Public EV charging is becoming a reputation business as much as an infrastructure business. New research released by charging-software company Driivz suggests drivers are increasingly willing to change their routes based on what other EV owners tell them about individual chargers and entire networks. A dependable stop can earn loyalty strong enough to justify extra driving, while one bad experience can influence people who were not even there.
The findings arrive as charging networks expand rapidly and reliability improves in some markets, yet frustration over broken equipment, payments and availability remains significant. For operators, the emerging lesson is that installing more plugs is only part of the challenge. Drivers increasingly want evidence that those plugs will actually work when they arrive.
Trust Is Becoming a Routing Variable
Driivz says its research involved more than 3,000 EV drivers across North America and Europe. The standout result was striking: 91% said they would make a detour to use a charger recommended by another EV driver. More than half, 55%, were prepared to travel more than five minutes out of their way. That suggests proximity is no longer automatically the deciding factor when drivers choose where to stop.
The calculation makes sense during a long trip. A charger five minutes farther away may still be the safer choice if another driver has confirmed that its plugs work, payment is straightforward and stalls are usually available. What looks like an inefficient detour on a map can therefore become a form of risk management. EV routing is increasingly shaped not only by distance, charging speed and battery percentage, but by confidence that a planned stop will deliver the service shown on the screen.
Word of Mouth Is Competing With Navigation Apps
Traditional mapping tools still matter, but they no longer have a monopoly on charging decisions. When Driivz asked drivers what they trusted when searching for an unfamiliar charging location, 33% selected specialist charging apps and 32% pointed to recommendations from EV-driving friends or family. Conventional satellite-navigation and mapping tools were selected by 27%, placing personal experience and EV-specific information slightly ahead.
There is an important distinction between knowing that a charger exists and knowing what using it is actually like. A map can provide coordinates, nominal charging speed and sometimes live availability. Experienced drivers can add information about awkward parking layouts, broken card readers, queues, unreliable stalls or nearby amenities. Specialist apps can supply recent check-ins and reviews. Together, those sources create a layer of practical intelligence that a simple charging icon cannot always capture, particularly when a driver is travelling through an unfamiliar area with limited alternatives nearby.
One Bad Charging Session Can Travel Far Beyond One Driver
The reputational downside is equally powerful. Driivz found that 76% of respondents would avoid an entire charging network if a friend or family member warned them about a bad experience. That means an unsuccessful session can affect future revenue from people who never personally interacted with the defective charger. For a network operator, the customer affected by an outage may effectively represent several potential customers.
Drivers also appear willing to broadcast problems. The research says 79% would warn friends or family after a poor charging experience, 76% would report the problem through a charging app and 65% would leave an online review. Positive experiences travel too: 42% said they were most likely to discuss a session that exceeded expectations, compared with 39% who were more inclined to discuss one that disappointed them. A reliable charging stop can therefore generate its own recommendation loop, while repeated failures can create the opposite effect surprisingly quickly.
Reliability Has Improved, but Failed Stops Still Matter
Independent research shows why those warnings carry weight. J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. public-charging study found that 14% of EV owners had visited a public charger without successfully charging. That was an improvement of five percentage points from 2024 and the lowest failure level recorded by the study in four years, indicating meaningful progress in infrastructure reliability.
Yet the reasons behind unsuccessful visits illustrate why drivers remember them. J.D. Power said chargers being out of service or malfunctioning accounted for 60% of failed charging visits. In practical terms, a failed station can be more disruptive than a closed fuel pump because an EV driver may have planned the stop around remaining battery range and charging speed. Someone arriving with a comfortable battery reserve can simply move on. A driver arriving near the end of a long highway leg may suddenly need to locate another compatible site, recalculate the route and potentially wait before continuing.
Perceived Reliability Can Influence Whether People Want an EV
Charging reputation affects more than the choice between two networks. Academic research published in Transport Policy in 2025 found evidence that perceptions of public-charging reliability can influence consumers’ willingness to purchase an electric vehicle. Researchers used a nationwide U.S. experiment in which non-EV owners received different information about charging reliability and then evaluated vehicle choices.
The researchers concluded that higher perceived public-charging reliability significantly increased willingness to adopt an EV, including among people who expected to have home charging. Their modelling found the difference between positive and negative reliability perceptions had an effect comparable to changing the vehicle purchase budget by 32% or changing driving range by 366 miles. Those figures do not mean every consumer literally values a reliable charger at that price or range. They demonstrate how powerful charging confidence became within the experiment. Infrastructure that drivers distrust can therefore weaken the appeal of vehicles that may otherwise meet their needs.
