A 320-mile road trip to Ohio in a BMW iX xDrive40 reminded Axios reporter Joann Muller of something the growing charger count doesn’t fix: actually using a public fast charger in 2026 is still a test of patience, physical stamina, and app tolerance. Her report, published April 8, is a useful reality check on where the industry actually stands — not where it claims to be heading.

The headline numbers look good. A surge in charger construction through 2025 means finding a station is genuinely easier than it was two years ago. J.D. Power reported an 84% charger success rate in Q1 2025 — the best figure in four years. But availability and experience are two different things, and the gap between them is where mainstream EV adoption keeps getting stuck.

DC Fast Charging Costs Up to Three Times More Than Home Charging

Muller reported rates as high as 60 cents per kWh at public DC fast-chargers (DCFC) — three to four times what the same energy would cost plugged in at home overnight. That math is one of the central arguments for EV ownership — lower running costs — and public charging actively undermines it every time a driver can’t charge at home.

The cost gap matters most for apartment renters, condo dwellers, and anyone without a dedicated parking spot. For those drivers, public DCFC is the primary option. At 60 cents per kWh, fueling a mid-size EV to a full charge can cost $30 or more, pushing it within range of a comparable gas fill-up. The economic case for switching evaporates fast at those prices.

And that’s before accounting for the session itself. Muller noted that high-powered DCFC cables are as thick as your wrist and can weigh 20 to 30 pounds. She hurt her shoulder trying to plug in. That’s not a fringe complaint. Anyone who has wrestled a heavy CCS connector in freezing temperatures knows exactly what she’s describing. The cables on some older non-Tesla stations are genuinely unwieldy, and there’s no industry-wide standard for managing them ergonomically.

Battery Preconditioning: The Feature Most Drivers Forget Until It’s Too Late

Muller arrived at a 180-kW charger in northeastern Ohio and pulled closer to 80 kW (less than half the station’s rated output) because she hadn’t preconditioned the BMW iX’s battery beforehand. Cold batteries charge slowly. That’s physics, not a defect. But it’s a detail most owners don’t know instinctively, and the cars don’t always make it obvious.

Preconditioning works two ways: set a departure time in the vehicle app and the car warms the battery automatically, or navigate to a DCFC destination and give the car 15 to 30 minutes to bring the pack to optimal temperature before arrival. Skip that step in cold weather and you lose charging speed. In Muller’s case, a 180-kW charger delivered 80 kW. That’s the difference between a 25-minute stop and a 45-minute one.

This is a genuine education gap. Manufacturers talk about charging speeds in peak figures. The fine print — that peak only applies under specific battery temperature conditions — rarely makes it into the marketing materials. BMW’s new iX3, now in production and rated for up to 400 kW peak charging, will make preconditioning even more consequential, not less.

Fragmented Networks Still Require Multiple Apps and Multiple Accounts

The charging industry’s app problem hasn’t been solved. Different networks — Electrify America, EVgo, ChargePoint, Blink, and others — each require their own account, their own payment method, and often their own app. Some EVs support plug-and-charge, a protocol that pre-registers payment so the session starts automatically when you plug in. The BMW iX supports it on participating networks. But Muller, driving as a media tester, hadn’t registered through the BMW app and fell back to the manual app-and-QR-code workflow.

Scanning a QR code in biting wind to download a network’s app, then creating an account, then entering payment, then initiating a session — all while standing outside next to a car that needs charging — is the kind of friction that makes casual EV consideration collapse into “not yet.” The Tesla Supercharger experience, where the car simply charges when you plug in, set a standard years ago that the rest of the industry still hasn’t matched consistently. Progress is happening: Stellantis brands including Dodge, Jeep, and Ram now have access to Tesla Superchargers, which helps, but only for those vehicles and only at Supercharger locations.

The physical environment compounds the frustration. No shelter from wind or rain. No seating. Charger screens washed out by late-winter sun glare. At one stop, Muller found a trash can and a bucket of water for the windshield — but no squeegee. These are small indignities individually. Stacked together over a 320-mile trip, they add up to an experience that feels like the industry stopped caring once the charger was installed.

Rising Gas Prices Are Sending Buyers Toward EVs — Right Into This Experience

The timing makes the charging experience problem more urgent, not less. U.S. gas prices crossed $4 per gallon on March 31, 2026, up 35% since February, and consumer interest in EVs is responding. People are looking at electric vehicles again — without the federal $7,500 tax credit that expired September 30, 2025. That credit expiration hammered EV sales in the fall, but high gas prices are doing what policy couldn’t sustain: pushing buyers back to the showroom.

The problem is that new EV buyers encounter public charging for the first time without the learned knowledge of preconditioning, network apps, or cable management. Ninety-four percent of current EV owners say they’d buy another EV — but current owners have had time to adapt their habits and mostly charge at home. The first-time buyer on a road trip to Ohio has not. That gap in experience is where advocacy is lost and where the industry’s growth ceiling keeps getting set.

The federal $5 billion NEVI charging program built the physical infrastructure — slowly, and with significant political turbulence — but infrastructure alone doesn’t fix cost, ergonomics, shelter, or fragmented software. Those are product and industry problems that require competitive pressure to solve, not grant funding.

EVXL’s Take

The honest read here is that the charging industry solved the easy problem — building stations — while the hard ones remain largely untouched. Cost, cable ergonomics, shelter, and software fragmentation aren’t infrastructure challenges. They’re product design and competitive dynamics challenges, and they won’t be fixed by ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

I’ve spent time at public chargers in winter conditions and the cable weight alone is genuinely off-putting the first few times. On a cold morning when you’re already running late, wrestling a 25-pound connector while the screen glares and the wind picks up isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a brand impression that lasts. Non-Tesla networks have known this for years and, with a handful of exceptions, haven’t done enough about it.

The broader pattern here connects directly to what we covered when BMW’s Neue Klasse i3 rolled off the Munich assembly line in early 2026: automakers are investing billions in better vehicles while the charging experience that surrounds those vehicles stagnates. BMW can build an iX3 rated for 400 kW peak charging. If the network experience sends buyers home frustrated and full of doubt, the car’s specifications don’t matter.

The industry has roughly 18 months to close this gap before the wave of gas-price-motivated first-time EV buyers forms lasting opinions about whether public charging is worth the trouble. If the experience in mid-2027 still involves QR codes in the wind and 60-cent-per-kWh rates, the growth story stalls again — not because of range anxiety, but because of charger anxiety. That’s a solvable problem. The question is whether anyone in the charging business feels enough pressure to solve it on that timeline.

Photo credit: EVGO

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.