The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that EV chargers, which languished outside many U.S. stores for years, are slowly boosting foot traffic. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe says that for a lot of electric-vehicle owners, the time to go shopping is when the car is low on power. Shopping centres and malls bet heavily on EVs when they started installing chargers decades ago. For years, their experience was mixed, and the actual benefits were unclear. Now, new studies say retailers' charging efforts may well be paying off: One peer-reviewed study by researchers at Boston University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison published this year looked at the impact of nearly 1,600 Tesla Supercharger stations in more than 800 U.S. counties and found a 4-per-cent increase in monthly visits for retailers within 200 metres of chargers after they were installed. The effects were most pronounced for retailers within 150 metres. The researchers also found a 5-per-cent increase in spending. Another recent study, published in Nature Communications, found that public EV stations "tend to attract higher-income, exploratory visitors and local residents," and in low-income areas they "enhance businesses."