Automakers often cite a number: About 85% of electric vehicle drivers charge at home most of the time.
Which says, survey results out last week from EV charging software company ChargeLab emphasizes that the reality is more nuanced.
Looking specifically at people with home chargers, the company found that while that may be the case, 59.6% of people who have the ability to use a home charger still use a public charger at least a few days a week, while 8.2% of that home charging group actually turned to public charging every day.
Charging in the workplace also plays an important role. Just over 40% of EV drivers surveyed had an EV charger available there.
The results come from a regular public charge survey published last week. ChargeLab provides an operating system for EV chargers built around the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) communication standard. It’s based on a poll of just 500 electric vehicle drivers in the US in the fourth quarter of 2023.
GM and Pilot Company’s electric vehicle charging network
Across all use cases, more than half of electric vehicle drivers were found to use public chargers on a weekly basis. ChargeLab found that 30.9% of electric vehicle drivers it surveyed used a public station “several times a week,” while 22.7% used a station “most days.”
Just over two-thirds of respondents said they liked the apps as a way to find public charging sources, while more than two-fifths of respondents said they use Tesla’s system. About 35% of respondents said they primarily drive Tesla EVs, so this highlights that not all Tesla drivers adhere to that ecosystem.
The results are the latest to show that America’s public charging problems are not as simple as highway network layout, and that many electric vehicle drivers are relying on public charging networks to supplement their charging at home. As JD Power pointed out in last year’s survey results, nearly half of shoppers view public charging as a deal breaker. Charging station availability ranked highly among the Reasons for refusing electric vehicles.
ChargeLab Survey – Questions about electric vehicle charging data privacy
ChargeLab also asked about data and privacy, noting that Americans are relatively open to sharing basic details like the make, model, and year of their electric vehicle — if it means anything. better charging performance or reliability.
According to the survey, it was not asked directly about Cybersecurity of EV chargers concerns, nearly 70% of electric vehicle drivers would be willing to share at least some of their charging data to improve the experience. But that support is not without boundaries; They found about 57% were comfortable with it, while less than half were comfortable with collecting individuals’ charging habits or payment data.
