Top 5 Annoying Moments Every EV Driver Has Faced

Owning an electric vehicle comes with plenty of perks—lower fuel costs, reduced maintenance, and a quieter ride—but it’s not without its challenges.

From ICE vehicles blocking chargers to the hassle of juggling apps, EV drivers encounter roadblocks that can make the charging experience frustrating.

Fortunately, together with our industry peers, we’re working to tackle these common pain points. Here’s a look at some of the biggest EV charging challenges today—and what’s being done to solve them.

Parking an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle at an electric vehicle charging station is a sure-fire way to make sparks fly between drivers.

The worst of the worst? When a big truck does the horizontal hunker-down across multiple charging spaces.

Despite signage and security cameras intended to keep internal combustion engines out of EV spots, this is such a common occurrence there’s even a term for it: ICEing.

No one abandons their car in front of a gas pump for hours while they hit the mall. Unfortunately, many drivers confuse charging stations for long parking spots, staying put after charging is finished—or worse, parking without charging at all.

To address the problem, many public sites now issue penalties for parking without actively charging and use tiered charging fees—that jump after a specified period of time—to encourage users to get the required charge and move on.

Public parking and charger use are often billed separately, even though your vehicle must be actively charging while occupying a designated EV spot.

Parking rates also tend to vary considerably, depending on the location and time of day, while hourly EV charging fees are often fixed.

This type of difference in rate structures may become increasingly confusing and cumbersome as more operators adopt per-kilowatt-hour billing.

Hypercharge streamlines the charging experience with Eevion™ Integrated Charging, a cloud-based service that integrates EV charging into any app, platform, or system, including parking payment apps. This way, users can pay for their parking, and start charging, all in one transaction.

You could be forgiven for thinking electric vehicle sales are tanking hard and fast, based on media hype over the last year.

In fact, while the year-over-year sales growth rate has slowed in some parts of world, the overall EV market continues to grow.

In Canada, for example, registrations of new zero-emissions vehicles have increased from about 3% of vehicles sold in 2019 to more than 15% in 2024.

In British Columbia, that figure is even higher: in 2024, one in four vehicle sales were electric!

Governments can be all too quick to scrap financial incentives that make investing in an electric vehicle, EV charger, or electrical infrastructure more affordable.

One of the most recent blows was the early 2025 announcement that the Government of Canada would pause its rebate program for first-time buyers purchasing personal EVs, stating that all funds had been allocated more than two months ahead of schedule.

Incentives have been critical to the growth in EV adoption, and we call on governments to reinvest in a carbon-neutral future.