The nearly 17,000 franchise dealerships in the United States will invest an estimated $5.5 billion in new infrastructure to sell electric vehicles, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), a car dealer trade group.
NADA didn’t elaborate on this estimate, leaving out details such as a timeline for the spend, according to Green Car Reports, but it did mention that some automakers have asked dealerships to invest anywhere between $100,000 and $1 million for chargers and other upgrades to sell electric vehicles.
With this being said, the car dealer trade group says that these costs “do not necessarily include the specialized equipment purchases needed to service EVs or the additional costs from local utilities for extending new power lines or adding transformers” to support EV charging.