Learning the hard way: Not all EV charging experiences are created equal

The nation's public charging network, with its steep learning curve and fussy technology, is proving to be a challenge for an auto industry working hard to sell consumers on electric vehicles.

While some early EV adopters are figuring out ways to navigate around broken stations, slow charging, tacked-on fees, unreliable software and myriad other hassles, these pain points are giving prospective EV buyers some pause.

Kurt Lammon, president of a Rainsville, Ala., company that supplies products to body shops to repair plastic components, is interested in EVs. He commutes around 120 miles per day, but he's not convinced that public chargers work well enough yet to make an EV practical for him.

"Time is the most valuable thing I've got. I'm not going to waste it charging an EV. But once they get charging figured out, maybe I'll consider it," Lammon said.

Pete Pryce, a program coordinator at a suburban Detroit automotive engineering company, drives a Ford F-150 with an EcoBoost engine that has close to 250,000 miles on its odometer.

He would replace it today with an electric truck — if he could charge an EV as painlessly as he refuels his trusty Ford pickup. But Pryce does not believe that the public charging infrastructure is reliable enough to ensure he can plug in and charge without something going wrong.

The way Lammon and Pryce both feel about charging aligns with the results of a survey in Deloitte's 2023 Global Automotive Consumer Study published in January. Charging issues were cited more than any other concern regarding EVs.

S&P Global Mobility, in a report on the public charging infrastructure in the U.S., said that even when home chargers are factored in, the country will need to quadruple charger installations in the next two years to keep pace with growing EV sales. While sales of EVs accounted for just over 5 percent of U.S. light-vehicle sales in 2022, they are forecast to climb to around 40 percent by 2030. This would put the number of EVs on the road at about 28.3 million, according to S&P Global Mobility.

Even if all those chargers are installed, recharging an EV using today's technology will still not be as effortless as filling a vehicle with gasoline.

Gasoline dispensers at the majority of America's 145,000 filling stations are made by one of three companies: Gilbarco, Wayne or OPW Tokheim. They all work pretty much the same way, and seamlessly. Gasoline pumps require little more from motorists other than a credit card and a fuel selection. Most fill-ups take about two minutes as gasoline flows into the tank at about 10 gallons per minute. The price per gallon is clearly displayed, and the pumps work the same way regardless of vehicle. Not so with EV chargers. And therein lies one of the problems that won't be solved by simply installing more Level 2 and DC fast chargers.

As more models of EVs debut from different brands, issues using public chargers might get worse before they get better — no matter how many chargers come online.

Part of the problem is rooted in software, said Octavio Navarro, spokesperson for Electrify America, operator of the nation's largest coast-to-coast public charging network.

He compares Tesla's Superchargers, which currently work only on Tesla vehicles, to those that serve EVs from all brands. He likens the situation to Apple computers' bespoke operating systems vs. those of PCs, the vast majority of which run on Microsoft's Windows operating system.

"I always say Tesla is like Apple. It's a closed system. It's all integrated and Tesla controls everything, so their system works really well," Navarro said. "There are different manufacturers of PCs, and they all work the same, but they use different parts. Each has its own kind of chips, so the software will work, but they all run a bit differently."

Another issue is consumers' knowledge of their vehicle and selecting compatible chargers. A vehicle's electronics, not the charger, govern the rate that electricity can flow into the battery pack. A Chevrolet Bolt has a maximum charging rate of 55 kilowatts, so plugging it into a 350-kilowatt DC fast charger not only doesn't charge the vehicle faster, it prevents drivers of cars such as the Lucid Air, which can charge faster, from being able to charge.

Jonathan Levy, chief commercial officer for EVgo, another large national charging network, said public chargers are beginning to work more like Tesla's, which only require a driver to plug in the vehicle to initiate charging. Tesla's chargers don't have screens, and drivers don't have to input any information. The car and charger exchange information in an electronic "handshake."

EVgo's Autocharge+ is also a plug-and-charge system that eliminates the need for the driver to use a screen or input credit card information. Autocharge+ and other similar apps have to do something that Tesla's Superchargers don't — work seamlessly with a variety of EVs. But the job of perfecting the "handshake" likely won't get easier as more brands and models become available and battery and charging technology continues to evolve.

"We have to be ready for 40 different EV models from eight manufacturers," Levy said. "All of which have different charging curves, different initiation sequences, and some of the manufacturers change the timing a little bit. All of that means it's a little more difficult to make sure it can work at the first go. That's why it's really important to work with the automakers."

EVgo has partnered with General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, Subaru and several other automakers to improve charging performance when drivers plug in.

The evolving business model is affecting consumers' experiences with public charging, and often not in a good way. ChargePoint, for example, doesn't operate the same way as most other public chargers. The Campbell, Calif., company sells its chargers to businesses and government entities, which control the pricing for using the chargers. That information is sometimes not easily found. Unsuspecting customers could end up with an unexpectedly high fee for a charging session, sometimes at a per-mile rate higher than gasoline.

Last fall, the city of Sunbury, Ohio, set the price for using a DC fast charger at $5 per minute or $300 per hour, sparking an outcry online that eventually resulted in the price being reduced to $10 per hour.

Fees can be added to a charging session if the driver doesn't move the vehicle after the charger turns off. EVgo has a 10-minute grace period before an inactivity fee starts accruing.

