Electric vehicle owners seem to like their energy-efficient machines just fine. It’s charging those EVs that vex drivers.
Exhibit “A” is a recent J.D. Power study noting EV owners are dissatisfied with both charging station availability and performance, with the numbers falling in alarming fashion.
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“The declining customer satisfaction scores for public charging should be concerning to automakers and, more broadly, to public charging stakeholders," said J.D. Power executive director Brent Gruber. "The availability of public charging stations is still a critical obstacle,
EV owners are increasingly dissatisfied with the amount of time it takes to charge their vehicles as satisfaction with tier-2 charging stations decreased by 36 points year-over-year to 455 (out of a 1,000-point ranking system). “EV owners using DC fast chargers don’t fare much better as satisfaction with the speed of charging declines 30 points to 588,” the Power study noted.
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Now, change is coming to the EV charging market, and in a big way, as a new Tesla Supercharger station has opened up in Quartzsite, Arizona. The new charging platform is one of the biggest stations ever built, holding 84 charging stalls with 60 stalls currently open for business.
The Quartzsite station offers some new amenities for EV owners, including larger “pull through” stalls for EVs with trailers and solar canopies for faster and more cost-effective charges.
Two more existing Tesla charging stations in California, in Barstow and Coalinga, are reportedly in line for a supercharger upgrade of over 100 charging stalls, with no official due date announced by Tesla yet.
Tesla says it hears the call for more charging stations and expects to reveal even more Supercharger locations, including the California sites, in the coming months. To date, Tesla has about 3,000 supercharger stations open across the world with almost 40% of them in the U.S.
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