25 Percent Of EV Charging Stations Report Inaccurate Information

A recent study by ChargerHelp has revealed that more than a quarter of electric vehicle charging stations provide inaccurate status information, leading to confusion and inconvenience for drivers.

The study found that 26 percent of the time, charging stations either appeared out of service when they were functional, appeared online but were actually offline, or incorrectly reported their availability status. Imagine if your gas station lied to you every fourth time you needed to fill up.

Specifically, the study showed that nearly 11 percent of stations appeared offline but were operational, 1.9 percent appeared online but were offline, 3.6 percent misreported their occupancy status, and 10 percent indicated they were online but failed to deliver a successful charge.

These findings highlight a significant issue in the reliability of charging infrastructure, with the root cause often being an information problem rather than a hardware failure. Kameale Terry, CEO of ChargerHelp, emphasized that the industry needs to address software, data, and interoperability issues to improve the accuracy of charging station status.

The study, which was endorsed by the University of California, Davis, used data from site visits, work orders, and external sources like the Department of Energy and Paren Inc., a data platform for EV charging stations.

Charging availability and reliability remain major hurdles for wider EV adoption. The study also found a strong correlation between payment system issues and charger downtime. Complex systems like credit card readers need to work seamlessly with charging infrastructure, and any malfunction can lead to significant downtime.

To address these issues, the study recommended that network providers and station operators improve data accessibility, establish standardized uptime calculations, and increase the number of charging stations to create more redundancy in the system.

This article was co-written using AI and was then heavily edited and optimized by our editorial team.

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