Modern electric cars usually come with some sort of companion smartphone app, for better or worse. They’re the perfect candidates for such a marriage–you can cool or heat the cabin before opening the driver’s door, set charging schedules and more.
But as is the case with other smartphone apps, not all are created equal. Some are filled to the brim with features, while others will make owners forget they have access to an app in the first place. But how do you know which EV maker has the best app? Well, you can be sure J.D. Power has a ranking for that.
Get Fully Charged
The beauty of smartphone apps for EVs
When an EV is charging at home, it's more or less like a smart appliance. You can check and modify the charging settings, cool or heat the cabin and more, all from your smartphone. That makes it a pretty cool gadget if you ask us.
Say hello to the results of the 2024 U.S. OEM EV App Report, which ranks EV smartphone apps from best to worst based on over 350 best practices that include more than 70 EV-specific attributes.
To come up with the results, J.D. Power surveyed almost 1,300 EV owners in the United States in April-May 2024 to get insights into app usage, feature desirability and app overall execution.
The results were split into two categories, one for premium brands and one for mass-market brands. In the former category, Tesla rules the chart with a score of 847 on a 1,000-point scale, followed by Mercedes-Benz’s Me connect app with 843 points and BMW’s MyBMW with 834 points. On the other side of the chart are the Volvo Cars, Jaguar Remote and Polestar apps.
In the mass-market segment, J.D. Power ranked Hyundai’s EV smartphone app to be the best of the bunch, with 835 points, followed by Kia with 829 points and Ford with 810 points. Volkswagen’s myVW, VinFast and the Subaru Solterra Connect app all got under 700 points and ranked at the bottom of the chart.
That said, things are going in the right direction, at least in the non-Tesla space. According to J.D. Power, the percentage of EV owners who experienced a connection problem remained flat year-over-year at 38%. However, the number of non-Tesla EV owners who experienced a connection problem went down from 44% to 40%, while for Tesla owners it’s the other way around, with the percentage rising to 35%, up from 30% in 2023 and 20% in 2022.
Generally speaking, the needs and features that the owners want are well taken care of by the top-performing brands, the report shows, with things like the ability to accurately monitor an active charge, set charging preferences and plug and charge integration working well.
However, not everybody considers the existence of a smartphone app to be a deciding factor in the purchasing decision. 62% of Tesla owners said the availability of a smartphone app had at least a moderate effect on their purchase decision, but non-Tesla owners are far less interested, with just 34% of drivers saying the companion app had at least a moderate effect on their decision to purchase an EV.
