Is America Finally Improving Its Electric Car Chargers? (seattletimes.com) 72
U.S. consumers "rank problems with public electric vehicle charging and the time it takes to recharge as their top two reasons for rejecting electric vehicles," writes the New York Times, citing figures from data analytics firm J.D. Power.
But are things getting better? Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They're also outfitting charging stations with items such as food and bathrooms, and making the devices more reliable. Because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at higher speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla to allow owners of other cars to use the company's fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable.
Early evidence suggests efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off. In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed about 20% of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16%, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021. "The industry is finally elevating as a whole," said Brent Gruber, an executive director at J.D. Power.
The number of chargers has also increased. There were about 55,200 fast chargers in the United States in May, up from 42,200 a year earlier, according to federal data.
In February, a former Phillips 66 gas station in Apex, N.C., near Raleigh, became the first "Rechargery" from Ionna, a company created by eight automakers, including General Motors, Hyundai Motors, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Their chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts of juice, much more than Tesla's 250-kilowatt Superchargers. Some cars can replenish a battery in 30 minutes or less at the higher charging speeds. When connected to chargers of 350 kilowatts or more, including those at Ionna and Electrify America, another fast-charging network, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can fill its electric "tank" from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes...
Some models from BMW, Hyundai and Kia have also enabled a national "Plug and Charge" standard that lets car owners begin charging their vehicles at Ionna stalls without first having to use a smartphone app or swipe a credit card, eliminating a step that sometimes results in errors. Tesla's chargers have long worked this way for Tesla cars and now work with some other vehicles, including Rivian's SUVs and pickups. More cars and charging stations are expected to have plug-and-charge capability in the coming months... Nearly every major automaker is redesigning their cars with plug outlets and software that are compatible with Tesla chargers.
Infrastructure upgrades are happening elsewhere too, according to the article.Texas-based gas chain Buc-ee's is offering "premium" charging using renewable power (working with Mercedes), while Waffle House plans to install BP Pulse fast chargers next year.
J.D. Power's Gruber says that while America's federal charger program only helped construct a tiny fraction of new chargers, it did also published guidelines which helped automakers and charging companies work together and address technical problems.
But are things getting better? Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They're also outfitting charging stations with items such as food and bathrooms, and making the devices more reliable. Because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at higher speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla to allow owners of other cars to use the company's fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable.
Early evidence suggests efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off. In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed about 20% of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16%, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021. "The industry is finally elevating as a whole," said Brent Gruber, an executive director at J.D. Power.
The number of chargers has also increased. There were about 55,200 fast chargers in the United States in May, up from 42,200 a year earlier, according to federal data.
In February, a former Phillips 66 gas station in Apex, N.C., near Raleigh, became the first "Rechargery" from Ionna, a company created by eight automakers, including General Motors, Hyundai Motors, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Their chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts of juice, much more than Tesla's 250-kilowatt Superchargers. Some cars can replenish a battery in 30 minutes or less at the higher charging speeds. When connected to chargers of 350 kilowatts or more, including those at Ionna and Electrify America, another fast-charging network, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can fill its electric "tank" from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes...
Some models from BMW, Hyundai and Kia have also enabled a national "Plug and Charge" standard that lets car owners begin charging their vehicles at Ionna stalls without first having to use a smartphone app or swipe a credit card, eliminating a step that sometimes results in errors. Tesla's chargers have long worked this way for Tesla cars and now work with some other vehicles, including Rivian's SUVs and pickups. More cars and charging stations are expected to have plug-and-charge capability in the coming months... Nearly every major automaker is redesigning their cars with plug outlets and software that are compatible with Tesla chargers.
Infrastructure upgrades are happening elsewhere too, according to the article.Texas-based gas chain Buc-ee's is offering "premium" charging using renewable power (working with Mercedes), while Waffle House plans to install BP Pulse fast chargers next year.
J.D. Power's Gruber says that while America's federal charger program only helped construct a tiny fraction of new chargers, it did also published guidelines which helped automakers and charging companies work together and address technical problems.
Better hope you have good cooling (Score:1)
Or you EV ends up as a pile of molten metal...
Especially when the temps are well over 300 degrees K
300 degrees K (Score:2)
Do you mean 310K will melt it? 8O
Re:Better hope you have good cooling (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you EV ends up as a pile of molten metal...Especially when the temps are well over 300 degrees K
300K! Why, that's... eighty degrees F.
Hot enough to melt metals like... mercury.
A little hotter and it will even melt gallium!
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That is typically the most complex part of an EV, battery temperature regulation. Even the charging cable has cooling built in for some fast chargers
Re: Better hope you have good cooling (Score:1)
BYD easy burn by themselves
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Most have heat pumps to keep the battery temps in an acceptable range.
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Most have heat pumps to keep the battery temps in an acceptable range.
Except for the Leaf, which is finally getting active thermal management for the 2026 model year.
