Users often find charging stops tedious. A route planner could suggest nearby activities or points of interest to make the wait more productive or enjoyable, helping users change their "time mentality" during long trips.
Decided to do my first road trip in an EV, boy did I learn a lot. Thoughts & serious recommendations ( based on Florida, non Tesla ) Clearly Europe /Tesla driving is wildly different. Please note, it made me realize driving an EV far is entirely sensible, just nothing like as easy as it should be. Key Takeaways & Recommendations - Level 3 Chargers or Nothing For daily use, home charging is amazing—like having a gas station at home. But 85% of public chargers are below 50 kW, making them useless for road trips. The U.S. has only 20,000 non-Tesla Level 3 chargers vs. 2 million gasoline pumps that are 10x faster. - More Chargers in Fewer Locations Less than 2 chargers per location is pointless. At least 40% of chargers seem broken at any time, and 50% of “double chargers” are just two plugs on the same unit—only one car can charge. Anxiety comes from uncertainty, so chargers should be in groups of 10+ per location. - Stop “Topping Off” The first 10 minutes of charging are MAGICAL—my Lucid gets 40 miles per minute at first. But charging slows drastically as the battery fills. 10%-70% can take 25 mins, but 90%-100% can take an hour. It’s absurd to see long lines while someone trickles in 2 miles per minute. Chargers should cut off at 80%. People are too ignorant to learn this. - Better Locations Most chargers are where they’re easy to install, not where they’re needed. EV owners need them in safe, well-lit locations near highways with something to do for 20-40 minutes. Huge gas stations with 70+ pumps often have zero EV chargers—makes no sense. - Massive Fragmentation To do this trip, I needed 10 different apps, and even that wasn’t enough. There are 35+ charging networks. You find random ones like 7 Eleven with the best and unused chargers because nobody knows ! Some apps aggregate data, but info is incomplete and unreliable. - Real-Time Info Is Critical You often can’t tell what’s ahead—broken chargers, long queues, chargers in employee-only lots, car parks closed at 6 PM, etc. - Everything Is Too Complicated Imagine if every gas pump required an app. Imagine if 50% of pumps stopped halfway through, and pricing was per kWh, per minute, and had extra fees for entering the station. That’s the EV charging experience today—a bizarre mess from lack of care and thought. Fixing This: A Simple Blueprint - More DC chargers, grouped in big locations (10+ per site). - Stop charging past 80%. - Allow credit card payments, no more apps. - Fine companies for broken chargers. - National chains should own this (Love’s, Racetrak, Walmart?). - One world-class app to show all chargers in real time—spend $10M on this, not $7.5B on 7 chargers ( digital infrastructure is often more vital than physical, it's resourceful allocation) - Clear queuing systems so people know where to line up ( painted lines and signs and only one access point please ) I still love my non-Tesla EV and will buy another, but charging infrastructure needs urgent fixes