EV Ownership: A Commentary on Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Practical User Experience

Written by Anna Anderson

In 2022, I moved to LA — and completed a rite of passage as a new Angeleno: I bought my first car.

I spent months examining options, weighing pros and cons, and researching. I knew I wanted something electric. I’d always been interested in electric vehicles, had witnessed gas price fluctuation stress out so many people I knew, and at the time was deep in a HappyFunCorp project. And what better place to drive an EV than Southern California?

My final selection: a 2022 Polestar 2. It’s a beautiful car with luxury features and an excellent safety rating — and it’s fully electric.

When I bought the car, there was a strong sense of optimism and momentum around electric vehicles, which made the decision to join in an easy one. Electric cars were everywhere in Los Angeles, and every day seemed to bring headlines about new EVs launching from every car manufacturer, and investment into EVs from business owners, and local and state governments.

Armed with these validations of my decision-making — and, frankly, the constant encouragement from EV marketing teams — I was confident that the infrastructure would grow and make an EV purchase not only practical for my daily life, but a smart long-term choice as well.

A harsh dose of EV charging reality

When I purchased my Polestar, I received two years of free charging at Electrify America, a top charging provider. I imagined myself driving around carefree, never having to worry about volatile gas prices, and charging my car while watching movies with an iced coffee in hand.

I’d also planned to have a home charger installed in my house by the time my free charging expired (I thought it was so easy and relatively affordable!), and banked on growing EV infrastructure — including public Tesla adapters — to make charging accessible everywhere.

The realities of owning an EV in Los Angeles revealed themselves about a year into ownership.

The number of EVs on the roads — and more importantly, at the charging stations — seemed to exponentially increase with each visit. The chargers were often broken and slow, and the waiting areas were unsafe and generally unpleasant.

Not surprisingly, installing a home charger also proved to be a lot tougher in a 100-year-old bungalow in Los Angeles than I’d imagined, which left me at the mercy of public charging stations.

In spite of all this, the car itself is great and met my expectations in many ways — its performance once fully charged, the quality of the interior, and the simplicity of maintaining the car’s motor, to name a few. But the functional gaps, specifically with charging, are just too large and too impactful to ignore.

My expectation (that charging my car would be a quick, efficient, and even enjoyable task) contrasted with the reality: charging my car was a lengthy, anxiety-producing event. It was a pretty significant gap in the user experience.

All this is to say that EV manufacturers have made an error that is actually common in technical product design: delivering technology without human-centric design and human-centric implementation.

Sidenote: I know that Tesla drivers have a less difficult charging experience. I choose not to purchase a Tesla for a variety of reasons, but the Tesla Supercharging stations are objectively far superior to non-Tesla charging.

Addressing EV pain points through a product management lens

EVs have made significant strides in recent years, but like any emerging technology, they still face pain points that hinder widespread adoption.

As a Product Manager, I regularly see situations where there is a gap between the vision of a product and the reality of how users experience it — what is delivered can align with a vision, but still miss the mark for users. A useful approach for analyzing problems like this is a method called Product Gap Analysis, which helps identify opportunities to narrow the gap between user expectations and actual outcomes.

By using a Product Gap Analysis for EV charging, we can identify where these disconnects exist, and think critically about solutions that could close these gaps — in this case, with the public charging experience. Let’s dive in.

Understand the intended product vision and goal

To implement meaningful solutions that will get the product closer to the original intent and improve business outcomes, you need to understand the qualitative and quantitative KPIs that will make the product a success.

For example, our goal might be to establish EVs as a user-friendly option for transportation that is easy to operate and charge.

In reality, while EVs may deliver on a large part of this goal, currently the experience of charging an EV is far from the intention.

Understand the user’s needs and wants

Next, it’s essential to understand what needs and wants are driving your users so you can evaluate how the product does (or does not) address them by conducting research and engaging with your users directly.

Take EVs as an example — there are many types of EV consumers in the market, and one of the most crucial differences between them is whether they have at-home charging or use public chargers as their main charging solution.

It’s helpful to put yourself in the shoes of the user you’re trying to optimize for. As an EV consumer who doesn’t have at-home charging, here is a summary of my experience with EV charging — which I think also represents how many consumers who drive EVs and use public charging feel:

“I find myself getting anxious when I know I have to charge soon because the chargers are crowded, unreliable, and unpleasant to be at.”

Another way to help identify wants and needs is to analyze similar consumer patterns that exist through proxies. In the market today, there’s a well established business that caters to refueling for internal combustion vehicles. While EVs require a different power source (and the process does vary), the need to refuel a vehicle has been around for decades and can provide a window into consumers’ wants and needs for features and services related to refueling.

