An electric vehicle charging station at Holiday Inn Express on Monday October 31, 2022. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)

A Longview hotel group has expanded electric vehicle charging options for its customers and the general public.

“We’ve been seeing a trend of people coming in with Teslas and other electric vehicles,” asking about where they can charge their cars, said Anup Patel, whose family owns the 281 Lodging group that consists of a number of hotels around East Texas. The group’s Longview hotels are the only where charging stations have been installed.

Patel said there had been no hotels on the north side of town with charging stations before his company installed them at the Courtyard by Marriot on East Hawkins Parkway; Candlewood Suites on Tuttle Boulevard; Staybridge Suites on Fourth Street; Holiday Inn Longview North on Tuttle; and Holiday Inn Express on East Loop 281.

“It does meet demand,” Patel said, noting social media posts he has seen from people looking for charging stations.

“It’s still a new trend,” and he said not many hotels provide charging stations at this point. That’s because unless the hotel is a new build, the stations are hard to install and require boring into concrete and connecting to the hotel’s electrical system. They can be more easily installed during construction of a new property.

Patel added that he believes new hotels will start to include the charging stations in construction.

281 Lodging Group worked with a company to install and operate the charging systems in a manner that won’t see the hotels make money off the stations, Patel said.

“It’s a profit-based system for the company who installed them,” he said. Users scan a QR code at the charging stations to download an app where they pay directly by credit card. The company pays the hotel for the electricity used.

“We’ve seen people already start to use it,” Patel said, adding that the chargers are “universal” and not just for Teslas but any electric vehicle. He said it costs about $13 to fully charge a Tesla.

“It’s a pay to use system,” that anyone, not just hotel guests, may use, he said.

The Patel family also is planning to build a 144-unit apartment complex on Toler Road. Patel said that property also will have six EV charging stations for residents.

“It’s kind of a trend we see as coming,” he said, adding that details about whether residents would pay separately for that service have yet to be determined.

The federal government has said it would require most of its new vehicle purchases to be zero-emission, such as electric vehicles, by 2035. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has said that means about 380,000 federal vehicles will need to be replaced, and the federal government, which has about 4,000 federally owned charging stations, could need an additional 100,000 charging ports.

The Texas Department of Transportation also announced plans to install electric vehicle charging stations around the state, starting with 50 locations along Texas interstates and eventually expanding to include at least one electric vehicle charger in every county, according to the Texas Tribune.