They’re talking about how charging feels to the driver. It’s not just whether the charger works—it’s also how hard it is to use, pay for, and get started.
Starting and stopping charging is the process of telling the charger when to begin and when to finish. If you don’t do it right, the charger may not charge properly or you might get billed incorrectly.
Payment methods are the ways you pay to charge your car at a public station. Some chargers work best with certain apps or cards, and using the wrong one can stop you from charging.
Charger accuracy means whether the charger actually does what it says it will do. If it doesn’t, you might get less charging speed or a session that doesn’t behave as expected.
That’s the display on the charger itself. It tells you what’s happening and what to do next, but if you don’t recognize the messages, it can be confusing.
State of charge (SoC) is the battery’s current charge level, usually shown as a percentage. Starting at 1% SoC can increase urgency and reduce buffer for errors—if the session fails, the driver may have very limited options to recover.
This is a Tesla Model S, and it has its own charging plug/port. If the charger you’re using doesn’t match that plug, you may need an adapter to charge.
ABB is a company that builds EV charging stations. The point here is that the charger hardware wasn’t the only problem—the way it was set up to use was confusing.
Google Pay and Apple Pay are ways to pay with your phone. They make checkout easier because you don’t have to manually enter all your card information.
A card reader is the part of the charger where you pay or prove you’re allowed to charge. Where it is and how many there are can make the process easier or more confusing.
Concept
RFID vs bank payment cards
They’re talking about two kinds of cards: special membership cards and normal bank cards. If the charger makes you figure out which one goes where, it’s more annoying.
Kempower makes EV charging stations. Here, the host is using Kempower as an example of how charger screens and readers can be placed in ways that confuse (or help) users.
Plug and charge is an EV charging workflow where the vehicle and charger automatically authenticate and start a session after you plug in—typically without tapping a card or using a screen. It’s designed to reduce user steps and friction at public chargers.
UI design here refers to how charger screens, instructions, and workflows guide users to start/stop charging. The speaker argues that poor UI forces users through extra steps and increases the chance of mistakes, especially when multiple connectors/EVSEs are present.
A QR code is a scannable code that can link to a webpage or app flow. In this segment, the speaker notes that Kempower uses a QR code to let users monitor charging via a phone.
EVSE is the charging unit that actually supplies electricity to your car. Some chargers have one charging channel, and others have two so two cars can charge at once.
Pre-authorization is when your card gets a temporary hold before the final charging cost is known. It’s a common payment step, but it can be confusing.
CPO stands for “Charge Point Operator,” the company that owns and operates charging hardware and typically manages pricing, uptime, and user access. The speaker questions whether CPOs prioritize user experience improvements.
Tesla chargers are used as a comparison point for user experience. The speaker claims Tesla chargers share similar engineering constraints with non-Tesla chargers but deliver fewer UX issues, implying software/workflow matters.
They’re saying the Tesla phone app is simpler than other charging apps. Even though it’s not only for charging, it still makes starting a charge easier.
UX just means how easy and pleasant something is to use. With EV chargers, it’s not only about charging—it’s also about how the screen, buttons, and payment steps feel and work for real people.
They changed the charger’s stop button color to make it look like the other buttons. The idea is that clearer button design helps people avoid pressing the wrong thing.
Seven kilowatts is how fast that charger can deliver power. The important part here is that even a fairly typical charging speed can still cause problems if the cable handling isn’t user-friendly.
This describes a manual, on-site intervention where the charger is shut down at the electrical cabinet rather than fixed remotely. It’s a sign of limited remote access or software control, which can prolong downtime.
ZAP map is an app for finding EV chargers. It can show which chargers are working right now and what they cost, so you don’t have to guess or download lots of different apps.
Car compatibility in an EV charging app usually means the app filters chargers based on what your vehicle can use (connector types, charging standards, and sometimes power limits). This helps avoid selecting chargers your car can’t effectively use.
LIVE
Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things
that are interested to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at the user
side of EV charging and why it's not always optimal.
