Recently a Bojangles restaurant in Savannah, Ga., added a new item to its menu alongside the usual fried chicken and honey mustard sauce. Now customers can also get a helping of electricity for their cars.
The bright yellow electric vehicle chargers that Bojangles installed here may seem like an odd pairing with the chain’s Southern fare. Battery-powered cars are often associated with liberal bastions on the West and East Coasts, not the Deep South.
But some of the fastest growth in electric vehicle sales and charging stations is taking place in states like Florida and Texas. In Georgia last month, there were 29 percent more charging ports than there were a year earlier, according to Paren, a firm that tracks electric vehicle data.
Companies like Bojangles and Buc-ee’s, the huge travel centers that started in Texas before expanding to other states, sense an opportunity to drum up sales of food, drinks and other wares by attracting more drivers.
“We knew that we had a certain percentage of our guests that were E.V. drivers,” Richard Del Valle, Bojangles’s chief information officer, said at the Savannah restaurant over a plate of chicken tenders. “We see them going through our drive-throughs. And so we wanted something for them.”
Electric vehicle sales have slumped in the United States after Congress and President Trump ended, last fall, a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for people who bought or leased one. But there are still not enough chargers to serve all the electric vehicles on American roads, industry executives say.
There are signs that the market is stabilizing. Sales of new electric vehicles rose 15 percent in the second quarter from the first three months of the year, though they were still down from last year, according to Cox Automotive. And sales of used electric vehicles are soaring as contracts on leased cars expire.
And while electric cars may be politically divisive in Washington — Mr. Trump has frequently attacked them, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. embraced them — many Americans, including in conservative areas, tend to judge them on how well they meet their needs.
Some Southerners, like Clyde Campbell, said they were drawn to electric cars for economic reasons. On a sweltering day recently, Mr. Campbell was charging his Volkswagen ID.Buzz van at a station operated by Mercedes-Benz in Savannah.
Mr. Campbell, who is a part-time minister, uses the van as part of a private transportation service. He used to own a Lincoln Navigator that cost $85 to fill up with gasoline, much more than it costs him to charge the Volkswagen. The fuel savings are enough to cover his monthly car payment, he said.
“I did the numbers,” said Mr. Campbell, who also markets his own barbecue sauce, Clyde’s Big Daddy’s. “Even paying $25 here,” he said, referring to the cost of using the Mercedes charging station, “I’m saving money over a tank of gas in the Navigator.”
About two-thirds of Mercedes-Benz’s 900 high-powered chargers in the United States are in Southern states.
Charging stations are growing fastest in states that followed California’s lead in electric vehicle sales. In the second quarter, Texas and Florida lagged only California and Illinois in charger installations, according to Paren.
In percentage terms, South Carolina had the third-highest growth, with an 11.4 percent increase from the first quarter, narrowly behind Illinois and Kentucky.
“The need for charging is massive,” said Madeline Ebert, senior director of product management at the Mercedes-Benz Charging Network. “We will continue to build our network so the chargers are there when sales pick up again.”
German luxury cars and Buc-ee’s, a Texas institution, may seem like another odd pairing. But 28 Buc-ee’s, known for smoked brisket sandwiches and caramel-coated puffed-corn Beaver Nuggets, have Mercedes charging stations.
Charging companies are discovering that the best locations are those that provide electric vehicle owners with a place to eat or shop in the half-hour or so it takes to charge.
“You can use your time in a good way,” Ms. Ebert said.
Tia and Tom Wouters stopped to charge the couple’s electric Mercedes sport utility vehicle at a Buc-ee’s in Florida during a road trip to North Carolina, and were impressed.
“There was loads of food,” Mr. Wouters said while using a Mercedes charger in Savannah. “It was like Disneyland.”
The South is also a major center of electric vehicle manufacturing. Hyundai makes the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 at a massive factory about a half-hour drive from Savannah. The South Korean automaker also makes batteries at the site in a joint venture with LG Energy Solution.
Mercedes makes the EQS and EQE electric sport utility vehicles in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And BMW announced last month that it would produce an electric version of its X5 S.U.V. in Spartanburg, S.C.
Republicans have welcomed the investments even as they opposed subsidies for electric vehicles.
“It’s one great reason we have more people moving in here than ever before,” Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina told BMW executives in Spartanburg last month as the carmaker unveiled new X5 models. “They want to be part of this great success.”
Southern electric utilities are encouraging electric vehicle ownership. Georgia Power provides rebates to customers who install home chargers, and they get a lower rate at night. TXU Energy in Texas offers free home charging to electric vehicle owners from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Utilities want people to charge at night to smooth out fluctuations in demand and make it easier to manage the grid.
“The cheapest fuel right now is a red state garage at midnight,” said Joseph Vellone, the chief executive of ChargeScape, which helps customers take advantage of charging deals offered by utilities. It’s a joint venture of BMW, Ford Motor, Honda and Nissan.
But even if they can charge at home, many Americans fear that it may not be easy to do so on road trips. That’s one of the reasons automakers are installing chargers on their own or through partnerships with other businesses.
“Having the confidence that the stations are there is going to give people the reassurance they need to buy an E.V.,” Ms. Ebert of Mercedes said.
Bojangles made sure the chargers in Savannah, provided by XLR8 America, were visible from the busy, four-lane road in front of the restaurant. So far, the Savannah location is the only Bojangles with a charger, but the company plans to add 85 by early next year.
The chargers will help attract a different kind of customer, said Rajiv Dinakaran, the chief operating officer of Georgia Foods, a family business that owns 45 Bojangles franchises, including the one in Savannah.
Georgia Foods, one of Bojangles’s largest franchisees, wants to install “as many as we can,” Mr. Dinakaran, who drives a Tesla, said. “We see it as something that’s going to be great for the business.”
