SUBARU SOLTERRA CONNECT 4+

I was trying to charge my car for the first time. I tried first at a ChargePoint location, but it never started charging. Then I tried a blink location. No luck. Each time, I’d download a new app, create an account, add my credit card, and then nothing would happen. I tried Electrify America because everyone said it was their favorite. That didn’t work, either. I started to think I was losing my mind. I ended up having to rent a car while the Subaru dealership investigated because I needed to get to an appointment Saturday morning. The dealership had no problem charging.

So when I got my car back, I tried again at Electrify America. This time, it got hung up initializing for about a minute, then it flashed an alert that the car had stopped charging. Immediately after that, an update for the Solterra app appeared. Once I updated the Solterra app, the Electrify America charger worked. But the Solterra app still showed that I had only 30 percent charged. It was only when I logged out of the Solterra app and logged back in that the charging percentage finally synced.

Just be aware that if you have trouble charging, the Solterra app may be getting in the way. That’s my hypothesis.

The visual design and the way that the info that’s needed is presented in a good way and shouldn’t be touched. I gave 3 stars instead of 5 is for two reasons. The biggest reason is what others have mentioned many times, by opening the app the clear intention is to get the most updated info about the car. Having to mash the refresh button is NOT needed and frustrating. Fix that and you will make the users of the app happy. The end result is simple, open app, no refresh button present or needed and instead boom it shows you all of the most updated info about the lock status and most importantly the charge status. If it makes the app take a moment longer to load that would be acceptable for most people. The other issue I have is when remotely starting the car, holding down the “Start” button as it says to do, produces a delay and acts like it’s not doing anything and then a moment longer it shows that it remotely started. I understand and support the need to have someone hold down the button on the app to prevent accidental starts, however the delay on the status changing is frustrating. Please fix that.

Been using the app daily for about a month, primarily to monitor battery level, and occasionally to remote lock/unlock or remote start. The worst UX aspects: typically I have to tap “refresh” 3-4 times to get the latest battery level info. The lock/unlock/start controls aren’t intuitive and usually fail for random reasons instead of showing a disabled state. I think typically related to whether the car is locked or charging. It feels like it was all built to satisfy a list of software requirements but no one on the team actually uses the app. It seems like it was designed to support multiple drivers with separate accounts, but that doesn’t seem to work. There’s support for adding your home address but you can only add nearby points of interest and not an actual address.