Sneak peek at Rove’s first ‘full-service’ EV charger, opening Oct 15

Rove, a new developer of full-service charging stations, has finished construction of its first charging station in Santa Ana, California, and invited us for a sneak peek ahead of its opening this month. The station includes 40 charging spots, a grocery store, indoor and outdoor seating, a car wash, and even a small dog park.

We first heard about Rove several years ago, and attended its groundbreaking for this site last year. The company plans several other sites around Southern California, but Santa Ana is the first to open.

Now, almost exactly a year later, the station is ready to open up to the public, offering a “full service” experience unlike any other charger we’ve seen yet.

The station aims to give EV drivers access to the types of services that might be useful on a longer charging stop, rather than just giving people access to chargers and letting them fend for themselves otherwise.

So, to start with, the site includes 40 charging points, with every format you might want to DC charge with. There are 28 V4 Tesla Superchargers (one of the first third-party Tesla Superchargers to open) which will soon be added to Tesla’s in-car navigation, each of which is equipped with a Magic Dock. In addition, there are 12 CCS chargers – 2 350kW chargers, and 10 184kW chargers (each with its own power, no shared power). The site even includes two CHAdeMO chargers!

Rove has maintained flexibility on these chargers too, and may install different heads on the charging cables as the market evolves. Each 184kW charger has two heads already, for different sides of the vehicle, but these could be replaced by 1 NACS and 1 CCS in the future.

These chargers are partially fueled by a large, 222kW solar canopy which provides shade for vehicles and power to offset vehicle charging or to charge the 4MWh of on-site battery storage. Battery storage helps to reduce peaks in demand and balance out loads and pricing – though this isn’t a particularly cheap charging stop, at 58 cents per kWh, which can be paid for through the Rove app or tapping your credit card.

But beside all these chargers there’s a large building, with the centerpiece being a small Gelson’s market. Gelson’s is a Southern California grocery store chain that mostly focuses on “upscale” locations and high quality – with prices that come along with.

So the store includes fresh fare like freshly-cut fruit, sandwiches, baked goods and even sushi, and definitely feels like a nicer experience than your typical gas station convenience store.

Gelson’s is calling the concept “ReCharge by Gelson’s,” and it’s the first store of this type the company has opened. They plan to partner at Rove’s future locations as well.

Beside the Gelson’s, Rove has included a lounge with tables and free wifi, for those who’d like to use their charging time to check up on emails or something of the sort. There’s outdoor and indoor seating available, and the site will have 24/7 security and clean bathrooms.

This particular site also has a car wash and fenced area for dogs. Rove will have different features for each site – for example, a future site in Corona will have larger parking spots for bigger vehicle. So we won’t necessarily see car washes and dog parks at every site site, but this one got the whole shebang.

And as for those things that you never get a chance to do in your EV since you never go to gas stations anymore, the site also has a complimentary vacuum, air, and windshield washer station.

The new location is just off the 5 freeway in Santa Ana, at 1008 E 17th Street. It officially opens on October 15th, though will have some soft-launch events over the course of the next couple weeks.

Rove is planning to expand elsewhere in Southern California next, with sites planned in Costa Mesa, Torrance, Corona and Long Beach, which should be opening roughly in that order. The company would like to expand outside of Southern California in the future, but that’s a long way away.

Electrek’s Take

We love to see concepts like these. 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 (shoutout to my favorite charging stop at the Supercharger in Harrisburg, Oregon, run by Olsen Run Winery) 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. 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. So why not offer something similar for EVs, and kill off all the complaints about EV charging being somehow inferior or weird or different?

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