Five Things That Would Make Charging an EV Much Simpler

With EV sales soaring in many countries and the Tesla Model Y now the world’s best-selling vehicle, ahead of the Toyota Corolla, it makes sense to look at how our network of charging points urgently needs to grow. Sadly, the evidence suggests that so far, the customer experience has been a disaster.

Let’s start with the basics: recharging an electric vehicle should not be a stressful experience. We’re not talking about flammable liquids or dicing with death, and charging times are, in many cases, a perfectly manageable 15 minutes. However, accustomed as I am to getting around with a Tesla vehicle for four years now, all of my bad experiences with charging have originated when I’ve tried to use another company’s charger. A couple of weeks ago, driving a Tesla rented from Hertz in Italy, it happened to me again: arriving at a charger next to my hotel, and supposedly having to go through an absurd process in a foreign language to sign up for a network that I will never use again. I finally ended up driving fifteen more kilometers to go to a Tesla Supercharger (I had plenty of charge left, so it was no real sweat). Car rental companies typically encourage you to use charging points they have agreements with (in my case it was, of course, Tesla’s own chargers and those at Shell gas stations, and in both cases the charges are applied directly to the card you used when renting the vehicle), but nothing prevents you from charging at other chargers (or on a wall socket overnight) if you find it more convenient to do so.

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With a Tesla vehicle, the problem is finding a supercharger. The car itself indicates where they are when planning the route, and even in Spain, which has a lower density than most other countries in Europe, they are usually sufficient because their location is carefully chosen. But the charging process could not be simper. The vehicle itself, when plugged in, identifies itself with the network, proceeds to recharge without asking the user for anything, reports the cost on the screen, and charges the user’s credit card. Done. Sure, this is a vertical experience: the company itself controls the vehicle and the infrastructure, and setting up the system in this way is simpler than when third parties are involved.

Tesla, by far the leader in this industry and the company that sets the benchmark and the standards, announced some time ago that it would start allowing other manufacturers’ vehicles to use its chargers. At the same time, we are seeing more and more public and private initiatives in countries such as China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea or the United States trying to speed up the installation of fast charger networks through measures such as forcing service stations to get on the program or setting criteria to increase their presence, as well as the development of infrastructure in cities such as London, New York or Toronto to provide spaces where the public can charge their vehicles. It is quite possible that we won’t need a vast network, and that all this is driven by the range anxiety of inexperienced consumers, but it’s clear that chargers are going to become a regular feature on our roads, as happened during the 20th century with gas stations.

However, all these initiatives could come to nothing if we don’t get the right charging procedures in place, which as things stand, is not the case. Let’s review the five fundamental points that would characterize a successful charging network.

The first is rapid repairs: a hotline must always be available, and breakdowns must be under 24 hours. I have come across many broken or disconnected chargers that have not been working for months; not a happy experience.
All chargers should function simply on the basis of a credit or debit card or its electronic equivalent. The vast majority of chargers still require a lengthy and tedious onboarding process, which, to top it all off, in many cases means the delivery of some kind of card to the user’s home. Let’s see: if I am in front of a charger, what I want is to charge, not to be sent something that will arrive at my house in a few days when I don’t need it. It is not a question of planning: the user cannot seriously be expected to carry around so many cards or download so many apps. Just in Spain, a very small country, we have more than ten different charging networks, do you seriously want people to install ten different apps or get ten different contactless recharging cards? If companies want to offer better conditions or prices to users happy to go through the onboarding process, fine. But the FUNDAMENTAL thing is that anybody who requires it must be able to recharge their vehicle immediately with just a credit card, with no need to undergo some stupid onboarding process.
In addition, chargers must indicate clearly the charging power they supply. To charge at 5A, which is what a normal household socket provides, takes far too long.
No exclusivity: several charger networks demand exclusivity from the service station, presumably to mitigate the construction and installation costs, which in many cases makes it difficult for other suppliers to install their charging points.
Finally, plug format: until standardization takes place, the charging point should be able to offer the widest possible variety of plug formats, and it should be the responsibility of the vehicle’s owner to carry the appropriate connectors.

These five simple rules would ensure that anyone who wants to use an EV for longer journeys can do so with guarantees, avoiding unnecessary scares and having to make trade-offs for something as simple as plugging a vehicle into a charger. For a long time, these ambiguities were exploited by oil companies to try to sow the idea that EVs were a hassle. The internal combustion engine’s days are numbered, and it is soon to be replaced by electric motors, a process that will happen in a relatively short period of time. Let’s be aware of this and stop creating needless problems.

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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.

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