I've been driving electric since 2022 (non-tesla) and I have never charged with a tesla Supercharger. They have been either more expensive than my contract or in locations far way from the highway or gas stations.
The situation in Germany right now is extremely good, almost every gas station by the Autobahns has 150KW+ chargers available (and most of them non-Tesla). No need to plan stops anymore. And at the moment Plug-and-Charge is also working in Ionity and other stations. My BMW is able to store several contracts and I can choose beforehand which ones to use without having to resort to any app or RFID cards.
Charging is now as easy as with Tesla, but with full market competition and many extra locations.
I'm in North Texas and have mostly encountered chargers in Texas. I can't speak to charging elsewhere.
> If they do finally work, they charge at 1/4 the quoted speed
Just to confirm, 1/4 of the quoted average charging speed of your car, 1/4 the quoted peak charging speed of your car, or 1/4 the max supported speed of the charger? Few cars can actually charge at the 350kW max charge rate available. And then on top of that those cars don't actually sustain that peak rate very long, and only when it's been preconditioned and already at a low state of charge. If you're rolling in at 50-60% SoC and especially if you didn't precondition you probably are looking at only being able to charge 100kW or so. That's not the fault of the charger.
Teslas don't charge at 250kW the entire time either. They too have charge curves and need preconditioning to hit max charge rates.
Don't even get me started on Oxford. We arrive to a charging station and it turns out it is exclusively for electric taxis. No mention of this anywhere online.
It boils down to trial and error, and then remembering which specific charging points tend to work. For a completely new piece of infrastructure with no legacy cruft, the industry has made a complete and utter mess of it.