The federal government is dedicating billions of dollars to encourage people to buy electric cars. Automakers are building new factories and scouring the world for raw materials. And so many people wish them that the waiting list for battery-powered cars was months long.
The electric vehicle revolution is near, but its arrival is being slowed by a fundamental problem: The chargers where people refuel these cars often fail. A recent study found that about a quarter of public charging stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, where electric cars are common, are not working.
A massive effort is underway to build hundreds of thousands of public chargers — the federal government alone has spent $7.5 billion. However, electric car drivers and analysts say companies installing and maintaining stations need to do more to ensure that the new chargers and the more than 120,000 already in existence are worth it. trust.
Many people sit in parking lots or in front of retail stores, where there is usually no one to help when something goes wrong. Problems include broken screens and faulty software. Some stop working midway through, while others never start at the beginning.
Some frustrated drivers say the problem leaves them guessing whether they can give up petrol cars altogether, especially for longer journeys.
“Often these fast chargers have a real maintenance problem,” says Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has owned a Chevrolet Bolt for several years. “When they do, you very quickly realize you’re in pretty serious trouble.”
In the winter of 2020, Mr. Zuckerman was traveling about 150 miles each to his job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cold winter weather can reduce the range of electric cars, and Mr. Zuckerman found himself needing to charge on the way home.
He checked on the internet and found gas, but when he pulled it up, the engine was broken. Another person across the street was also out, he said. In desperation, Mr. Zuckerman went to a nearby gas station and persuaded a worker there to run an extension cord for his car.
“I sat there for two and a half hours in the freezing cold, charging enough that I could limp to the town of Lee, Mass, and then use another charger,” he said. “It wasn’t a great night.”
The availability and reliability of public chargers remains an issue, he said.
Most electric vehicle owners mainly charge at home, so they use much less public chargers than people with conventional cars using gas stations. Many people also report some problems with public charging or are willing to look at past problems. And most battery-powered vehicles on the road today are made by Tesla, which has a proprietary charging network that analysts and drivers say tends to be reliable.
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But all of that is changing. Electric vehicle sales are growing rapidly as established automakers roll out new models. Some of those cars will be bought by Americans who can’t get gas at home because they can’t afford to install chargers at home.
Studies show that public charging is a top concern for people when they consider buying an electric car. The other big concern is how far a car can drive on a full charge.
Even people who already own an electric car have such worries. About a third said damaged chargers were at least a “moderate concern,” according to a survey by Plug in the USa non-profit that promotes these vehicles.
“If we want to see electric vehicle adoption continue to increase, then we need to address this,” said Joel Levin, chief executive officer of Plug In America.
Urgency is not lost for the auto industry.
Ford Motor recently began sending contractors it calls “charge angels” to check the charging network which it works to power people who buy its electric cars and trucks. Unlike Tesla, Ford does not build and operate its own charging stations.
This spring, one member of that team, Nicole Larsen, went to a charger row at a Long Island mall, plugged in her Mustang Mach-E, and got to work. Ms. Larsen watched as the laptop recorded a detailed stream of data exchanged between the charger and the vehicle and began taking notes of her own.
The chargers, built and operated by Electrify America, a division of Volkswagen, were working fine that day. But Ms. Larsen said a day earlier someone had given her an error message. When that happened, Ms. Larsen notified Ford technicians, who worked with the toll company to fix the problem.
Ms. Larsen said her experiences were uncommon, but they appeared enough for her to recognize them with the naked eye. “I can tell you in advance, this will give me an error on the screen,” she said.
There has been little rigorous research on charging stations, but one was conducted this year by Cool the Earth, an environmental nonprofit in California, and David Rempel, a professor of bioengineering. retired at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 23% of the 657 public charging stations in the Bay Area were down. The most common problems were that testers couldn’t get the charger to accept payment or start charging. In other cases, the screen is blank, unresponsive, or displays an error message.
Carleen Cullen, CEO of Cool the Earth, said: “Here we have real data in the field and the results are very interesting.
Companies charge a fee to dispute findings. Electrify America said there were methodological flaws in the study, and EVgo, which operates a charging network, said it could not repeat the study’s results.
Another major charging company, ChargePoint, has a success rate of just 61%. The company rarely owns and operates the chargers it installs on behalf of commercial businesses, although it does provide maintenance under warranty. That model is rife with problems, critics say, because it places the responsibility on property owners, who may not have the expertise or commitment needed to manage the equipment. ChargePoint did not respond to a request for comment.
EVgo and Electrify America say they take reliability very seriously and ask employees to monitor their stations from centralized control rooms so that technicians can be quickly dispatched to fix problems.
“These things have come up on their own in the wild,” said Rob Barrosa, senior director of sales, business development and marketing at Electrify America. “You just can’t set it up and forget it.”
But not everything is under their control. While those companies test chargers with a variety of electric vehicles, compatibility issues may require changing chargers or cars.
Even stations owned by toll companies like EVgo and Electrify America are often left unattended for long periods of time. At most gas stations, sales staff are always on hand and can observe when problems arise. With the charger, vandalism or other damage can be harder to track down.
“Where there’s a screen, there’s a baseball bat,” said Jonathan Levy, commercial director of EVgo.
It’s a problem reminiscent of the early days of the Internet, when old modems and aging phone lines could make using websites and sending email a frustrating exercise. The auto and charging industries hope they will soon fix such problems as the tech and telecommunications industries have made internet access much more reliable.
This also comes with a requirement that the charger be active for 97% of the time and comply with technical standards for communicating with vehicles. Stations must also have a minimum of four ports that can charge simultaneously and are not limited to any car brand.
Tesla is also expected to open chargers to other automakers’ cars in the United States, something it has already done in several European countries. However, auto experts say Tesla’s network works well in part because its chargers are designed for the company’s cars. There’s no guarantee that vehicles made by other automakers will run smoothly from the start with a Tesla charging device.
Currently, many car owners say they have little difficulty with public chargers or are so satisfied with the performance of their battery-powered vehicles that they will never consider returning to electric models. gasoline.
Travis Turner is a recruiter for Google in the Bay Area who recently traded his Tesla Model S for a Rivian R1T pickup. He said the truck didn’t seem to work well with the EVgo charger and some stations wouldn’t start charging unless he had closed all the doors and trunk of the truck.
But Mr Turner said he wasn’t too bothered because he worked through those issues and found his Rivian truck much better than any other car he owned. He is also confident that the problems will be resolved soon.
“This is really just the beginning,” he said. “It can only get better from here.”
