Key findings from a study indicate that increasing EV popularity exacerbates inadequacies with the public charging infrastructure, as shown in JD Power‘s U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience (EVX) Public Charging Study released on Wednesday.
With more EVs on the road and more charging stations than ever, the study showed that customer satisfaction with public Level 2 charging dropped by 10 points on a 1,000-point scale this year from 2021. Satisfaction for public DC fast-charging stations stayed the same as in the prior year.
Of all chargers, Tesla’s Destination chargers ranked highest of Level 2 chargers at 680 points, while Tesla’s Superchargers ranked highest amongst fast-chargers at 739 points.
JD Power’s Executive Director of Global Auto Brent Gruber said, “Public charging continues to provide challenges to overall EV adoption and current EV owners alike.”
Gruber later continued, “Stations need to be added to areas where there are currently gaps in heavily traveled routes and in high-density areas for people who don’t have access to residential charging, but most importantly, designed with things for users to do while charging—regardless of the use case. Then, we need to make sure those stations are reliable.”
The study says it points to a need for charging infrastructure improvement, saying that consumers avoid buying electric because of a concern for lack of public charging availability.
Tesla launched a Supercharger membership for non-Tesla EVs this week, costing just $0.99 per month. But the option soon quickly disappeared.