The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by Zatmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find
and pay for public charging with confidence. Our main topic of discussion today is the user
experience. As a general rule of thumb, I'm quite happy with the charging experience I have
on the public network. There have been one or two chargers that haven't worked or
particularly have started charging and then stopped within two minutes while I was away
using the facilities. But generally, I know how to start and stop chargers. I know which
payment methods work best for me, which apps to download, and which units you need to plug in,
then authorize, and which you need to authorize and then plug in. But that's a result of many
factors, the biggest of which is that I've been doing this for almost eight years now. I've seen
and used all of the major networks across the UK, most of the different bits of hardware,
and most of the payment methods. There's not many circumstances where I'm confronted with a
situation that I can't deal with. But I know that this isn't always the case for many people,
especially people who are new to EV public charging and haven't, perhaps, listened to or watched
any of my podcasts that cover this topic. Now, this point was brought home to me recently
when I was waiting to meet fellow EV podcaster Liz Allen and Craig Marsden for a day out looking
at charger accuracy. But you remember Craig from last season's episode 277, the charger
accuracy episode, where we looked at whether chargers actually deliver what they say they're
delivering. Now, I arrived first at our agreed meeting charger to find a young lady in an older
Tesla model S part at the little 50 kilowatt charger staring at her phone and looking at the
charger screen. After a few moments, it became obvious that she was stuck. So naturally, I offered
my help. Now, it turned out that the car was her brother's. She'd never driven it before.
He lent it to her. The car was at 1% state of charge, and she had no idea what to do.
Now, complicating matters was the fact that this wasn't a Tesla charger, so the car wouldn't
automatically charge. And the fact that because it was a model S, it had a connector that wasn't
compatible with the unit without actually having an adapter. It was the next standard, not CCS.
Now naturally, she couldn't locate the adapter, which meant that we were looking at using the AC
connector to slow charge the car enough for her to get home. But when she had a literal newborn
eight days old in the back seat, now under the best of circumstances, this would have been a
challenge. But the unit we were using an ABB unit with both Chadmo CCS and AC connectors on the same
unit had one of those small interface screens with the little icons at one side and a not very
intuitive design. It was a very poor user experience. In fact, over the course of the next few minutes,
both Craig and I attempted to start the charger on her behalf with a credit card and an RFID card.
And the user experience was so bad, we were both unsuccessful. Craig tried again with a different
card and things started up eventually. In the parlance of our times, she'd encountered a user
experience or UX issue. And this relates to how the system as a whole operates together to either
assist or inhibit the user from doing what they need to do. Let's compare and contrast that with
an experience I had over the Christmas break. I had my nephews and niece, 21 to 25 years old,
in the car on Boxing Day and we arrived at the Tesla V4 Supercharger site open to the general public.
I parked at the first unit and told my younger nephew, go plug me in please. Now he got out,
walked to the back of my car and despite the fact he'd never charged this vehicle before,
as it's a recently purchased bottle for me, nor had he seen or used a V4 Supercharger. It took him
less than 10 seconds to make the connection and I started the charge in the app while sitting in
the driver's seat. So two very different experiences doing the same thing. One very easy, one far more
difficult. Now another example of this outside the world of charging is when you go to a typical
non-Amazon website to buy something and when it comes to paying, you're sent from the website out
to a third-party provider to enter your payment details. Now for a good user experience, what
some sites do now is they allow you to pay using your phone either via Google Pay or Apple Pay.
You click on the payment link on the website, you authenticate on your phone and it's done.
That's a good user experience. A bad user experience is when you have to manually enter your car details,
your expiry date, your security code, alongside your address details and maybe even have some
sort of independent third-party verification. All this before you can pay. Now the end result
is the same. The user journey is very much different. Now late last year I had an interesting
conversation with someone who worked at a charger manufacturer. They were presenting their latest
charger, showed a picture of it and added a couple of user experience questions in the comments on
the post. In fact I started it with I'm going to have a bit of a rant. Now the response that came
back was shall we say very much more hardware focused than user focused, which got me to thinking
how difficult is it to make a charger that has a good user experience? And as we move forward
with this you'll see that I do a lot of comparison with the way we used to do things with wet fuel
dispensing and there's a reason for that. Let's take a look at the issues I had with this particular
charger and how it was explained to me. First off this isn't a rant about this particular
charger. I'm not even going to link to the comment I made or identify the charger brand,
but this is more of a general discussion about charger design as a concept rather than the
issues with this charger specifically. The first thing I talked about was the card reader. Now I've
been to chargers where there's a card reader by the screen and another card reader a bit lower
down. One of these is for RFID cards such as the Zatmuc card, the other for bank payment cards.
