Roseville-based office equipment company WiZiX Technology Group is adding electric vehicle charging to its offerings of installation, service and maintenance.
The company decided to get into the business last fall, and it now has dozens of projects in the pipeline, said Eric McIntosh, senior vice president with WiZiX.
“We see it as a way to future-proof our business,” he said.
The company also saw EV chargers as a complementary business to office equipment because WiZiX already has a crew of more than 30 technicians in the field setting up equipment or servicing it. Those technicians deal with sophisticated and complex machines, so servicing EV chargers is an easy addition to make, McIntosh said.
WiZiX sells, leases and services office products like copiers, scanners and printers, along with other office equipment like fax machines, plotters and document management equipment.
So far, customers for EV chargers have included commercial properties, churches, charter schools, office properties and restaurants.
That will likely extend to many more kinds of real estate that have parking lots where the owner might want to start earning some income from commercial charging, McIntosh said. WiZiX already has a roster of business clients and many of them also have fleets that they will be transitioning to electric.
The demand for EV charger spaces is anticipated to grow in the coming years as more EVs are on the road.
California’s zero-emission vehicle mandate is just 11 years away. In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order mandating that all new cars sold in California starting in 2035 be zero-emission vehicles. That order was later codified by the California Air Resources Board.
Currently, about 80% of EV charging happens at home, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. One problem is that less than half the population lives in a house, so those drivers, along with drivers on road trips, will need to have access to public charging.
A lot of home EV chargers are Level 1, which is basically just plugging into a grounded 110-volt wall socket, or it could be Level 2 charging, which requires a 220-volt plug like is used for an electric range or a clothes dryer and takes five hours.
Commercial chargers tend to be Level 2 or Direct Current fast chargers, which can bring an EV battery to a 90% charge in less than a half hour.
McIntosh said WiZiX can service any of them, but the public-facing ones for commercial charging will likely be Level 2 or DC fast chargers.
Office equipment veteran Gary Johnson started WiZiX in 2017 and then expanded it quickly with acquisitions of office equipment companies in Northern California and Nevada.
The company has offices in Rohnert Park, San Jose, Fresno, Fairfield and Reno.
McIntosh said the company will service the EV chargers out of all of its offices, and for installations, if they are large enough, it will go anywhere in California or Nevada.
