EV drivers face payment anxiety due to ‘complicated’ charging experience

Booking and paying for electric vehicle (EV) chargers is creating problems for drivers which could hold back EV uptake, according to a new survey by Paythru, conducted in partnership with The EV Café.

The survey of 200 EV drivers found many frustrations, including there being too many ways to pay with users still using multiple payment methods, despite an often-stated preference for universal solutions.

The survey found that only 13% of people have a single payment option they use 100% of the time.

Most have three or more regular options that they switch between, such as contactless and a couple of different apps, each making up less than a quarter of their overall usage.

“This level of variation suggests the majority of users are being forced to use multiple payment options to navigate an overly complex charging system,” said Sara Sloman, Paythru’s chief strategy officer.

The survey also shows a surprising frequency of problems at the charger with 87% of respondents saying they have had to download a new app at the charging point at least once in order to pay, and 80% have faced app payment problems due to mobile connectivity issues.

More than half (56%) have had their card rejected, while 45% of drivers said they have had to phone up to make a payment, and 61% have left the charge point because of unacceptable payment options.

The survey found that pre-authorisation of payments – where money is reserved against a driver’s payment card prior to the charge, with the charge then deducted – is a major irritation.

Some 90% of respondents said they have been asked for pre-authorisation when charging, and 80% have experienced at least one issue with it. These include being unclear about what they were committing to (49%), waiting more than a day for a pre-authorisation fee to be refunded (49%), and multiple pre-authorisation fees on their card for a single charge (36%).

“As we move from early adopters to mainstream EV drivers, expectations will rise and intolerance will fall for the type of problems highlighted by this survey,” said Keith Brown, Paythru’s managing director. “People have little patience for complex and cumbersome EV charging transactions.

“The charging experience remains overly complicated, creating what we call ‘payment anxiety’, the feeling of going to charge and knowing there’s a very real chance – even if it’s a small one – that the charge point won’t work the way you want for one reason or another.

“Until now, the EV industry has understandably focused on hardware. But the problems we see causing driver frustrations now are mostly linked to the software used in the charging process, and the experience that comes with it.

“The time has come to concentrate on designing software that will solve most, if not all, of the issues raised in this report, in order to make EVs accessible to all.”

Download a copy of the report ‘Overcoming Payment Anxiety in EV Charging’, which includes the full survey data and Paythru’s analysis.