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>"Except for the Leaf, which is finally getting active thermal management for the 2026 model year."
The Ariya has had it for 3 model years now.
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When Japanese OEMs get stuck and stubborn, boy do they get stuck and stubborn.
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Is that somewhere in his half-hour long video about why most people don't actually need a NEMA 14-50 outlet to charge their EV? Some of his videos are kind of entertaining in a geeky way, but other times it can be a bit of a slog to get through.
At some point I guess I'll have to watch it (the click/rage bait works), but I'm assuming it just boils down to the fact that the average driver isn't going to be running their car's battery completely flat every day. Thing is, if you're installing a dedicated EV c
Premature celebration (Score:2)
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It would upset me to pull in to get gas and, 1 out of 6 times, the pump was broken.
I think that must be a west coast thing. Here east of the mississippi, I haven't seen a problem with broken chargers.
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Really depends on who is running them.
On the Electrify America chargers, apparently this can take weeks or even months to fix basically anything. And for those who don't recall, VW was required to build that out as part of its settlement for emissions cheating. It kind of makes sense that they have no incentive to make sure it works well, or even charges particularly fast. So say an rsilvergun comes around and, believing that copper being a natural resource means he's entitled to it, will cut the cable and
Re: Premature celebration (Score:1)
In Cleveland you don't see many chargers
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Lax regulation lets shit like this happen. Imagine if every gas station required you to use their shitty payment app before the pump worked. That’s why so many EV chargers don’t work.
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It's mostly poor maintenance. There's a Tesla Supercharger near me that frequently gets crashed into by drivers, but Tesla is surprisingly fast about repairing it every time it happens.
The ChargePoint chargers at the local Whole Foods, though? Both of them have been broken for months.
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Lax regulation lets shit like this happen. Imagine if every gas station required you to use their shitty payment app before the pump worked. That’s why so many EV chargers don’t work.
That's a shitty analogy (not to mention, that doesn't seem to be forbidden by any regulation.) I think it's more likely that the gas station with the shitty payment app will lose customers to the one across the street without it. Besides, you love companies that will happily kick you in the butt if you don't do things their way, namely Apple, and you always nerd rage about any attempt at regulating them. To this day, you're still pissed off at the EU for killing the lightning cable. So go fuck off with that
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Post-Script: If you did regulate them like that, you'd basically create an economic disincentive, effectively making it more desirable to simply not build any at all if it can be avoided. Which would leave the only company with any incentive at all as effectively the only company that continues to build them out.
You Proably would not notice for Petrol Pumps (Score:2)
It would upset me to pull in to get gas and, 1 out of 6 times, the pump was broken.
It's probably not far from that - it is not uncommon to find a petrol station with one or two pumps that for whatever reason are not working. The difference is that most petrol stations have ~12 pumps and you only need one for 5 minutes at most so when one is not working you just go to another that's available and think nothing of it.
The problem with EVs is that they need the "pump" for at least 30 minutes if not more so you need at least six times more recharging stations as petrol pumps to handle the
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>"It's probably not far from that - it is not uncommon to find a petrol station with one or two pumps that for whatever reason are not working."
Really? I don't think I have encountered a completely non-working gas pump in at least 10 years. I agree with your other assertions about fewer chargers and longer times and more impact. But the comparison in reliability is hugely different.
I will also point out that gas pumps are probably way older, on average, and see TONS more use/turnover, and yet still ho
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While it's true you'd need six times as many recharging stations to handle the same throughput of cars as a fuel station, it's also true that you won't need to handle the same throughput of cars. At least 60% of US cars and 70% of UK cars are parked off-street overnight. The UK currently has 80,000 public chargers... and 1,000,000 home chargers (for 1.4m EVs). So in practice today, 400k British EVs are using 80k public chargers.
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but for those without garages this is still a huge problem.
I've actually seen plenty of people with their EV charger installed on the exterior of their house, because their garage is full of crap.
Are things getting better? Not everywhere. (Score:1, Interesting)
New Jersey is making Tesla remove 64 superchargers [electrek.co] along a major turnpike - even though anyone can use the chargers there.
So I question if the article is just trying to paint a bright picture atop a more confusing scene.
The political left's hatred of Musk and by extension Tesla may well end up killing electric cars altogether.
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Elon Musk claimed corruption without any evidence.
It's New Jersey.
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Do the chargers have attendants that plug it in for you? can't be talking away those jobs!
Re:Are things getting better? Not everywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)
What a terrible attempt at clickbait and trolling. They’re removing Tesla chargers and replacing them with a third party. It’s stated in the first fucking sentence.
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Who in their right mind replaces dozens of NACS high speed chargers with CCS ones, though?
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The political left's hatred of Musk and by extension Tesla may well end up killing electric cars altogether.
That'll last until the current tensions in the Middle East jack up the price of oil. Nothing like a little pain at the pump to remind people why EVs entered the chat in the first place.
