The electric vehicle charging experience in the US leaves room for improvement, according to a major new study that lists some of the biggest infrastructure issues, including under-reporting of broken stations, inaccurate charging station status messages, aging equipment, and some not-always-reliable network providers (who, unfortunately, weren’t named in the study).
The study was conducted by ChargerHelp, a company that provides operations and maintenance solutions for EV chargers. The company also engaged Professor Gil Tull, director of the Center for Electric Vehicle Research at the University of California, Davis, to review and confirm the findings. Using four years of data from 20,000 chargers that it monitors, ChargerHelp compared the self-reported uptime of its networked stations with the actual uptime observed in the field by EV drivers.
EV chargers can fail for a variety of reasons, the study concluded, including failure of the retraction system meant to stop the cable getting tangled in the car’s tires, broken screens, malfunctioning payment systems, as well as general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors.
ChargerHelp calculates that across all recorded chargers, actual occupancy was just 73.7%, compared to the 84.6% self-reported by EV network providers.
The study found that 26 percent of all stations analyzed didn’t accurately match the charger status shown in the network’s software, meaning some charging networks are exaggerating how many stations are online, undermining the trust EV owners should have in the charging infrastructure. This is especially problematic when you’re in desperate need of a charge and end up at a station that the app says is online but isn’t.
The study lists a variety of situations where EV drivers have trouble connecting to a charger, including scenarios of “ghost” stations – stations that appear on the app but don’t actually exist or are out of order. The study also describes “zombie stations” – stations that exist and work but don’t appear on the app and so drivers don’t use them. And “confusing occupancy” – where the app tells drivers that a particular station is free, but it’s not. And “dead end” – where everything seems fine until you plug it in and find out it’s not working. ChargerHelp claims that reliable software interoperability and network data sharing can help solve these problems.
Charger downtime varies staggeringly by location. For example, New Jersey had the nation’s lowest number of down ports at 4.4% as of early 2023. But the state only had 27 operational public charging ports per 1,000 registered EVs, which may not be enough to meet demand. In contrast, Washington DC had a port down rate of nearly 11%, but 137 ports per 1,000 registered EVs.