Public Perceptions and Walking Accessibility of Amenities Near Fast-Charging Stations in the USA

This study investigates the usability of consumer-generated online comments, to elucidate BEV drivers’ concerns and perceptions regarding these vital facilities. A multi-label text classification was implemented and the walking accessibility of nearby amenities where BEV drivers might dwell while waiting was assessed for more than 500 fast-charging stations in California, USA. BERT achieved the lowest Hamming loss, closely followed by RoBERTa. The most prominent themes in the reviews were the availability of charging points (including waiting times before a charger became available) followed by the charging speed. In terms of amenities, BEV drivers frequently referenced food and dining options as well as retail outlets, toilet facilities (or the lack thereof) and cleanliness-related concerns such as bins, odors and trash. Although parking fees and difficulties in locating charging stations were mentioned in fewer than 10% of the reviews, several charging stations exhibited these issues as the most salient themes, being referenced in up to 80% of a charging station’s reviews analyzed in the study. The majority of fast-charging stations were found to have nearby amenities belonging to the category ‘Drinks and snacks’, ‘Restaurant’, ‘Fast food’ and/or ‘Groceries’. This paper is an extended version of the paper “Fast Charging Stations in the USA: A Multi-Label Text Classification of Online Reviews”