In the minds of prospective EV buyers, charging is big. Just over half of those surveyed by AAA last year said public charging infrastructure was a major concern.
That concern is unfounded. EV fast charging has historically been slow. In 2023, after a disastrous trip, I wrote a fast-charging EV “bill of rights,” outlining seven improvements to charging networks that need to be made to turn things around.
What a difference a few years can make.
On a recent road trip, I was amazed at how much the situation has improved. With one small exception, my charging experience was flawless, something I can’t say about a similar road trip three years ago.
A flawless experience
This summer’s road trip to Montreal covered over 600 miles. We intended to use our Kia EV9, which will go about 300 miles on a charge, but the Kia is in the shop due to a broken air conditioner. Instead, we drove our Audi e-tron, which has a range of 220 kilometers per charge. Despite the differences, the e-tron handled the trip with aplomb. Rangemaxxing may sound fancy, but it’s not necessary.
To find chargers, I used the Better Route Planner (ABRP), an app that prepares charging stops by calculating everything from wind and temperature to vehicle specifications and battery degradation. You can use a Bluetooth OBD reader to feed live data from the car to ABRP, but I found the app to be very accurate without one. ABRP said our first stop should be the Rivian charger near Lebanon, New Hampshire. The app is now owned by Rivian, so I’m not entirely surprised.
After my experience with Lebanese chargers, I can see why the app chose them, regardless of Rivian’s identity. There were no lines, plenty of food options, a grocery store, and six 300 kilowatt chargers all working. I had downloaded the Rivian app in advance, but no need. The charger accepted my credit card and delivered over 140 kilowatts, about the size of an e-tron. We used the same chargers on the way home and had the same experience.
After that, we used the Circuit Électrique station outside of Montreal to fill in for the next week. There, we encountered the only problem of the trip: The card reader didn’t work, so I had to download the Circuit Électrique app and load it for 20 Canadian dollars. After that, the session went smoothly. In retrospect, the stop was completely unnecessary. We didn’t drive much during the week, and the hotel charger worked well. But the kids needed a break and my wife needed coffee, so maybe we would have connected no matter what.
Each session lasted about 20 minutes, and included charging and lunch or breaks. We didn’t wait a single day in the car. All in all, the three times it took a long time to wait for border control on the way back to the United States.
How it used to be
Three years ago, the journey did not go well. I knew fast charging could be hit or miss — I’ve driven non-Tesla EVs for over a decade — but I still came away disappointed.
That summer, we drove the same Audi e-tron to Maine, a round trip of about 350 miles, about half the distance of our trip to Montreal. The car could get to Maine on a single charge, but the hotel didn’t have an EV charger. To make sure we had enough juice for the long weekend and the start of the trip home, we planned to charge a little over half there.
Before we left, I had also used ABRP to rule out less reliable chargers, but the experience was still miserable. The first charger broke shortly after I plugged it in, forcing me to move to another store. The first charger didn’t finish the session with my car, which means the second one won’t start without a call to customer service. At another stop, the charging network’s app reported two of the four plugs were working, but only one was working. In total, I drove for about 7 hours and had to call customer service three times.
Imagine if gas stations worked like this?
The data revealed significant improvements
Thankfully, EV charging infrastructure looks very different today. My experiences in 2023 and 2026 are anecdotes, of course. But the available data suggests it represents a broader trend: fast charging in the US has grown by leaps and bounds.
Back in July 2023, the country had 32,000 DC fast chargers, according to the United States Office of Energy and Transportation. At the time, most of those chargers were limited to Tesla drivers. (Tesla announced plans to open its network in 2023, but it took more than a year for widespread access.) Today, EV drivers can use most of Tesla’s network. Continued expansion by Tesla and other companies has helped push the number to more than double the number of DC fast chargers available by 2023.
In addition, they are very reliable.
My almost flawless trip last week seems to be the norm, not the exception. Since last year, reliability has improved nearly 10 points, from 85 to the mid-90s, on Paren’s reliability index, which includes metrics such as effective charging times and station downtime. Tesla’s network remains dominant, according to Paren, but other networks are growing rapidly. That competition has undoubtedly helped improve the charging experience across the board.
Gaps in the network still exist and EV chargers are still out. But more chargers are installed every month and broken ones are fixed faster than before.
It’s not perfect, but I’m really surprised at how much faster charging has improved. Someone has to tell the stakeholders what they are missing.
If you shop through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