They're usually marked so you know which is which, but not always. I've also been to chargers
where there's one reader only. Regardless of whether I'm using an RFID card or my bank card
I swiped in one place. Well which of these processes is better from a user point of view?
Well I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that having a single card reader is a better user
experience. There's no confusion about which card goes where and the process is familiar
because everybody has swiped a card or tapped a card to pay for something. As soon as you
introduce a second card reader you're hitting two potential problems. The first is that unless
they're directly next to each other people often won't see the second one especially if one of them
is right next to or just below the screen. And the second issue is that users won't know which
card needs to be swiped on which reader so the on-screen or written instructions need to make
this absolutely crystal clear. Now I've been to Kempower Chargers where the RFID reader is directly
below the screen but the payment card reader was located several feet lower on the column supporting
the screen. Very easy to not notice if you don't know what you're looking for. Then I moved on to
the screen itself. Now I'll be totally up front here and say that I think the ideal charger has
no screen at all. You just plug a cable in and the card deals with everything i.e plug and charge.
I'm going to be talking more about plug and charge later in the season. But if we do have to have a
screen does it have to be a tiny little screen? Why were reduced to trying to read instructions
and initiate chargers from small poorly designed screens? In fact I'd go so far to say if the
screen was well laid out designed it's probably no issue with it being small. But if we look at
something like an ABB charger and compare it with a Kempower charger we see a couple of key differences.
Both screens are around the same size but the ABB unit has those little tiny icons down the
side of the screen to allow you to select which connector you're using. Now it's quite easy to
miss these or to see them but not necessarily realize to what they refer. So that creates confusion
with the users and confusion is not good. And we will talk about ABB a little later on. But the
whole design of the user interface is an area where great improvements can be made. Some are
actually quite good. I love the Kempower interface which allows you to monitor your charge by scanning
a QR code on your phone and checking things out on the linked web page. But something just not
well thought out they require the user to jump through a set of hoops to start and stop a charge.
That this is particularly apparent when you're using a single charger that has two EVSEs in it.
So an EVSE is a physical device that can charge an EV. On some units there is a single EVSE
that unit can charge one vehicle at a time. On some chargers there are two EVSEs and these
can charge two vehicles simultaneously through two separate cables. On some units there are two
cables but only one EVSE which means that whoever is their first can charge and the other cable can't
be used at the same time. This often happens with Chadamo and CCS connectors on the same unit but
while these units that with these units have two EVSEs there is still only a single screen to manage
them which means we then get into the next issue I have with the user experience, selecting a cable
on the screen. The user usually has to select the connector on the screen then select the method
of payment. Why? If I attach the cable on the left of the unit to my car that should automatically
indicate that I want to use that one. Likewise if I connect the cable on the right hand side.
Why through a disconnect here when there isn't a disconnect with say
wet fuel pumps? Once I lift a wet fuel pump from the holster the system knows that's the one I want
to use. It's intuitive and it works. Why is it so different for charging? Well there will be CPOs out
there that say but you've got to tell it which connector you're using so that it can lock that
connector into the charge port and start the handshake process with the car. Fair enough.
But if we need to select a connector using a touchscreen how does plug and charge avoid this?
Or auto charge? With plug and charge or auto charge if I connect a single cable to my car
it automatically starts to charge without me needing to tell it I'm using the cable on the
right of the charger. Now this is the same methodology for auto charge which is the
less secure charging process that operates with no user interaction. You plug the cable into your
car and it starts connecting. If it can work from plug and charge it can work for any other method.
And once again this is adding a layer of complexity to a system that is simply
poor user experience. Ironically if I'm using a double headed AC charger such as those operated
by BP poles or podpoint I don't have to tell it which device I'm using I just plug it in
and present my payment card and it knows which of the two EVSEs I'm using and it starts to charge.
So I then went on to discuss the whole area of payment. Now I don't want to get into the
integrity of pre-authorizations and comms with the payment providers etc but I do want to look at
this and say there's a standard for this. Now on web fuel stations I slide my card into the machine
and it automatically knows I'm paying by card. It knows which card I'm using as well.