Even Tesla's Superchargers — acknowledged as the gold standard of EV charging — have issues, largely related to capacity. As with public chargers, if two Teslas are using the same Supercharger, the charging rate for both cars will be slower because of limitations of the unit and possibly the electricity available from the grid. At best, it takes around 15 minutes to put 200 miles of range in a Tesla. And, in California at least, there's often a wait at more popular Supercharger facilities.

"Tesla has benefited in terms of improving the ownership experience from its Supercharger network, but it's not clear if that will truly be the best solution if EVs really do reach the nearly 42 percent of the market forecast for 2030," said Stephanie Brinley, associate director of Autointelligence at S&P Global Mobility.

"The business around who owns and operates publicly available EV chargers is in its infancy, and what the best model ultimately will be is something that the market will really have to sort out by trial and error," she said. "Everything being done today will contribute to developing an infrastructure that is eventually effective and efficient. But it will develop over time, and it may look different from region to region, depending on local needs."

Ben Cirker, an environmental scientist from Columbus, Ohio, has plenty of experience charging EVs. In 2016, he bought a secondhand Ford Focus Electric and piled 30,000 miles on it in six years — no easy feat, since the compact hatchback has a range of just 76 miles and about one-third fewer in the winter. Cirker now drives a Chevrolet Bolt.

Cirker told Automotive News he often spends his spare time testing different public chargers and apps, viewing YouTube videos and chatting online in EV forums where people swap tips and share their experiences.

He believes automakers, new-car dealers and charging companies need to be more transparent about charging times, how fast electricity can flow into a vehicle and driving ranges.

"It's not like gasoline, where you fill at the same rate until it is full," Cirker said. "Manufacturers need to be upfront about the fact that when you plug in with 10 percent in the battery, you are going to charge a lot faster than if you plug in at 80 percent. That's in the fine print somewhere, but it is not intuitive."

Charging costs also can vary widely, depending on the brand and location.

"I pretty much always know about the cost to charge; it varies state by state, but not that much," said Cirker, who warns that EV drivers using ChargePoint chargers need to read the costs on the screen before they plug in and press the button. He has also found that public charging networks almost always work better when the user has the app and an account set up with payment information.

Levy, of EVgo, said having an account greatly improves the "handshake" coupling between the car and the charger and reduces the chances of the charge initiation timing out, which happens when the charger doesn't communicate with the vehicle within a certain time frame. These incidences are particularly annoying to customers, he said, because no reason is given for the failure.

David Auch, founder of D1 Auto Brokers in Tarzana, Calif., owns a Jaguar I-Pace EV and Audi Q5 plug-in hybrid that he bought at Audi Beverly Hills. His salesperson, Ryan Bradley, was instrumental in helping Auch learn how to use public chargers and set up accounts with EVgo and ChargePoint. But that doesn't appear to be standard practice for most sales personnel.

"I think the key difference," Auch said, "is having a sales or a product person who has actually lived with an electric car for a while and actual experience charging."

Bradley, the store's new-car fleet director., said, "I think it is an important part of every deal we do on an electric vehicle that people know how to use them." A lot of the difficulty and frustration with chargers is caused by the network itself, not so much the car or user error, he added.

Ed Kim, an analyst at AutoPacific, recently spent a week testing a Genesis G80, which included his first long-distance drive in an EV. He drove the car from his home in Long Beach, Calif., to Las Vegas. The G80 performed flawlessly. Public chargers, not so much.

A charging session at an EVgo station in Long Beach quit at just 18 percent a few minutes after he left the car to go on a jog. He was planning to come back to a car with 80 percent charge.

"This was a 350-kW charger, so, in theory, it should be able to charge the G80 to 80 percent in 22 minutes," he said. "In Vegas, it really did work that quickly. But this time, it had a communication error and stopped. People need to be aware that this sort of thing happens a lot more than we'd like."

Auch, who does most of his charging at home, said the occasional inconveniences of relying on public charging are manageable. "The time I save in my life not going to gas stations to fill up every week or two is far more valuable to me than the time I spend at long-distance chargers," he said.

Mujeeb Ijaz, CEO of battery producer Our Next Energy, believes at least some concerns drivers have with the charging infrastructure can be negated by EVs with longer driving ranges. If EVs can be driven without the need for public charging and then are completely recharged at home overnight, consumers, he believes, will fret less over the state of public chargers.

"Once the car gets you to the end of the day, you don't really care how fast the charging experience is," said Ijaz, whose company is working on batteries that extend range between charges to 600 miles.

Autel Energy, a maker of chargers for public and private use, aims to improve reliability using software as robust as what automakers deploy in vehicles plus manufacturing equipment that's extremely durable in the face of abuse, weather extremes and other situations that can take a charger off-line.

But John Thomas, Autel's COO, said there are things suppliers of charging equipment can't control, such as the energy available from the grid and customer knowledge, something he's experienced firsthand.

"When I picked up my Tesla, the gentleman who handed off the car asked me what I wanted to know," he said. "This was my first EV, and I didn't even know what I wanted to know."

Autel has about 60,000 public and private chargers in service in Europe and the U.S. Thomas believes dealers have a role in helping educate EV drivers about the public charging infrastructure.

"I'm not sure how dealers ramp up their teams when every different type of hardware or software might be slightly different," he said.

As for Pryce, who works at Pilot Systems in Farmington Hills, Mich., he said he is sold on the technology — having tested Teslas, BMWs and other EVs. But until the issues with the public charging infrastructure are sorted and EV driving ranges expand, he sees one as a second car, mostly for city driving.

"How far does the average car go on a tank of fuel? As soon as EVs start to approach that, I think we'll have an EV in the garage," he said.