Choosing the Right Charger for Your Property
The single most common mistake we see in EV charging isn't a technical one — it's picking the wrong type of charger for the site. The fastest, highest-power charger isn't always the right answer, and the cheapest one usually isn't either. What actually matters is how long vehicles stay parked at your location, and what your visitors are there to do.
Start with dwell time, not charging speed
The single question that decides almost everything else: how long does a typical vehicle stay parked at your property?
- A few minutes to an hour (retail, quick-service restaurants) → you need a fast DC charger. Slow charging here just frustrates people who don't have time to wait.
- A few hours (offices, malls, hospitals) → a mix works, but you don't need to pay for the fastest DC hardware everywhere — a slower, cheaper AC setup on most bays, with maybe one fast charger, covers this well.
- Overnight (hotels, resorts, residential) → this is where an overnight/AC charger is actually the better choice, not the compromise. A car parked for 8+ hours doesn't need 30 minutes of fast charging — it needs a reliable, lower-cost charger that tops it up by morning.
For hotels specifically: one more decision
If you're a hotel or resort, there's a question worth answering honestly before installation: do you want to allow non-guests to park and charge overnight? Opening it up to external vehicles can increase utilization and revenue, but it also means managing parking capacity for your actual guests. There's no universally right answer — it depends on how tight your parking already is — but it's a decision to make deliberately, not discover after the charger is already installed.
Don't over-invest in power you won't use
Higher-power DC chargers cost more up front and often cost more to run (larger electrical connections, higher demand charges from your utility). If your site is genuinely an overnight or long-dwell location, a high-power DC charger is usually money spent on speed nobody there needs.
Where this fits into a Zappo installation
This is the exact logic our Site Advisor walks you through in a couple of minutes — dwell time and use case first, hardware spec second, with a straight answer even when it's not the one that makes us the most money. A fully automated version that reads a property's real traffic pattern and nearby stations is still on our roadmap; until then, we work through the same questions with every new station owner during onboarding regardless — it's a five-minute conversation that saves a lot of regret later.