charging could be such an opportunity for businesses to offer services to captive customers who are happy to have something to do, and often won’t mind spending a few bucks anyway (Rove, for example, says around a third of people who charge also buy something in the store). There are some businesses who have already learned to take advantage of this, but it’s been a bit of a patchwork so far.
Rove shows how a business could provide all of these services under one roof. And we think this concept would work in a wide variety of areas. Gas stations already have something similar, with Buc-ee’s style travel stops, and people enjoy stopping at those even though they’re not waiting for their car to fill up. This is also a very common concept in European charging station. So why not offer something similar for EVs in the US, and kill off all the complaints about EV charging being somehow inferior or weird or different?
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