Charger outage rates varied broadly by operator, Gruber said. One had almost no charger downtime – just 3 percent. Drivers failed to charge at nearly 2 in 5 visits, or 39 percent, at the most problematic last year.
J.D. Power declined to make public which networks had the best and worst reliability records. Its study included more than 26,500 charging attempts at Level 2 and Level 3 chargers in all 50 states.
The reasons for failed charging sessions range from software glitches to payment processing errors to vandalism.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents who were unable to charge their vehicle last year said they couldn’t charge because the charger was out of service.
Companies are failing to act quickly, said Ben Shapiro, a manager at RMI, a clean energy nonprofit.
“It might be a pretty minor issue, but they need somebody to come out and fix it… and they don’t do that for 24, 48 hours,” he said.
Tesla’s Supercharger network tends to have better charger uptime than peers. Fewer Tesla drivers face charger outages and, if a charger is down, the driver typically finds a working charger at the same location, Gruber said.
EV charging company EVgo launched EVgo Renew this year to better handle its charger issues. The company plans to replace, upgrade or retire hundreds of chargers this year. It upgraded, replaced or removed 125 chargers during the first nine months of last year.
Many EVgo charging stations are a decade old, said Jonathan Levy, EVgo’s chief commercial officer. Most issues are reported by drivers who are using EVgo’s charger for the first time, he said.
EVgo realized it must improve education and reliability. Today, it has 17 error codes. Just two years ago, EVgo used only one error code for a failed charging situation.
“If the customer didn’t plug it in all the way or the charger was broken or the car was communicating poorly, it would just say connection error,” Levy said. “That’s not particularly useful to the driver and it’s actually not that useful to us in terms of fixing a problem.”
Level 2 charging satisfaction improved in the fourth quarter from the third quarter, largely because charger conditions had improved and the cost of charging had decreased, according to J.D. Power.
“Many network operators are starting to upgrade existing Level 2 chargers, so those efforts are starting to show, at least from a physical condition standpoint,” Gruber said.
