- Owners report more than ten times the issues with Shell Recharge, EVgo, or Blink than with Tesla
- Rivian’s own charging network was second only to Tesla
- Hardware-related issues have become more prevalent than payment problems
Charging networks operated by Tesla and Rivian tended to have fewer problems than non-automaker efforts, according to a recent Consumer Reports survey.
Electric vehicle owners experience a problem in one out of every five public charging sessions, according to the survey, which draws from ongoing responses from CR’s EV Charging Community project.
In this edition, Consumer Reports includes information from about 5,700 total charging sessions, from 1,230 EV and plug-in hybrid owners. As CR notes to Green Car Reports, there’s not much variation in problems by U.S. region. But the rate of reported problems was certainly not uniform across all networks.
Survey respondents reported problems at Tesla charging stations 4% of the time, and 5% of the time at Rivian-operated chargers. In contrast, respondents said they experienced problems 48% of the time at Shell Recharge stations, 43% of the time at EVgo stations, and 41% of the time at Blink stations. It’s worth pointing out that all of these low-rated charging networks are third-party providers not directly owned or run by automakers
Tesla Supercharger
Rivian last year phased in a grading system for the charging experience via its route planner—so it appears that might be working. A J.D. Power study last year suggested Tesla Supercharging was losing its edge over other public charging, but this study suggests otherwise.
The most common reported problems were hardware-related, at 36%. “Other issues” accounted for 25% of the reported problems, followed by payment issues (23%) and charging power (15%). Payment issues used to be frequently cited as the most common issue EV drivers faced at public charging stations, so this is a notably different result.
Among the reported hardware problems, broken screens were by far the most frequent, at 76%. Other reported problems included damaged charging cables of connectors (10%), chargers that could not physically connect to a vehicle due to ice blockage, damage, or other issues (9%), and cables that were too short (5%).
2023 Toyota bZ4X at EVgo charging station
Of those EV drivers who reported payment issues, 56% said they were able to pay but then encountered another issue that prevented them from charging; 25% said they were unable to pay at a given charger and had to move to another one; and 19% said charging never started despite payment being accepted.
To help make public charging go more smoothly, Consumer Reports recommends having multiple accounts with saved payment information so that, if there’s a problem with the charger’s interface, payment can be completed on a network’s app.
Blink Level 2 charging station at Firestone service center
General charging best practices, such as only fast-charging to 80% and preconditioning the battery pack before arriving, can help as well, the publication notes. In various polls and surveys, consumers continue to emphasize that the absolute charge rate doesn’t matter so much, rather that they get some level of charge in a reasonable amount of time.
With automaker-funded Ionna expanding rapidly, we’ll see how it lands on the scale of consumer approval—perhaps in a future update from this same data set.