91% of EV Drivers Would Go Out of Their Way for a Recommended Charger, New Research Finds

Driivz, a Vontier company, found that 91% of more than 3,000 surveyed EV drivers in North America and Europe would detour to use a charging location recommended by another driver. The findings indicate that charger reliability and peer validation are increasingly important in EV charging-location decisions, supporting demand for charging-network software and service quality improvements.

Analysis

The relevant monetization signal is not charger utilization alone but the emerging premium attached to verified uptime and a consistent payment experience. If drivers increasingly route around unreliable sites, charging-network economics should bifurcate: operators with high availability can lift utilization and ancillary retail spend, while low-reliability networks face a negative loop of lower traffic, weaker site-host economics, and reduced capital access. VNT's software position offers operating leverage if operators respond by prioritizing monitoring, roaming, and reliability-management spend rather than adding lower-quality ports.

This is not yet a material earnings catalyst for VNT: survey-based preference data does not establish willingness to pay, customer contract wins, or incremental recurring revenue. Over the next 1-3 months, the actionable read-through is to monitor whether charging operators frame uptime as a capex-to-software reallocation in quarterly calls; stronger-than-expected software bookings or ARR commentary would support multiple expansion for VNT. Over 6-18 months, reliability standards and automaker-backed charging networks could consolidate demand toward better-managed platforms, but vertically integrated networks may build internally and constrain third-party software pricing.

Contrarian view: the market may overstate the value of reliable charging software if EV owners primarily charge at home and public charging remains a low-frequency use case. The stronger equity beneficiaries could instead be site hosts and networks able to convert reliable charging stops into high-margin retail transactions; conversely, broad EV-adoption enthusiasm does not automatically translate to VNT revenue without evidence of share gains or improved Driivz unit economics.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Maintain VNT as a watch-list long rather than initiate solely on this release; enter only if the next earnings update shows Driivz recurring-revenue/bookings acceleration or management quantifies uptime-driven pricing. Target a 6-12 month holding period, with thesis invalidated by flat software growth or customer churn despite EV-charging expansion.
• Monitor CHPT and EVGO earnings for evidence that reliability investments are raising utilization faster than operating costs. A widening gap between utilization and network-maintenance expense would support a selective long in the improving operator; absent that data, avoid treating reliability narratives as a sector-wide buy signal.
• For a broader charging exposure, prefer a paired framework: long VNT only on verified software momentum versus short a cash-burning public-network operator with deteriorating gross margin. The pair isolates the likely shift from undifferentiated hardware deployment toward software-enabled uptime; cover if public-network utilization and gross margins inflect materially upward.