The idea that you don’t need an app to charge is, in my view, highly dependent on the region. I follow several YouTube channels where people document long EV road trips to showcase how the charging infrastructure is evolving. While things have definitely improved over the past couple of years, using non-Tesla charging stations still often involves:
- Charging speeds that fall short of what's advertised
- A requirement to use an app for payment (even if no account setup is needed)
- Chargers that are out of service but not flagged as such in the system
Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I bet you're right! I bet denser areas got chargers earlier, so they're stuck on the stupid-app-based model that was popular 5 years ago. Where I am in the upper midwest, the rollout has been happening only over the last couple years (e.g. several of the chargers I stopped at last month are not even on Google Maps streetview yet), so the chargers are in better shape and just have standard card readers now.
- Charging speeds that fall short of what's advertised
- A requirement to use an app for payment (even if no account setup is needed)
- Chargers that are out of service but not flagged as such in the system