„The best charging experience is one you don’t notice.“ That was Sebastian Henßler’s key take-away from our podcast conversation. It sounds like I have very low standards. 👀 The opposite is true. 💥
Because for charging to go unnoticed, everything has to work. A roof, toilets, accessible bays and maybe a waste bin. Not as extras, but as givens. Stefan Forsbach from Fastned picked that up in his repost and he’s right. I’d just frame it differently.
🌦️ The Kano model distinguishes between basic, performance and excitement factors. Despite being already over 60 years old it’s still a great tool. Basic factors go unnoticed when they’re there. When they’re missing, you feel it immediately and you are frustrated.
☔ So are a roof or a toilet excitement factors? I would say, clearly not. They’re basic factors. And the actually sad part is that we sometimes get genuinely excited when there’s a roof above the charger. That says less about the feature and more about the state of some charging sites out there.
🌩️ I understand that CPOs face enormous CAPEX pressure and look for every possible compromise. But that should show up in strategy and pricing, not just in customer frustration. 🌥️ Some operators understood this earlier than others. You see it in their stations, not in their press releases.
🛣️ Yet almost all of this plays out in Journey Charging. That’s the petrol station logic, and it holds also in EV times: charging has amenities like a roof, toilets and coffee. Because the driver stopped for the charge and needs to get through the wait.
☕ Destination Charging flips that. There, charging is the amenity. Everything else is already there, and that’s exactly why I went there first place. The charging happens alongside it, passively, without me thinking about it.
Two situations. Two standards. Whoever tries to solve both with the same approach gets neither right. And yet the goal is the same in both cases: a charging experience I don’t notice.
⚡ Charging should never ask anything of you. It should just happen. 🔋
And no, this post isn’t about roofs at all.
Not about roofs
