Finding a charging station that’s working can be tough, but Rivian wants to make it easier by grading charging points
April 15, 2024 at 20:02
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- Rivian’s latest OTA update uses customer data to grade charging stations across the U.S.
- Customers will be able to see if a charging point is well rated, and gets an A, or poorly rated, and gets an F.
- Grades are based on factors like network uptime, number of successful charging sessions, and peak performance.
There’s nothing worse than planning a trip and plotting a route with all of your charging points selected, only to discover that one of the chargers is dead. More than just annoying, such a hindrance could effectively end your trip. So Rivian is trying to do something about it.
As part of its latest over-the-air software update, the electric startup is using data gathered from its customers’ vehicles to rate charging stations. The stations are evaluated based on things like network uptime, successful charging sessions, and the charger’s peak performance.
Read: Biden’s $7.5 Billion Investment In EV Chargers Has Only Seen 7 Stations Built
From that, Rivian coalesces the data and gives each station a letter grade, just like a teacher might give a student. The best charging stations are given an A grade, while the worst get an F. Unfortunately, there are more stations in the latter category than the automaker’s head of software, Wassym Bensaid, was expecting.
“Surprisingly, actually, there’s multiple chargers rated F,” Bensaid told The Verge. “That was one of the ‘a ha’ moments as we went through the data.”
Rivian has been collecting data for over a year now, in order to be able to launch a product with reasonable accuracy. However, Bensaid admits that since the automaker has only produced 100,000 vehicles to date, it can’t give a complete picture of charging in America.
Not yet, anyway. Bensaid says that every charging sessions helps provide it with more data, making the information more reliable. Rivian is also working on a customer rating system, that will allow them to provide their own feedback on the charging experience, to account for things that the vehicle cannot detect.
Offering a charging station ranking system could be quite helpful to Rivian owners, as EV drivers frequently complain that America’s charging infrastructure needs work. J.D. Power reported in 2023 that satisfaction with charging stations was at its lowest point since it started collecting data, due to slow charging speeds.
However, with more and more automakers adopting the NACS plug, more will have access to Tesla’s Supercharger network, which frequently tops the charts as America’s best rated charging network.
