While I really hope that they do a great job with it, I have no faith in Walmart to offer an effective charging network. Doing everything on the absolute cheap leaves a lot to be desired.
They were great when they were expanding and had great stores to lure you away from the competition, but now they operate under maintained not well staffed stores with confusing self checkout and obtrusive surveillance everywhere. It’s just a total race to the bottom at their stores.
Hopefully it will encourage better players like Target to follow suit.
Anyways, reality is that people buy EVs to charge them at home most of the time. At least thats what I think the reality is.
The quality of store management seems to affect a lot when it comes to Walmart. I have been to some Walmart stores where I have never seen any unfolded clothing. I have been to some Walmart stores where I have never seen any folded clothing.
An organization as large as Walmart has the wherewithal to put together an effective charging network if they decide it is a priority. One of the nice things about being first-party is that they will likely have a preventive maintenance program and emergency maintenance program for the chargers, and some of that can be done by the company electrician.
I have a Tesla, and due to various factors (apartment living, other family members with Teslas), I almost exclusively use public chargers. I have some opinions of what amenities I want at a charger (bathroom, cold diet coke), but in general the chargers at gas stations, grocery stores, and Walmarts are the best for me. Restaurants and malls are actually not great amenities because that's often not the mood you are in when you arrive at the charger.
They were great when they were expanding and had great stores to lure you away from the competition, but now they operate under maintained not well staffed stores with confusing self checkout and obtrusive surveillance everywhere. It’s just a total race to the bottom at their stores.
Hopefully it will encourage better players like Target to follow suit.
Anyways, reality is that people buy EVs to charge them at home most of the time. At least thats what I think the reality is.