An electric vehicle charging center with sushi, kombucha, a WiFi lounge and car wash opens next week along a bustling stretch of 17th Street in Santa Ana.
The modern, black-on-steel-toned charging facility sits parallel to railroad tracks, not far from the congested 5 freeway.
Created by the Southern California startup Rove and its partner Gelson’s Markets, the 40-stall hub and its Recharge convenience store are part of a growing trend nationwide to create charging stations blended with retail spaces.
Just a half-block walk away is a Chevrolet dealership that has seen the evolution of cars first-hand. Guaranty Chevrolet, which opened in 1946, is looking forward to a neighborhood renaissance with some help from EVs.
“To be next to us is great,” said Brian Hamlin, the sales manager at Guaranty. “The drive-by business helps us.”
Brian Hamlin is the commercial/business elite manager at Guaranty Chevrolet in Santa Ana, Calif. The dealership is a few blocks away from a new Rove EV charging center on E. 17th Street in Santa Ana. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
A catalyst for EV sales
Long before a sound wall went up along the freeway in the early 2000s, Guaranty had a towering billboard along the 5, letting commuters know they could exit at 17th Street and shop for new wheels.
The showroom and its tire-kicking lot now sit mostly unseen from the freeway, tucked among low-rise retail centers, apartments and a hodgepodge of fast food.
Hamlin is hopeful that rising EV sales and leases, up fivefold at Guaranty this summer, and the superfast charging station will be a bright spot for his team and the city.
A ReCharge by Gelson’s mini-mart will be a part of a Rove EV charging center on E. 17th Street in Santa Ana, CA. The center will offer an indoor lounge with free WiFi, restrooms, night time security, car wash and pup pad for use while cars are charging. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
“I hope it revitalizes the neighborhood. There are a lot of transients that we deal with on a daily basis,” he said.
Amid soaring inflation and housing costs since the pandemic, the city has seen a rise in homelessness. Business owners on this stretch of 17th Street keep their bathroom doors locked.
“The latest “point in time count” in Orange County showed a 28% increase in the homeless in two years. Santa Ana’s homelessness was significantly higher, rising 71%.
Rove, now based in Redondo Beach after launching in Costa Mesa, seems unfazed by the neighborhood’s struggles, believing the market for its centers is potentially huge.
The startup has plans to open 10 other charging station centers in Southern California near heavily traveled freeways. Three of Rove’s future centers will be near freeway interchanges, while a fourth, at 2666 Harbor Blvd. in Costa Mesa, is just west of John Wayne Airport.
The other three Rove centers in the planning stages are at 1335 W. 6th St. in Corona near the 15 and 91 interchange; 1620 W. Wardlow Ave. in Long Beach near the 405 and 710 interchange; and 1861 190th St. in Torrance near the 405 and 110 interchange.
The next four stations should be open by the end of 2025, Rove said.
EV fueling stations
The hustle to build more charging stations comes as the Biden administration calls for half of new-vehicle sales to be EVs by 2030. California’s goal is even more auspicious, reaching for 100% zero-emission new vehicle sales by 2035.
The lounge area at the Rove EV charging center on E. 17th Street in Santa Ana, CA. The ReCharge by Gelson’s mini-mart will offer an indoor lounge with free WiFi, restrooms, night time security, car wash and pup pad for use while cars are charging. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
To meet those goals, the U.S. will need almost 2.3 million public chargers by 2030, the federally funded National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated in March. Numerous reports indicate California will need more than 1 million public chargers to accommodate the pivot to EVs or emission-free vehicles.
Currently, the U.S. only has about 177,000 public EV chargers, about 45,800 of them in California, government figures show.
Rove Chairman and CEO Bill Reid said that Orange County, which ranked third in the number of charging stations behind Los Angeles and San Diego counties, has room to grow.
As of Aug. 26, Orange County had 8,522 EV chargers, while Los Angeles County had 60,698. San Diego had 10,982, Riverside 3,206 and San Bernardino 2,911, according to the California Energy Commission.
Reid pointed to the rising count of EVs sold in the state, up to 22.6% of car sales in the past year.
“Southern California right now could probably support 40 sites like ours, and Northern California as well,” Reid said. “These are hard to permit, so we’ve got plenty of running room.”
Reid said his business learned a lot of lessons in building the first center.
“We will be building more, but hopefully we’ve got it mostly right. So every time you drive into a Rove center in the future, it’ll look pretty much the same,” he said.
