IONNA outscores Tesla Superchargers in J.D. Power's 2026 study

Walter of Out of Spec BITS pulled into an IONNA Rechargery in Rock Hill, South Carolina, at what he called ungodly o'clock, because J.D. Power had just put the network, not yet two years into running public chargers, first among US DC fast chargers. The canopy over the Alpitronic HYC400 stalls was white instead of IONNA's usual purple and orange. Chick-fil-A next door was already slammed. He plugged a General Motors car in, plug-and-charge started the session on its own, and the screen showed 39 cents a kilowatt-hour with no idle fee. "This is how charging should be," he said.

That stall is what the ranking is actually about. It is not a map of the country.

J.D. Power's 2026 U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study, released 12 August, scored IONNA 807 out of 1,000. Mercedes-Benz Charging Network took 797. Rivian Adventure Network took 755. Tesla Superchargers, first for five straight years, landed fourth at 701, still above the DC fast average of 666. Mark Kane published the rest of J.D. Power's ranking graphic on EVChargingStations.com: Red E at 628, Electrify America at 616, EVgo at 601, ChargePoint at 583.

The study ran January through June 2026 with PlugShare and 6,594 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid owners. Only DC fast charging was award-eligible. Satisfaction in that segment rose 12 points year over year, with gains on all ten factors. Charger availability jumped 27 points. How safe people felt at the site, and the cost of charging, each rose 18.

Brent Gruber, J.D. Power's executive director of EV solutions, treated the result as a design lesson. "The newest generation of OEM-backed charging networks is showing what it looks like when public charging is designed around the driver," he said. Earlier in the same release he restated the firm's long-running finding: "JD Power data consistently shows that public charging is the top reason new-vehicle shoppers reject EVs."

IONNA is BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Toyota. Electrek counted 1,375 ports at 150 stations when the ranking landed. Walter put the live count at just over 150 open sites, with Sandy, Utah flagged in a contractor's LinkedIn post as the 200th location now mobilising for construction. The 2030 target, as InsideEVs framed it, is 30,000 fast-charging plugs. Chief executive Seth Cutler told Electrek the company measures reliability by first-attempt success rate. "Because we're not first to market, we've been able to learn from others, and we're determined to redefine public charging and quality."

Walk-up pricing is 39 cents a kilowatt-hour nationwide. GM owners get 10 percent off. BMW is running 20 percent through the end of September, then 10 percent. Walter, charging as a GM customer, saw 35 cents after the discount and said plug-and-charge has worked every time he has tried it at IONNA: no app, no card, just the cable. Dual NACS and CCS connectors sit on the same stall.

A satisfaction score is not coverage. On InsideEVs' YouTube show, Suvrat Kothari said he has never had a problem at IONNA and has paid in the 30-cent range, then pointed at the map. "The ubiquity of Tesla superchargers is just undeniable," he said. His nearest IONNA site is about 50 miles away. In New York he has been paying 65 to 70 cents a kilowatt-hour at public DC. InsideEVs cited Paren data putting Tesla and Electrify America around 56 cents on average against about 37 cents at IONNA and 43 cents at Walmart's own stalls.

Walter keeps Mercedes-Benz, IONNA and Pilot Flying J in his navigation and uses Tesla when nothing else is around, in part because the charge-port door on his Chevrolet Equinox makes Supercharger cables awkward once an adapter is in play. Carscoops noted the other half of that trade: when its piece ran, IONNA still had no stations in Michigan and only one in New York. Sparse and excellent is a real product. It is not yet a Supercharger every few exits.

Non-charge visits — you arrive, you leave without electrons — fell to 12 percent in the most recent quarter, from 14 percent a year earlier and 19 percent in 2024. J.D. Power called that the lowest failure rate in the history of the study. Newer OEM-backed networks posted the lowest rates; legacy networks improved too. Twelve percent is still one visit in eight. Hotels scored highest among DC sites at 692, then gas stations and convenience stores at 689 and restaurants at 688. Dealership chargers sat at 570. Stand-alone parking lots and garages: 606.

On the Batteries Included podcast, Martyn Lee of EV News Daily called 12 percent "way too high." Tom Moloughney of State of Charge, who has been logging this infrastructure for years, was blunter about the trend line: go back five years, he said, and the difference is night and day. He now picks networks he trusts — Mercedes-Benz, IONNA, Tesla — instead of taking whatever stall he can find. "That's still going to take a while for the general public to really acknowledge that and understand it," he said, because the old road-trip write-ups in the major press stick.

Public Level 2 went the other way, down 12 points to 595, mostly on payment and starting a session. Slow speed remains the most common complaint on both sides of the plug, though DC speed complaints have eased. Gruber's warning sits in the same release as the applause: the Level 2 slide "shows there is still work to be done on network quality, location strategy and customer education before mainstream shoppers fully trust public charging."

IONNA won a satisfaction study on new hardware, dual plugs, 39-cent power and a place to eat. Tesla Superchargers still own the miles between those sites. Both of those can be true on the same Tuesday.