Car Vrum

Refueling is so easy. You take the fuel pistol, squeeze the lever and voilà … petrol or diesel flows into the tank. The situation is different with electric cars. We regularly drive EVs, for our range tests among other things, and still run into problems with charging. We received a charge card from BMW that did not work (an intern came to bring a new one), at Fastned we grabbed a broken plug (which someone had apparently driven over) and in Utrecht we had to call customer service to have a non-working charging station reset. (after that it didn’t do it yet).

Dutch EV drivers would like to have one charging pass

In addition, you cannot go to all charging stations with one charge card. That is why the average EV owner uses more than 3 charging cards, according to the EV Driver Survey

of Shell Recharge among more than 4000 electric drivers in the Netherlands. Nearly 15 percent of the respondents even indicated that they use 4 or more cards. In Great Britain, France and Germany this is even 55 percent, 31 percent and 32 percent respectively. More than a third of electric drivers would like to have one pass.

Frustration about too low charging speed at public charging stations

Another frequently heard complaint is the too low charging speed at public charging stations: more than 50 percent of the Dutch respondents mention this. Moreover, a large majority say that they are still occasionally concerned about the limited range of their electric car. They also worry about whether the electricity grid can handle the increasing popularity of EVs. Finally, they wonder whether rising electricity prices will increase the costs of electric driving.