A new report from J.D. Power finds that satisfaction with electric vehicle smartphone apps has hit record highs — but so have expectations, and automakers are struggling to keep pace. For years, the apps that automakers bundled with electric vehicles were largely an afterthought — useful, occasionally, for checking a charge level or pre-warming a cabin. Now they have become something closer to a daily habit, and the bar has risen accordingly. A new industry study released Tuesday by J.D. Power found that churn among EV app users — the share of owners who stop using the apps — has collapsed to just 4.5 percent, down from 22 percent in 2023. Daily usage among non-Tesla owners has climbed to 55 percent, up from 48 percent a year ago. Overall satisfaction among mass market users reached 7.7 on a 10-point scale, compared with 6.1 in 2025 and just 5.5 in 2024. But embedded in those improving numbers is a warning for the industry: owners who use these apps constantly are also the least forgiving when they falter. “With 51 percent of our respondents new to vehicle apps, OEMs have a clear opportunity to set the standard,” said Violet Allmandinger, senior principal of OEM solutions at J.D. Power. “However, inconsistent connectivity continues to hold the experience back.” The study, now in its sixth year, surveyed 1,610 owners of 2024 to 2026 model year battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles across 24 brands. It found that speed — not design, not feature depth — has emerged as the single most important driver of satisfaction, accounting for 25 percent of overall scores in regression analysis. Nearly three-quarters of users said they considered one to five seconds the maximum tolerable wait time before satisfaction began to erode. One in three users still reported connectivity problems,