What 9,000 Google Reviews Say About California’s Public Chargers

Your drivers are already telling you which sites need work. They’re doing it in public.

We analyzed 9,000 Google reviews from 2,483 reviewed locations, out of more than 5,000 public charging stations in California, covering every major network. Then we sorted each review by what the driver was actually complaining or happy about.

The average rating came out to 3.5 stars. Here’s what stood out.

3.5 stars means “I hope it works”

For a restaurant, 3.5 stars is fine. For infrastructure people depend on, it signals doubt. A driver who isn’t sure a site will work is less likely to plan a trip around it, and less likely to come back.

Payments are the top complaint

The most common problem wasn’t vandalism or weather. It was paying: cards declined, apps that wouldn’t start a session, and charges that didn’t match what the screen said. In Los Angeles, more than a quarter of complaints were about payment. That’s mostly software and process, which means it’s fixable without new hardware.

About 1 in 13 reviews mention a broken charger

Across all the reviews, 7.8% mentioned equipment that didn’t work. Some networks were at 13% or higher, about 1.7 times the state average.

The more useful finding is that the damage is concentrated. A fairly small group of locations accounts for a big share of the broken-charger complaints. For most networks, that means the reputation problem isn’t everywhere. It’s a short list of sites you can go fix first.

The gap between networks is wide

Tesla averaged 4.3 stars across more than 27,000 Google ratings. Several large networks sat between 2.5 and 3.0 stars, and a few were under 2.0. Drivers do compare, and Google shows that comparison to every new driver looking for a place to charge.

Averages hide regional problems

Los Angeles averaged 3.1 stars, well under the state. Some networks dropped below 2 stars in dense urban areas, even when their statewide number looked okay. If you only watch the network-wide average, you can miss the region where things are going wrong.

Reviews are field data

I’d treat reviews the same way you treat OCPP logs. Read across thousands of them, they show you where operations are breaking down and where drivers are losing trust.

• Where payment is breaking

• Where drivers think hardware is unreliable, even when your uptime report disagrees

• Which regions and site types are falling behind

• Where frustration is turning into lasting damage to your brand

Until recently, sorting thousands of reviews by cause was slow, manual work. Now it can run every week.

What to do next

• Rank your sites by recent reviews, not lifetime rating, and pull the bottom 10.

• Tag every negative review by cause, such as payment, hardware, access, or app, and send each one to the team that owns it.

• Check reviews against your own data. If a site has “broken” reviews but shows 99% uptime, find out why.

• Reply to every review, especially the bad ones, so the next driver sees someone is paying attention.

• Track reviews monthly by region, so a slipping market shows up before it becomes the story.

Do you know which 10 locations are quietly costing you drivers’ trust right now? Your drivers do. We’re still digging into this data, and if you run a network, I’m happy to share what we’re seeing at your sites.