Electric Vehicle Charging User Experience and Reliability

To ensure electric vehicle (EV) drivers have access to chargers when they are away from home, federal funding has supported the build-out of public electric fueling infrastructure. In order for the charging infrastructure to be effective, it must be aligned with consumer expectations and needs, which includes working reliably.

The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office) focuses on improving user experience by promoting common, open-source, and user-first approaches to charging key performance indicators (KPIs), payment processing and user interfaces, vehicle-charger communication, charging system faults, and diagnostic data sharing. This work is accomplished through a consortium of national laboratory researchers and industry stakeholders called the National Charging Experience (ChargeX) Consortium.

EV Charging Experience Through a Consumer Lens

Charging stations, like any frequently used infrastructure, do not always meet consumer expectations. With EV supply equipment, this could mean wait times, issues starting sessions, failed payment processing, or slower-than-expected charging speeds. There are many different suppliers of industry, so a common approach to measuring the customer experience is needed so the charging ecosystem can make improvements that scale.

Starting with real-world customer pain points and input from charging suppliers to define the charging experience, the ChargeX Consortium has developed definitions of the charging experience and best practices for a set of common charging KPIs and best practices for payment systems. These guidelines are designed to create operational consistency cross-industry while also remaining flexible to work for individual businesses.

Read Customer-Focused Key Performance Indicators for Electric Vehicle Charging and Best Practices for Payment Systems at Public Electric Vehicle Charging Stations.

Creating Consistency in How Charging Issues Are Triaged and Fixed

Each charging experience has several different vendors and systems working together in the background. While their technology works together, they do not always use the same approach for error reporting and troubleshooting, which results in a longer time to triage and fix charging issues.

Working with its industry partners, the ChargeX Consortium proposed a common set of minimum required error codes and diagnostics to streamline error reporting, interpretability, and the diagnostics process. These minimum required error codes created a unifying language across the EV ecosystem, including identifying which vendor categories of the EV charging process were responsible for resolving various errors. Ultimately, this common approach will speed up time to resolution in the event of an issue, improving charger availability and reliability.

Read Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure and Implementation Guide for Minimum Required Error Codes in Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure.

Improving the User Experience at Scale

As the user experience is defined and analyzed, there are common issues that could be addressed by taking the burden off the consumer and automating it instead. For example, the ChargeX Consortium has identified that many common charging issues, particularly in public direct-current (DC) fast charging, can be solved by simply unplugging the charger and re-plugging it in. However, instead of the user doing this, the ChargeX Consortium identified that this kind of task can be automated as a retry mechanism when specific kinds of errors occur.

The Joint Office continues to look for opportunities like this example to improve the overall user experience with technology.

Fostering Innovation That Improves the User Experience

Performance and reliability challenges are likely to contribute to a driver’s poor charging experience. To spark innovations that help solve these challenges, the Joint Office funds efforts to improve EV charging performance and reliability through its Ride and Drive Electric funding opportunity. In 2024, the Joint Office awarded $46.5 million in new federal funding for projects to improve performance, reliability, and resiliency of EV charging while strengthening the EV workforce and ensuring equity. Of that funding, more than $13 million will go to projects that improve EV charging performance and reliability.

Read about the Ride and Drive Electric funding awards.

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