ChargePoint is making a modest but meaningful move to improve everyday EV charging access in Wisconsin, adding public chargers at rental car locations in Appleton and Madison. On the surface, it looks like a small regional rollout. In practice, it highlights how some of the most useful charging expansions aren’t massive highway hubs, but chargers placed where people already stop.
The project is being carried out with Midwestern Wheels, a regional licensee of Avis Budget Group. Together, they are installing a mix of Level 2 and DC fast chargers at airport and neighborhood rental branches in Appleton and Madison. Crucially, these chargers are open to the public. You don’t need to be renting an EV—or even renting a car at all—to plug in.
That detail matters in a state like Wisconsin. According to Wisconsin Clean Cities, EV registrations have grown by more than 50% per year on average since 2013. Charging infrastructure, especially outside the largest metro areas, hasn’t kept pace. For many drivers, that gap shows up not on road trips, but in everyday routines—running errands, visiting airports, or navigating neighborhoods where home charging isn’t an option.
Rental car locations are an interesting solution to that problem. They tend to sit near highways, airports, and commercial zones, and they’re already designed for frequent vehicle turnover. By opening chargers at these sites to the public, ChargePoint and Midwestern Wheels are improving utilization and avoiding a common pitfall of fleet-focused charging: expensive infrastructure that sits idle much of the day.
The technology choice reinforces that practical mindset. Midwestern Wheels is deploying ChargePoint’s Omni Port chargers, which support multiple connector types at the same parking spot without requiring drivers to carry adapters. In mixed-use environments—where today’s renter might be driving a Tesla and tomorrow’s a different EV—that flexibility reduces friction and confusion.
Offering both Level 2 and DC fast charging also broadens the appeal. Travelers dropping off a rental can top up quickly, while local drivers might take advantage of slower charging if they plan to be nearby for a while. For EV owners who don’t have reliable home charging, that kind of optionality can make a real difference.
From a user perspective, this isn’t a flashy announcement. There are no sweeping promises about transforming the grid or blanketing the Midwest with chargers. But that’s also the point. EV adoption often advances through incremental improvements that quietly make ownership easier, not through headline-grabbing projects alone.
My view is that this kind of expansion deserves more attention than it gets. Public chargers at rental car locations won’t solve all of Wisconsin’s charging challenges, but they reflect a smarter way to think about infrastructure: put chargers where people already go, open them to everyone, and design them to work with whatever EV shows up. If more charging providers followed that logic, range anxiety would fade not because batteries got bigger, but because charging became less of a hassle
