In the minds of prospective electric vehicle (EV) buyers, charging looms large. Just over half of those surveyed by AAA last year said that public charging infrastructure was a key concern. Those concerns aren’t unfounded. EV fast charging has historically been lackluster.
However, my recent road trip to Montreal covering more than 600 miles proved that the situation has improved dramatically. With one small exception, my charging experience was flawless. This summer’s road trip to Montreal was not intended to be a test of EV charging infrastructure, but it turned out to be an opportunity to assess the current state of fast charging in North America.
The Audi e-tron, which has a range of about 220 miles per charge, handled the trip with aplomb. To find chargers, I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP), an app that optimizes charging stops by accounting for everything from prevailing winds and temperature to vehicle specs and battery degradation. The app is now owned by Rivian, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when it recommended a Rivian charger near Lebanon, New Hampshire.
The experience at the Rivian chargers was impressive. There were no lines, plenty of food options, a grocery store, and six 300-kilowatt chargers that were all working. The charger accepted my credit card and delivered more than 140 kilowatts, roughly the e-tron’s max. We used the same chargers on the way home and had a similar experience.
In contrast to my previous experiences with EV charging, this trip was almost seamless. Three years ago, I drove the same Audi e-tron to Maine, a round trip of about 350 miles, roughly half the distance of our trip to Montreal. The car could have made it to Maine on one charge, but the hotel didn’t have an EV charger. To ensure we had enough juice for the long weekend and the beginning of the drive home, we planned to charge a little over halfway there.
The experience was miserable. The first charger broke shortly after I plugged in, forcing me to move to another stall. The first charger never ended the session with my car, which meant the second one wouldn’t start without a call to customer service. At another stop, the charging network’s app reported two working plugs out of four, but only one actually worked.
Altogether, I drove about seven hours and had to call customer service three times. Thankfully, the EV charging infrastructure looks very different today.
The available data suggests that my experiences in 2023 and 2026 are representative of a broader trend: fast charging in the U.S. has improved by leaps and bounds. Back in July 2023, the country had about 32,000 DC fast chargers, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.
At the time, many of those chargers were restricted to Tesla drivers. Today, EV drivers can use most of Tesla’s network. Continued expansion by Tesla and other companies has helped push the total to more than twice the number of DC fast chargers available in 2023.
My nearly flawless trip last week appears 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 successful charging sessions and station downtime.
Tesla’s network remains dominant, according to Paren, but other networks are growing quickly. That competition has undoubtedly helped improve charging experiences across the board. Gaps in the network still exist and EV chargers still break. But more chargers are being added every month and the broken ones are being repaired more quickly than in the past.
It’s a testament to the rapidly evolving landscape of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
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