They're positioned perfectly for this model as the whole point of going to Sonic is to sit in your car while you order your food, wait for it to be delivered to your car, then eat in your car.
Most fueling station profits come from convenience sales, especially so for the corporate stores who price their fuel the same (or lower) than all surrounding exactly for this purpose.
Bringing the food closer to the charging station fixes that. No idea about the drive-in, though.
(Of course it also brings with it the risk of a spot getting ICE’d, which is why charging stations are so far out in the first place. Dunno how they plan to avoid that.)
Forgive my ignorance, but are you telling me that you get charged $60/hour to park in a spot that has an EV charger in it if your car is done charging? And people are okay with doing that? How accurate is the "time left to charge" indicated? Can you monitor charge/est. time remaining on your phone?
Only if the station is full. Even then you won't necessarily get charged. I've gone over the grace period a couple of times, no fee. The actual grace period seems to longer than stated.
> How accurate is the "time left to charge" indicated?
When you first plug in, it's accurate to within 5 minutes. Once the charge has been going for a few minutes, it's accurate to within a minute or so.
> Can you monitor charge/est. time remaining on your phone?
Yes. The app sends a notification when you're ~5 minutes done charging. You can adjust the cutoff point from your phone, so if you want a few more minutes to eat just drag the slider to 80% instead of 70% (or whatever) to buy some extra time.
Commercial Real Estate is already doing that.
Commercial real estate owners are installing charge-in outlets in strip malls that already offer the above, while getting federal and state subsidizes.