You may have heard Consumer Reports (CR) was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025 — celebrating CR’s impact on electric vehicle testing, charging accessibility, and industry standards. You can read about it here in the CR Newsroom or directly from Fast Company here. As a Campaign Manager at CR, I’m here to give you the backstory on just one of the exciting projects that helped secure CR this award: CR’s EV Charging Community.
The Problem
It’s no secret that public electric vehicle (EV) charging is a major pain point for consumers. In fact, charging availability and reliability is the issue Americans most commonly indicate as an obstacle to EV adoption. CR’s work isn’t to promote one powertrain over another, but to ensure that consumers have the opportunity to drive the vehicle they want, and have the resources and infrastructure in their region to support that decision.
The Solution
Back in 2022, a CR nationally representative survey of 8,027 Americans found that charging logistics were the top barrier to EV adoption (and more recent data, from our updated 2023 nationally representative survey, show this is still the most common common barrier). CR acted on this consumer data by inviting EV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle drivers to join a community where they were able to regularly share their public charging experience with CR via a survey.
The Findings
CR has a long-standing project called Community Reports where members and supporters of CR contribute to community science projects that improve the marketplace. We asked the EV drivers in this community about the state of public charging where they live, and the feedback reinforced the need for a coordinated effort focused on addressing charging problems.
CR’s citizen scientists became the first wave of members for the EV Charging Community, creating a means to gather real-time data from EV and plug-in hybrid drivers towards the betterment of the entire EV charging ecosystem.
In addition to taking a survey after publicly charging, community members have the opportunity to answer weekly discussion questions about salient topics happening in the world of electric vehicles. Members consistently provide thoughtful, in-depth responses to CR, and we respond by taking action based on their feedback. For instance, CR’s Brian Vines published this article: Using Public Chargers for Your Electric Vehicle? Here’s How to Get the Best Deal after community members identified the cost of charging as a key area of concern.
To continue growing this community, we aligned with nonprofit partners including Electric Vehicle Association, GreenLatinos, Forth, Generation180, Plug In America, and the Texas EV Education Project, as well as a corporate partner Chargeway, a charging app developer that is encouraging its users to contribute to our community’s dataset. The EV Charging Community today has over 1,700 members crowdsourcing their public charging experience.
On the day the Fast Company award was announced, CR published the first of our survey findings from the EV Charging Community: The Most Common EV Charging Problems – and How to Avoid Them. The top line: one out of every five public charging sessions encounter some sort of problem. While experience varies based on the specific charging network, the findings point to the need for accountability across the industry.
The Road Ahead
This is just one CR initiative that contributed to CR being named no. 2 in the Not-for-Profit category for its transformative role in advancing the electric vehicle (EV) industry and empowering consumers with knowledge and tools to adopt more efficient transportation choices. And it’s just the beginning.
The more community members we engage, the greater the power of our collective data will be. We are excited to continue growing this community alongside our partners, and plan to implement new incentives that will award community members for their thoughtful contributions to this work. By connecting with drivers about the daily challenges they face, we’re hopeful about the prospect for a more reliable, convenient, and consumer-focused EV charging experience for all. If you’d like to join CR’s EV Charging Community, you can take the screener survey here.
Charging networks and other third parties that are interested in engaging with CR on this topic are encouraged to reach out to CR’s Data Intelligence team at: dataintelligence@consumer.org.