Gaps identified through these methods sometimes can seem trivial, but neglecting your users’ needs is frustrating for them, and can lead to broader consequences — in this case, negatively affecting EV sales and the adoption of EVs.

Identify the gaps

Gaps in the user experience can be functional, meaning the user can’t make the product do something that they need to do, or they can be emotional gaps that are harder to immediately identify and occur when the user’s expectations are not met or the product fails to elicit the desired emotion.

There are a number of functional and emotional gaps that impact EV charging such as a technical learning curve, accessibility, and safety, but let’s focus on charging time and reliability.

Here are some examples of gaps when it comes to public EV charging:

• There’s often a wait of 15 minutes to an hour to charge, with no clear place to line up.


• Stations are routinely closed for maintenance and charging station equipment is often broken.


• Even if the equipment works, the promised charge speed is typically a fraction of what’s advertised.


• As if all that weren’t enough, most new EVs come with a multi-year incentive of free charging, which drives more users to public charging stations and makes charging stations even more crowded.

Long story short, public charging infrastructure is far from where it needs to be to serve the population of EVs on the road — and is a key gap to solve for if we want to increase EV satisfaction.

Prioritize, ideate, and solve

Now, you can start looking at solutions and prioritizing them. Some gaps might be easily solvable and others may not even require a “technical” solution — maybe additional user education or product support will solve it.

First, consider the resources you have available to solve these issues. What kind of expertise will be needed? If you’re designing (or redesigning) a solution, creating mock-ups of various ways to address specific use cases is a helpful tool. For issues that aren’t a top priority, incorporate those into your product roadmap to plan out that work later. This helps prioritize future development and ensures that all aspects of the project are accounted for, even if they aren’t addressed right away.

Sidenote: I should acknowledge that the gaps mentioned above are pretty large-scale issues that would require a huge amount of resources, political buy-in, and time. It’s important to balance these with small iterative fixes that will make a difference for at least a small population of your users, based on factors like bandwidth and urgency.

Using charging time and reliability as an example of a gap, how can we get the user from feeling anxious when they have to charge, to the intended state of trust and enjoyment?

Here are focus areas for reducing EV charging anxiety:

• Update infrastructure to support fast charging and reduce the risk of outages


• Build more charging stations


• Add amenities to make charging locations less unpleasant if there are wait times


• Subsidize charging equipment and installments for homeowners and landlords


• Equip rental properties with charging options as amenities in cities where people live in apartments


• Hire additional staff for charging stations. Currently, most charging stations don’t have on-site staff to help users who have questions. If someone encounters charging issues or has questions about the chargers or price, they’re usually not able to get answers or support in a timely manner. Having on-site customer service would be really helpful for customers who have issues with the mobile apps, payments, or charging hardware.


• Build thoughtful technology to show users where to charge and what types of charging are available around them


• Provide better education about how EVs work (such as knowledge about how batteries work, what charging metrics mean and what to expect) and best practices for drivers — some apps such as Tezlab are tackling this by providing education and data about battery usage and optimization

These may sound like ambitious and complex goals, but some charging companies are already taking them on. Tesla and Mercedes are partnering with infrastructure providers and new startups like Rove Charging, which opened is opening its first station (on October 15, 2024!) that will offer a large inventory of fast chargers in a safe, comfortable, and functional environment. At scale, stations like these would eliminate many charging pain points such as long wait times, slow charging speeds, and poor overall charging experiences.

Monitor and continue to adapt

Once you’ve implemented a strategic fix or improvement to the product, you’ll need to set up metrics to help you measure success. These metrics should directly relate to the goals and needs of the user. For example, you could measure how satisfied EV owners are with the charging experience at public stations with a simple CSAT (customer satisfaction) survey, or you could track adoption with usage numbers.

How can EV infrastructure catch up with adoption?

The EV industry faces a critical challenge in closing the charging gap if it hopes to meet future growth goals and stabilize EV sales.

While companies are working to address this issue — expanding networks, improving charging speeds, and adding amenities for drivers during charging stops — there’s still a long way to go before these solutions become widespread.

But innovative companies like Rove are emerging with fresh ideas to bridge the gap. While achieving this will require significant investment and time, there’s a clear first-mover advantage for those that can execute successfully.

Early efforts are already showing promise, and if these challenges are met, the benefits would be far-reaching — more EVs on the road, lower costs for consumers, and a more reliable, safer charging experience for everyone. It’s an exciting time for the EV industry, and the next few years will be pivotal.

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