It doesn't ask me to select are you paying by card or cash. It knows. This is the user experience
I want with a non plug and charge device. Why is that so difficult? Now I've talked about this offline
and one argument that's used to justify a lot of this is cost. It'll cost more money to add in
this sort of functionality. I don't necessarily disagree with this but when you're looking at
the unit that can be anything up to £30,000 to buy and even more to install and CPOs are buying
these by the dozen or even higher for some sites. InstaVault Winchester has 44 of them.
Will the cost of these mods make such a dramatic difference? I wonder if charger designers and
CPOs recognize that there are currently sub-optimal user experiences that are a direct result of the
engineering design aspects of a charger. Do they recognize that Tesla chargers which have exactly
the same engineering design constraints as non Tesla chargers don't have these user experience
issues? Even using the Tesla app is easier than using an app with other chargers and the Tesla app
isn't designed purely for charging. It's a general Tesla app which just happens to have
charging functionality included. So let's take a step back and look at where we are.
We have a unit which does everything you would expect an ultra-uppy charger to do.
It connects to a car, it accepts payment and it dispenses electrical energy at various speeds
but as a user coming to this fresh there are things that would make the process simpler to use.
Make the payment process initiative. Give me one place to swipe a card either payment card
or RFID card. If I swipe a bank card I'm paying by bank card. If I swipe an RFID card I'm paying
by RFID card. Don't make me tell you what I'm going to do before I do it. Once I'm authorized
or even before I'm authorized if I connect one of two or more cables available on the machine
to my charge port the charger should know that this is the cable I want to use.
I mean it's hardly complicated is it? If I'm on an ionity that is generally one cable per unit
it knows which cable I'm at. It also knows when the cable is connected as it tells you
to plug it in and then starts the handshake as soon as you've done that. No pressing a button
on this. If I'm at a charger with two cables one is being used then by definition I'm going to be
using the other one. If I'm at a circuit control unit that has three possible connectors then once
I plug one of the three in to my car that will be the one where the connector pins make a circuit
so that must be the one that's been selected right? Is it really rocket science? In summary I
think it's relatively easy to create an engineered solution that's both practical secure and robust
the payment processing works the screens work the charger works
but in a lot of cases the user experience when using these chargers is suboptimal.
Now I'm not telling tales out of school but I was invited to GridServe's secret development
facility about 18 months back prior to when they launched their app. I was in a little
user group that was looking at that. Now as part of this we were walked through the engineering
labs where I had the opportunity to ask the guys there a few questions because you know me I like
to ask questions. The first one was was why can I walk down a line of GridServe chargers and stop
every one of them just by pushing a button on the screen with no authorization and the answer was
that's the design of the hardware we've chosen so my follow-up question was what are you doing to try
and stop that happening and their reply was and this is not a word of a lie we've changed the
stop button on the screen from red to green so that it matches the other buttons there's nothing
else we can do to which I replied yes there is change the hardware to something that's more
user-friendly. Now in a totally unrelated piece of news I see that the new expansion at the GridServe
site at Beckinsfield is going to be using Alpetronic hardware rather than ABB good for them.
Now the experienced Liz Craig and I had with the young lady trying to charge the Tesla
showed that there is obviously some issue with how they've designed their particular interface.
If three relatively knowledgeable EV users have problems getting it to start
then that obviously needs looking at. This issue was brought home to me more recently
but with a charging issue I encountered on a seven kilowatt charger at the venue of a conference I
attended. The tool I didn't read on this was that the charger locked my cable into the unit
and I ended up calling the help desk for you know help. Unfortunately the number I had went
through to a company that no longer supported the chargers in questions it took a while to
determine this because the phone signal was bad when we finally worked out who managed these chargers
I had to find some way of noting down a phone number using the phone I was currently
using to call the help desk then I called the second help desk who were very pleasant but not
helpful at all. I called the second help desk who were very pleasant but not helpful at all the
resolution to the problem was to reboot the charger in which the cable was trapped this would
release the cable and I could continue but the second help desk had no access to the actual
charger and couldn't do anything. There weren't really a help desk there were a call centre
who were just raising tickets and passing them on to the engineers who also it seems didn't
actually have access to the charger software would need to come out and physically turn the
charger off at the cabinet. This is obviously not ideal under any circumstances let alone for someone
who unlike me didn't know what the quick solution was in fact I've heard tell of people who carry
around specific cabinet keys so that they can unlock the units and power them down to release
the cables themselves but obviously this is not ideal in fact it's quite vehemently discouraged
for the majority of the public but it's certainly an option that doesn't leave you at the mercy
of the CPO engineers. Now as prepped for this episode I contacted the individual whose LinkedIn
page caused me to start this conversation and I asked him if he would come on to the show
and chat he was very enthusiastic about it but he suddenly then went radio silent
now I told him I'm doing the episode with or without you and he still didn't answer
now you know who you are if you are listening to this and you want to write a reply
you know where to reach me. So what are your thoughts on the whole aspect of the charging
experience? I'd love to hear any tales of poor user experience at chargers not that the charger
didn't work or it was blocked but I found it difficult to understand how to start the charger
or it was confusing or things like that. Drop me a line at info at EVmusicians.com or a comment
and like and subscribe on YouTube if that's where you're watching.
