Feb. 13, 2023–J.D. Power has been keeping track of EV drivers’ satisfaction with “the network of Level 2 and Level 3 public chargers” since 2021, and currently, American EV drivers are more disappointed than ever, Car Scoops reports.
The biggest cause of dissatisfaction stems from how unreliable public chargers can be, with “one in five charging attempts at public chargers” failing in 2022. Since 2021, it’s only become worse, and according to J.D. Power, it’s due to a lack of upkeep with the chargers.
Brent Gruber, executive director of global automotive at J.D. Power, said that adding new chargers and letting “all those old ones fall into a state of disrepair” is not a viable option.
“We have to manage the maintenance of those as well because that’s the only way we’re going to meet the consumer demand,” he said.
Over 26,500 chargers across the country were examined in the study, which found that the least reliable charging networks “failed to charge 40 percent of the time” for drivers, while the best networks had a failure rate of only three percent.
Many of the problems plaguing the unreliable chargers were minor, such as “software glitches,” “payment processing errors,” and “vandalism,” but it often takes technicians “24 to 48 hours” to go and repair them.