Reviews Reveal That Drivers Judge Much More Than Charging Speed
Recent academic analysis of charging reviews also shows how broad the definition of a “good charger” has become. A 2026 study in Transportation Research Part D examined more than 120,000 user reviews involving public charging sites in Wuhan, China. Reliability, charging speed, accessibility, price and nearby amenities emerged as important elements of satisfaction, while severe failures involving reliability, access or payment produced particularly strong negative reactions.
A separate U.S. study of 409 EV owners reached a compatible conclusion: drivers across different charging-behaviour groups consistently valued accessibility, reliability and location safety. Other priorities, including cost, speed, ease of use, waiting time and proximity, varied more between groups. That helps explain why two technically identical chargers can develop very different reputations. A fast charger beside food, washrooms and a well-lit parking area can provide a far better experience than the same hardware at an isolated location where payment is confusing or drivers routinely find occupied stalls.
Canada’s Growing EV Market Raises the Stakes
The trust question is increasingly relevant in Canada as more electrified vehicles enter the fleet. Statistics Canada reported 58,811 new zero-emission vehicle registrations in the second quarter of 2026, up 26.7% from a year earlier. Battery-electric registrations alone increased 37.4%. ZEVs represented 10.7% of all new motor-vehicle registrations during the quarter, marking the third consecutive quarter in which their share exceeded one in ten.
Charging deployment is expanding alongside them. In February 2026, Natural Resources Canada said more than 30,000 chargers had already been installed with support from the federal Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program, while another $84.4 million was announced for 122 projects intended to add more than 8,000 chargers. Later federal announcements added further projects. More infrastructure gives drivers additional choices, but choice also makes reputation more important. Where competing stations exist along the same corridor, drivers can increasingly favour the site or network that has demonstrated dependable service rather than automatically stopping at the closest plug.
Payment Friction Can Damage an Otherwise Good Charging Stop
A charger can deliver full power and still leave a poor impression if starting the session is unnecessarily difficult. Authentication, apps, credit-card readers and account requirements have become important parts of the charging experience. Driivz’s separate 2026 research involving 300 charging-industry professionals found that 43% identified seamless authentication as a priority for improving customer experience, second only to round-the-clock network availability at 47%.
J.D. Power has previously measured how large that difference can become. Its 2024 public-charging study found that fast-charging sessions using automatic payment averaged 27 minutes, eight minutes shorter than sessions requiring credit- or debit-card payment and seven minutes shorter than those using third-party or charging-network apps. The difference reflects more than charging speed; extra steps before energy begins flowing consume time as well. For a driver making several stops on a long trip, a reliable plug-and-charge experience can become memorable enough to shape which network is chosen the next time.
Charging Operators Are Shifting From Expansion to Utilization
The business incentives are starting to align with driver expectations. Driivz’s 2026 operator research found that 59% of charging professionals identified charger reliability and stability as the industry’s leading challenge. The same percentage ranked increased charger utilization as the leading driver of profitability. In other words, operators increasingly see value not simply in installing stations but in getting drivers to repeatedly use the infrastructure already deployed.
That shift changes the economics of reputation. A charger that exists on a network map but routinely fails, is difficult to activate or earns poor reviews contributes little to utilization. A dependable location can do the opposite: repeat customers return, positive recommendations attract newcomers and higher usage improves the economics of the site. Driivz reported that only 15% of operators considered network growth the primary driver of profitability, compared with 59% favouring utilization. As charging markets mature, operators may therefore gain more from making existing stations trustworthy than from pursuing expansion numbers alone.
The Next Charging Competition May Be About Confidence
Governments have already begun treating reliability as a measurable infrastructure requirement. U.S. federal charging standards developed for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program established a 97% uptime benchmark for funded chargers, alongside requirements intended to make pricing, availability and payment more predictable. California has also implemented reliability reporting and uptime requirements for certain publicly supported charging equipment. Canada, meanwhile, announced plans in 2026 for a National Charging Infrastructure Strategy as the country expands its network.
The new Driivz results should still be interpreted as stated preferences rather than proof that 91% of drivers will actually make a detour every time or that 76% will permanently abandon a network. The research was also commissioned by a company that supplies technology to charging operators. Even with those qualifications, independent studies reinforce its central message: reliability, accessibility and ease of use materially affect charging satisfaction. The strongest charging networks may ultimately be those drivers trust enough to recommend when someone else asks where to plug in.