A Rove EV charging center will open on E. 17th Street in Santa Ana, CA. The ReCharge by Gelson’s mini-mart will offer an indoor lounge with free WiFi, restrooms, night time security, car wash and pup pad for use while cars are charging. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Looking Beyond California?
Rove, financed with $150 million from New York-based private equity firm Newlight Partners, partnered with Gelson’s Markets over a year ago to build out a network of centers with EV charging stations with amenities for motorists and their families.
Those facilities, in addition to the convenience store, include a locked lounge with bathrooms, baby changing stations, a pup pad or “relief area” outside, plus vacuums and a car wash. A security guard is on site between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Ryan Adams, the newly appointed president and CEO of Gelson’s who joined the 27-store grocery chain in April, didn’t rule out the possibility that the new Recharge by Gelson’s concept could grow beyond its Southern California roots or outside the state.
“As we continue to discuss things with Rove, there’s definitely opportunities beyond that,” Adams said. “I think for both of us, we’re going to be learning and pivoting in different scenarios as this comes to life.
Recharge, something of a convenience store on steroids, stocks everything from Wolfgang Puck caesar salads to Kombucha drinks and freshly brewed pumpkin lattes, Adams said.
So far, Gelson’s is Rove’s only partner for its charging center expansion.
A Rove EV charging center will open on E. 17th Street in Santa Ana, Calif. The ReCharge by Gelson’s mini-mart will offer an indoor lounge with free WiFi, restrooms, night time security, car wash and pup pad for use while cars are charging. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Charging at Rove
Rove’s stations will charge an EV battery dipping to a charge level of 20% on a Chevy Equinox EV to 80% for just under $30, according to the company. For a Kia EV9, the cost would be slightly under $35.
It takes about 15-20 minutes to charge a battery to the 80% level to get about 200 miles of range. A full charge can take up to an hour.
Drivers can access the locked lounge, which is open all day, seven days a week, using Rove’s app, which is also where payments are made for the EV charge. Reservations for a charger also can be made with the app in advance of arrival, and be turned off sooner than planned if the driver doesn’t have time to stick around.
Besides Tesla, the charging hub includes stations for EV models including Guaranty’s GM line, Ford and Rivian. Plans are in the works at the Rove facility and Tesla charging stations nationally to adapt EVs made by Mercedes, Nissan, Polestar and Volvo.
There are an estimated 4 million EVs in America today. In August, consulting firm J.D. Power reported that EV sales in the United States are expected to reach about 9% of the market this year, a 3% drop in its previous forecast. The automotive consultant attributed the cut in sales forecast to a slower-than-expected growth rate for the first half of 2024 due to increased competition in the market for gasoline-powered vehicle alternatives.
According to the latest government data, California led the pack with nearly 1.3 million EV registrations at the end 2023, nearly five times as many as closest rival Florida with 254,878.
“It’s growing in leaps and bounds,” Reid said. “When we look at the market, we try to figure out where all the chargers are. We also try to figure out what the traffic is like,” he said.
Rove estimates 20,000 and 30,000 commuters drive EVs along the I-5 past its charging center on a daily basis.
Having enough power for the centers has been a challenge. Rove added 400 solar panels to generate power to help charge the EVs.
“One of the critical things in picking a site is making sure we can get enough electricity. It’s not easy,” Reid said. “The grid has been underinvested in, and it’s hard to find enough power.”
Reid declined to share how much it cost to develop the Santa Ana station, which opens Oct. 15.
Rove joins a host of companies conceiving superfast charging stations combined with retail.
Electrify America, an EV fast-charging network, has opened up charging centers next to malls in San Francisco and San Diego. “There is a need for this kind of infrastructure,” company spokesperson Octavio Navarro said.
Irvine-based Rivian Automotive turned an abandoned gas station outside Yosemite National Park in Groveland into a recharging lounge where EV drivers can drink coffee, make their own trail mix from an ingredients bar and even drop off recyclables.
There’s also a library onsite where they can browse books and relax on furniture made from used sleeping bags and puffer coats and tables made from compressed sawdust. A map of the climbing routes on the granite face of rock formation El Capitan covers the side of an entire wall on the charging station, located on a former site of a blacksmith shop in the 1870s to service the needs of horse drawn travel.
About Rove Santa Ana
Charging stations : 40
What EVs do they charge: Tesla, Ford, GM and Rivian
On the drawing board: Mercedes, Nissan, Polestar and Volvo
Other amenities: Recharging by Gelson’s, car wash, secure lounge, Wi-fi and pup pad relief area for dogs.
How to access charging stations: Rove app or Tesla app
