It’s shocking. I’ve had a non-Tesla electric car for about 5 years and the public chargers have always been garbage. The new ones are garbage too. If they do finally work, they charge at 1/4 the quoted speed. I had free charging for a while and even that was not enough of an incentive to use it.
Interestingly it is a very different situation in Germany and other surrounding countries.
I've been driving electric since 2022 (non-tesla) and I have never charged with a tesla Supercharger. They have been either more expensive than my contract or in locations far way from the highway or gas stations.
The situation in Germany right now is extremely good, almost every gas station by the Autobahns has 150KW+ chargers available (and most of them non-Tesla). No need to plan stops anymore. And at the moment Plug-and-Charge is also working in Ionity and other stations. My BMW is able to store several contracts and I can choose beforehand which ones to use without having to resort to any app or RFID cards.
Charging is now as easy as with Tesla, but with full market competition and many extra locations.
I've had a non-Tesla for three years now. I've never had a single problem charging at a public DC fast charger. Every time I've managed to find an open and working stall. Every time it worked either with plug and charge or took credit cards on the dispenser. My car isn't 800v so it doesn't do the full 350kW but it has always been about the speeds my car can charge at.
I'm in North Texas and have mostly encountered chargers in Texas. I can't speak to charging elsewhere.
> If they do finally work, they charge at 1/4 the quoted speed
Just to confirm, 1/4 of the quoted average charging speed of your car, 1/4 the quoted peak charging speed of your car, or 1/4 the max supported speed of the charger? Few cars can actually charge at the 350kW max charge rate available. And then on top of that those cars don't actually sustain that peak rate very long, and only when it's been preconditioned and already at a low state of charge. If you're rolling in at 50-60% SoC and especially if you didn't precondition you probably are looking at only being able to charge 100kW or so. That's not the fault of the charger.
Teslas don't charge at 250kW the entire time either. They too have charge curves and need preconditioning to hit max charge rates.
Same experience in the UK. Just within London you have a dozen charging networks, they all have their own shitty apps, they require you to add your credit card and create an account and half the time they simply don't work and just give you some garbage error message like "charging failed".
Don't even get me started on Oxford. We arrive to a charging station and it turns out it is exclusively for electric taxis. No mention of this anywhere online.
It boils down to trial and error, and then remembering which specific charging points tend to work. For a completely new piece of infrastructure with no legacy cruft, the industry has made a complete and utter mess of it.
