The observatory of service quality of publicly accessible electricity charging points
delivers its first results
Roaming experience to charge one’s EV must be ever simpler, more fluid and more assured: this is the objective of AFIREV, which has decided to set up a service quality observatory to provide an objective measurement of the situation, encompassing all players involved in EV charging: users, service providers, manufacturers and local authorities.
For the first time, major players in the electricity charging sector have pooled their feedback to measure the quality of services and identify priority areas for improvement. To this end, operating statistics for more than half of the installed charging stations were analyzed and compared with the perceptions of electric vehicle drivers, collected through an OpinionWay survey, listening to social networks, and interviews with two user associations.
With the first edition of this observatory, EV charging stakeholders identified the improvements that need to be made to offer a service that can convince an ever larger number of drivers: over the period from May to October 2020, 9% of the charging points proved to be unavailable for more than 7 consecutive days; 85% of users of these networks said they had encountered an out of order charging point and 83% of users said they had experienced a charging defect at least once.
Nevertheless, 80% of users express overall satisfaction with the current public charging service and 96% remain satisfied with the use of EV. They appreciate essential aspects of e-mobility service such as map applications on smartphone and the ease of use of the stations.
The observatory’s findings lead to two priority areas for progress in 2021: on one side user information and support before and during charging; on the other side overall level of availability of charging points and the 100% success rate of charging sessions.
The quality charters published on AFIREV website are a lever to help charging infrastructure planners, CPO and EMSP to prevent difficulties and anomalies encountered by users. They will be adapted to the lessons learned from the Observatory.
The Observatory website (in french) provides access to the full report and interactive tables presenting all indicators produced.