Rivian's Updated App Tries To Fix The Most Frustrating Part Of Public EV Charging

There are few experiences more annoying for electric vehicle drivers than getting to a charging spot and finding out that it's broken — or, even worse, it stops working in the middle of charging. Rivian released an update for its app designed to avoid those annoyances. The on-app and in-vehicle trip planner will now display reliability scores for chargers based on what Rivian says is "based on real-world charging experiences," according to a press release.

Rivian

Charging locations are given a letter grade, and the trip planner will automatically guide you towards charging stations with A and B ranks, so you will typically have somewhere nice to charge on your trip. Additionally, the feature isn't linked just to Rivian's own charging network. The Tesla Supercharger network is included, as well as any charger that's capable of fast charging (provided it has enough user data to give it a score). The update is installed over-the-air, and is available for Rivian R1T trucks and R1S SUVs.

Along with showing a particular charger's reliability, the app also shows what hours the charger is open, as well as the actual speed it charges. There is sometimes a marked difference between the advertised charging speed of a charger and what drivers actually get, and this update hopes to tackle that discrepancy. 

Rivian says its charging score is based not only on whether or not the charger was able to fulfill its main job and charge the vehicle, but also charging speed, and even ease of payment. A press release notes that fast chargers that are not compatible with plug-and-charge will have a lower score. Rivian wants to become the be-all and end-all when it comes to EV-centric apps and trip planners (if, of course, you have a Rivian).

The automaker notes that you can start planning trips and charging now in order to give more scores to more chargers to make the app better.