EV house owners expertise extra issues with their automobiles than house owners of comparable internal-combustion automobiles, in line with a brand new examine, however the issue is not the powertrains.

Revealed Thursday, the J.D. Energy 2023 U.S. Tech Expertise Index (TXI) Examine focuses on the person expertise of automotive tech options, issues like infotainment programs, superior driver-assist options, and different issues in that realm. On that entrance EVs carried out worse than their gasoline and diesel counterparts.

J.D. Energy surveyed 82,472 house owners of 2023-model-year automobiles within the first 90 days of possession, from February via Could 2023. House owners have been requested about 21 tech options widespread to each EV and internal-combustion fashions, and 17 of these had extra high quality issues per 100 automobiles for EVs (excluding Tesla, which wasn’t formally ranked) than internal-combustion automobiles.

Tesla Supercharger

Examples of the hole between EV and inside combustion together with distant parking help, with 27.4 issues per 100 automobiles for EVs and 10.7 for internal-combustion automobiles, and gesture controls, with 49.6 issues per 100 automobiles for EVs and 31.2 for internal-combustion automobiles. House owners have been additionally typically aggravated by biometric options throughout the board.

Maybe not surprisingly, proprietor satisfaction throughout 86% of the options surveyed was decrease for EVs than internal-combustion fashions.

New EV-only manufacturers like Lucid and Rivian are likely to pack their automobiles with extra tech options, J.D. Energy famous. Amongst manufacturers from established producers, solely Genesis matched these new manufacturers’ stage of tech innovation. Nevertheless, extra tech typically brings extra issues, the examine discovered. The exception is Polestar, which had among the many lowest reported downside ranges of any model.

2023 Polestar 2

Each Polestar and Genesis additionally carried out effectively in final 12 months’s TXI Examine, though the Genesis GV60 does make use of biometrics in a deeper method that, primarily based on the outcomes of this 12 months’s examine, house owners could discover off-putting.

Some EV-specific tech options additionally obtained reward. Plug-and-charge functionality, which permits a automotive to robotically begin charging by plugging right into a public station, was thought of important, with 72% of householders saying they wished it of their subsequent automobile. It additionally proved pretty dependable, with simply six reported issues per 100 automobiles. The BMW iX and Mini Cooper SE additionally obtained “vitality and sustainability” awards for his or her one-pedal driving.

2023 Genesis GV60

This newest examine as soon as once more reveals that in EVs, the difficulty is not the powertrain, however all the opposite tech. J.D. Energy got here to an analogous conclusion in a examine revealed in 2022, but it surely might not be the one problem holding EV buyer satisfaction down.

A J.D. Energy survey revealed earlier this 12 months discovered that extra individuals are rejecting EVs, however that has extra to do with worth and charging availability than tech. Extra not too long ago, the agency discovered that one in 5 EV charging makes an attempt fails. So charging should be the larger problem right here.