EV Charging Habits & Patterns In USA & Europe — CleanTechnica Report
Below is a portion of our newest report, The State & Promise of EV Charging Infrastructure: North America & Europe. This article explores various EV charging habits and patterns — as well as a bit of EV charging knowledge — in the United States and Europe. Enjoy!
One of the key things we wished to explore in this report was how people are using their electric vehicles: are these the primary vehicles for the home, or secondary vehicles? Are people able to charge at home, and if not, where are they getting their charge from? Questions like this help us explore the landscape of needs for EV drivers, and can inform industry decision makers about what consumer needs are for public and private infrastructure.
In all data sets, it was clear that most EV drivers use their EV nearly every day or most days of the week. Because of this high use, the majority of them have home charging and charge nearly every day at home. About 10% of the US respondents can charge at their workplace, while nearly 15% rely on free public charging.
What’s particularly interesting here is that more than 30% of EV drivers charge only twice a week or less. Among other things, that is a reminder that charging and range are probably much smaller issues for many people than they might think when introduced to the concept of electric cars.
Our partner for this report was Volta, a California-based EV charging station company that provides free public charging locations at shopping centers and elsewhere around the country. They wanted to know to what extent their service was known, and which other brands were commonly known.
The responses differed significantly between the US and Europe due to regional differences in network presence. Tesla was the most commonly known charging solution in Europe, while in the US it was actually ChargePoint. Overall, globally, ChargePoint also won out.
The followup question here shows the very real need for continuous improvement of public EV charging infrastructure. Knowing that most EV drivers have home charging (85% in US and almost 78% in Europe), it’s interesting to see the frequency that drivers still utilize Level 2 and Level 3 public charging.
When looking at the battery percentage EV drivers keep their cars set at, one thing is clear: drivers don’t have much range anxiety. Most are happy to have their batteries go well below 50%. Also, the spread on this topic is quite diverse. Though, we only asked this question in the European surveys.
For more insights into EV charging patterns in the US and Europe, check out the full report.
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