Or at your destination. You can even see live charger availability and price information in the
app helping you choose your charger at a glance and turn it with total confidence that it will
work it will be available and it'll be in your budget. Plus you can pay through the app or with
a tap of the ZAP map charging card at thousands of charge points nationwide. No need to download
a different app for each charging network. You can download ZAP map for free or check out ZAP map
premium for charging discounts in car compatibility and additional filters.
Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com
on an ad hoc basis. Now if you enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee go to coffee.com
slash evmusings and you can do just that ko-fi.com slash evmusings takes apple pay too.
Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable.
Now they're 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on the Kendall store on Amazon.
Now check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular
evmusings newsletter and associated articles. Now I've spoke to a few of you and I know that
you're probably driving, walking, jogging, ironing or you know sat on the sofa watching
this on your phone but if you can remember and you enjoyed the episode drop a review in iTunes
please, like, subscribe, leave a comment on YouTube because it really helps. If you've
reached us by the podcast and are still listening thank you. Why not let me know you've got to
this point by messaging me at musingsv.beesky.social with the words putting the user first hashtag
if you know you know nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simon. You know he's
never had an issue at a charger? Completely true. Thanks for listening. Bye.
About this episode
User experience is the real battleground in public EV charging, and the episode argues that many failures aren’t about charging hardware—they’re about confusing interfaces, awkward payment flows, and poor connector selection. Gary recounts a tense stop at an ABB charger where a new driver with a low-battery Tesla couldn’t get charging started due to non-intuitive UI and incompatible connectors. He contrasts that with effortless Tesla V4 Supercharging and then breaks down design choices: single vs dual card readers, tiny screens, and why “select connector on screen” shouldn’t be necessary. He also shares help-desk frustrations and calls for more intuitive, plug-and-charge-like behavior.
In this episode Gary explores the user experience challenges in EV charging stations, contrasting good and bad examples, and discusses how design improvements can enhance usability for all EV owners.
Key Topics:
User experience challenges in EV charging stations
Comparison of charging experiences: Tesla vs others
Design flaws in current EV chargers
Payment and authentication issues in charging
Potential solutions for better EV charging UX
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to EV Musings and Gary's Experience
01:32 The Young Lady's Charging Dilemma and UX Failures
03:44 Contrasting Easy and Difficult Charging Experiences
04:49 Payment Methods and User Experience in Charging
06:27 Design Flaws in Charger Interfaces and Hardware
08:03 The Impact of Screen Size and Interface Design
09:23 Multiple EVSEs and Connector Selection Challenges
10:47 Plug and Charge and Auto Charge Technologies
12:15 Payment Processing and Standardization Issues
13:42 Cost vs. UX: Are Better Chargers Worth It?
15:09 Tesla's Seamless Charging Experience
17:00 Real-World Charging Failures and Hardware Limitations
18:48 The Future of User-Centric EV Charging Design
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence. Zapmap is free to download and use, with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points.
Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store or find out more at www.zapmap.com.
Download Zapmap and you’ll get the UK’s most comprehensive charging map in your pocket, with a range of filters so you can personalise the map to suit your specific EV model. So it’s easy to find the best charge for you, whether you’re charging on-street, en-route, or at your destination.
You can even see live charger availability and price information in the app, helping you choose your charger at-a-glance, and turn up with total confidence that it will work, it will be available, and it will be in your budget.
Plus you can pay through the app, or with a tap of the Zapmap charging card, at thousands of charge points nationwide. No need to download a different app for each charging network. You can download Zapmap for free, or check out Zapmap Premium for charging discounts, in-car compatibility, and additional filters
