"A new report shows a chasm between software-reported and real-world reliability of public EV chargers in the U.S. — and lays out how to make things better."

"It’s bad enough when a public EV-charging station is out of service. It’s worse when your app doesn’t know that and sends you there just as you’re in desperate need of a charge.

This experience is all too common among the U.S. EV drivers who don’t have access to Tesla’s dependable network, per a new report on EV-charger reliability based on exhaustive data collected from the field.

Unreliable public charging infrastructure and unreliable information on EV-charger uptime have become two of the biggest barriers to the EV transition in the U.S. That’s a problem, as the country needs to shift to EVs fast in order to slash carbon emissions from transportation. But it’s a problem with clear, if complicated to implement, solutions.

So says the inaugural annual reliability report from ChargerHelp, a startup that trains and employs technicians who service and repair EV-charging stations in more than a dozen states. Its analysis of more than 19 million data points collected from public and private sources in 2023 — including real-time assessments of 4,800 chargers from ChargerHelp technicians in the field — finds that ​“software consistently overestimates station uptime, point-in-time status, and the ability to successfully charge a vehicle.”"

Jeff St. John reports for Canary Media August 5, 2024. [2]