Five Pillars that Define a Smooth EV Charging Experience
Approximately 100 million EV charging sessions will be attempted this year on the U.S. public DC Fast charging infrastructure1. Use cases include road trips, rideshare charging, opportunity charging, and daily/weekly charging for those without home charging access.
As longtime EV drivers, the Paren team has identified five pillars that ultimately define the charging experience: Availability, Reliability, Pricing, Amenities, and Safety.
Each driver has their own priorities for ranking these factors, but it's key that modern route planning systems take all of them into account when guiding drivers to EV charging destinations.
Availability covers many key aspects of planning, including whether the station is usually available at the driver’s expected arrival time, whether it has the plug type needed, or whether the unit is a 250kW or 350kW stall that the vehicle can take full advantage of.
Reliability encompasses not only if the unit is up or down, but whether it will successfully charge the driver’s car. We have all encountered stations with high review scores that fail to successfully deliver a charge; an app that tells us the unit is available but it fails to charge every time; or a working station that is now blocked by a natural disaster or vandalism. Understanding the current reliability of an EV charging station is much more important than how it performed last week or last month, which is what some social apps provide you.
Pricing is becoming more of a factor in public EV charging with more stations in the ground and the opening up of the Tesla Supercharger network. Many times, the price is hidden or not quickly visible within popular routing apps or infotainment screens. Would you pay $3 per kW like we saw recently at a dealership site? Is a 10¢ difference enough to steer you toward the less expensive offering? We believe drivers will start paying more attention to price in the coming months.
Amenities may be taken for granted in the major metropolitan areas where charging stations are often located in shopping center parking lots. However, amenities, or lack thereof, are a critical consideration on a road trip that takes you to unfamiliar areas. The ability to add your amenity preferences to the routing experience will provide for a more enjoyable trip.
Safety is an often-overlooked aspect of public EV charging. Many stations may feel safe during the day but are not well lit or lack open amenities later in the evening and during the overnight hours. Would you send your loved one to a potentially unsafe charging station at 11:00 p.m.? Where would you even go to get all of the information related to open amenities, lighting, and other safety information?
Bringing all of these variables together into a real-time data feed helps route planning tools and in-vehicle infotainment systems guide each driver to a better charging experience. Systems can store individual preferences (for example, putting price ahead of amenities, or ranking safety above all else), and combine them with up-to-date data feeds to automatically navigate drivers to the best option meeting their criteria.
Would having access to these kinds of insights compel you to rethink where you get your charging guidance? Check out the tools Paren offers to solve these problems and start enjoying the smoothest possible public charging experience.
1 Based on Paren analysis of existing CCS and Tesla public charging stations
