New Report Shows That Yes, Our EV Charging Infrastructure Still Indeed Sucks

EV ownership rates may be ticking up, which is a good thing. But what isn’t good is the charging infrastructure that is barely keeping up with adoption. So while you may drive your EV and charge it just fine at home, public charging is and has been a whole other issue, as detailed in a latest report by J.D. Power, via USA Today.

Electric Car Charging Still Sucks, But That Might Change

The report is part of a larger one done on EV leasing rates and vehicle availability — showing that 20.8 percent of EV owners said they had problems with public charging in the first quarter of 2023. Many said the chargers just didn’t work, which if you’re edging really close to zero percent power on your battery, and this is the one charger you can get to, it certainly creates a big problem. 

Then when you look at the faster chargers, the numbers aren’t much better. J.D. Power says that 71 percent of all public charging stations are Level 2, but customer satisfaction with those chargers dropped significantly. On the other side of this, Level 3 charging satisfaction actually improved ever so slightly, but that’s not saying much since many people don’t have access to those types of chargers. Charging problems are also more pronounced in the West, in places like California where EV adoption is leading the nation. The report says the amount of EV owners unable to use public chargers in the Pacific region was 25 percent; nationally its 21 percent.

A VW ID.4 owner shared his personal pains of charging with USA Today. Charging is so bad he says that he’s going to start renting or borrowing gas cars to take on longer trips.

He typically stops at a public charging station in Moore, Oklahoma, on the way to the university to refuel. But during his last visit, he said one of the four chargers wasn’t working and another was delivering a limited number of kilowatts. He fell in line behind three other cars, making what is typically a 30-minute stop drag on more than an hour. He ran into another line at the public charging station on the way back.

Brent Gruber, executive director of global automotive research for J.D. Power says one of the main issues with public charging reliability is the lack of maintenance, due to the weird relationship between EV charging companies and the owners of the sites they’re located at. Most do not own or operate their chargers, but instead sell them to the sites where they are now located. And like most new, expensive things, maintenance is kept up if the warranty is still valid. But once the warranty expires, site owners tend to stop taking care of the chargers. Seriously far from ideal.

Companies like Electrify America says that they plan to replace 600 aging EV chargers by the end of the year, but more needs to be done industry wide, and of course, more chargers also need to be built. In the interim, Gruber says the best thing EV drivers can do until charging improves is to plan ahead and “prepare for the unexpected.”