Every year, more and more car owners are switching to electric vehicles. However, they are not happy with the state of the public EV charging in the US, from broken chargers and busted screens to janky software.
State of EV Charging Stations
According to The Verge, JD Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid car owners from January through June for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study.
Despite the massive growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, electric vehicle owners say the overall experience is not good.
JD Power measured customer satisfaction with electric vehicle charging stations on a 1,000-point scale. The respondents said that the charging at a public Level 2 charger is worse than it was in 2021, with their satisfaction dropping to 633 from 643 in 2021.
Meanwhile, satisfaction with the speedier direct current fast charger segment remains at 674, according to The New York Times.
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Brent Gruber, the executive director of global automotive at JD Power, said that the availability of public charging is still an obstacle, and EV owners continue to be faced with charging station equipment that is "inoperable."
Finding a public charger has never been easier, but finding one that works well is still a serious problem.
According to the survey, one out of every five respondents ended up not charging their electric vehicle after locating a public EV charger because the EV station malfunctioned or it was out of service.
Most EV owners do their charging overnight while parked in their own driveway. But if EVs become more enticing to car buyers, charging stations will need to become more pervasive and reliable like gas stations.
As of 2022, there are 41,000 public charging stations in the country, with more than 100,000 outlets.
Tesla's EV Charging Stations
When it comes to ranking customer satisfaction for EV chargers, Tesla came on top. The company's Destination wall-mounted Level 2 chargers, usually found in parking garages or hotels, ranked highest with 680 out of 1,000 votes.
Tesla's Supercharger network also ranks highest among DC fast chargers, with a total of 739 votes.
Experts said that Tesla's network usually works so well because it is designed to work only for the company's own electric vehicle.
Tesla uses a proprietary connection in North America, so non-Tesla cars will need an adapter in order to access the Supercharger.
According to the Department of Energy, there are more than 6,798 Supercharger plugs in the country, with 35,000 Supercharger plugs globally.
Other public charging networks have to work for many different electric vehicle brands. Tesla is expected to start opening up its chargers to non-Tesla EVs by the end of 2022.
Among Level 2 charging providers, customers ranked Volta as the second best, just behind Tesla. ChargePoint comes in third, SemaConnect comes in fourth, and Blink comes in fifth.
Meanwhile, customers ranked DC fast charging companies in the order of ChargePoint, Electrify America, and EVgo.
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Written by Sophie Webster
