New survey looking at experiences charging electric vehicles

28 July 2022

How can the experience of charging an electric vehicle be improved?

The number of electric vehicles on our roads is increasing. Sales of new petrol and diesel cars and vans will end in 2030. This will mean many will soon be charging up instead of filling up.

Transport Focus is building a new survey to measure the user experience of charging an electric vehicle at services on England’s motorways and major ‘A’ roads.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus, said

“As more and more people use electric vehicles, it’s important to focus on improving the experience of charging up.

“By benchmarking experience site to site, and between different chargepoint providers, we will help drive up standards both in the short and longer term.”

We talked to around 350 road users as we tested different approaches to measuring the charging experience.

Although small scale and not intended to be representative of all those charging a vehicle, we found that electric vehicle users:

• are an engaged group of consumers
• are willing to share and feedback information if it helps drive improvements
• have concerns about chargepoint supply keeping up with demand
• encounter problems with chargepoints.

Among the electric vehicle users we spoke to, around half were satisfied with their chargepoint experience. Problems mentioned included them being broken, only one customer at a time being able to use some chargepoints, queuing to plug in and lack of support when things go wrong.

Transport Focus is engaging with the Office for Zero Emissions Vehicles, National Highways and chargepoint providers as we work towards launch of the new survey later in 2022/23.

See our pilot survey report here.

Read our research from September 2021 on this topic – Plugging the gap: drivers experiences with electric cars.

For further information please contact: Misha MccGwire, senior communications officer, email: misha.mccgwire@transportfocus.org.uk.