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That'll last until the current tensions in the Middle East jack up the price of oil. Nothing like a little pain at the pump to remind people why EVs entered the chat in the first place.
Then what happens to the price of BEVs when demand for them spikes? My guess, prices go up. What happens to the value of their hydrocarbon burner when they try to trade it in or sell it during a fuel price spike? The value goes down. With those two things in mind I expect people to keep their current vehicles for as long as they can to avoid the cost of a new (or even new-to-them) vehicle since that is a cost they can avoid to help cover the cost of fuel.
With the demand for BEVs will come demand for bat
Re:Are things getting better? Not everywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)
The political left's hatred of Musk and by extension Tesla may well end up killing electric cars altogether.
That's ridiculous. Do you somehow live under the impression that Tesla is the only electric car maker in the world? Tesla sales are declining sharply in Europe and China, while European companies like Volkswagen and BMW or Chinese brands like BYD are taking over. Tesla role as a driver of innovation has also pretty much disappeared, and they have trouble coming up with new models as they get sidetracked by technological debacles (like the Cybertruck) or by Musk's political idiocies. If Tesla closed doors tomorrow, electric cars would continue to thrive and grow - maybe even better than they do today, since the corrupt Republican administration (I know, oxymoron) wouldn't have more incentive to cripple the competition in order to favor Musk's "Tesler".
Also, blaming the left's hatred of Musk for the putative failure of electric vehicles is doubly ridiculous. Do you somehow feel conservatives are putting in sterling efforts to encourage electric cars, but are hindered by the hater lefties? Are you even listening to yourself?
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https://news.gm.com/home.detai... [gm.com]
What's at risk of dying off is not EV's as a whole, but Tesla's first-mover advantage.
Musk placed all their chips on Robotaxi. I am very skeptical since "full self driving" is so short of solving that "last 5%" and they are so far
Re: Are things getting better? Not everywhere. (Score:3)
False. Tesla was asked to upgrade their chargers to allow non Tesla cars to charge there and they declined. So there was a new bidding process and Tesla lost the bid in 2022. Teslas chargers are not universal, I just passed them today. Hyundai couldnâ(TM)t use them until March of this year, and even then they still require an adaptor. Theyâ(TM)re being replaced by universal chargers that work with all models and take credit cards, and even have higher charge speeds.
Musk is salty but his claims are
Cost, not chargers (Score:3)
U.S. consumers "rank problems with public electric vehicle charging and the time it takes to recharge as their top two reasons for rejecting electric vehicles,
Count me as skeptical. I suspect they are just repeating the messages they have heard most often in the media. Most people don't buy new cars at all so they have little basis for comparison. Of course there are used electric vehicles, but they are still on the upper price end. Those that aren't have small aging batteries with very limited range. Price, range, availability are probably the real top three. And just plain unfamiliarity is fourth with chargers only a part of the that. People prefer something they are familiar with and don't have to think about.
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"Of course there are used electric vehicles, but they are still on the upper price end."
'22 Kia Niro EV for $8k net of tax credits is nowhere near "the upper price end".
"Those that aren't have small aging batteries with very limited range."
260+ mile range and a battery showing no sign of degradation.
And free DCFC near me, too.
Good deals on decent used EVs abound.
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Good deals on decent used EVs abound.
That does say something about how much the people who currently own them value them.
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Good deals on decent used EVs abound.
That does say something about how much the people who currently own them value them.
Not really. A used 2022 model year car most likely just came off a three-year lease. A lot of people that can afford to make car payments forever just keep getting a new car every three years. The main reason that getting a lease would be more common for electric vehicles is that the technology is still improving rapidly. A gas car that's three years newer will have some minor improvements, but an electric car that's three years newer may have some major improvements, especially a longer range.
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It's the familiarity issue. When I got an original Leaf with its 24kWh battery and typical ~80 mile range, people would ask me if I could get to the next city over... 22 miles from my house. Turns out people vastly over-estimate distances, and pretty consistently too.
Then you have charge times. 30 minutes?!? Way too long! Except that in practice it's often too short, with the app telling me it's done and I should go unplug before I've finished getting lunch and using the bathroom.
Of course modern cars are m
Operate them like a truck stop or filling station (Score:4, Insightful)
People will need a public EV charger while traveling far from home. That means they will likely arrive there after hours of driving, and so in need of a restroom, a beverage, perhaps a snack or even a quick light meal, and a place they feel generally safe and comfortable to sit with a drink, a snack, a map, or just their thoughts for a few minutes. This is especially true if it can take 20 to 40 minutes for enough of a recharge to make it to the next stop.
We have such things for hydrocarbon burners, and they can be called various things. Truck stop. Filling station. Oasis (which might be a Midwest thing). They all share features besides just a fuel pump. There's going to be a building with a person inside to offer assistance if necessary (apparently a requirement in the ADA) and take payment if paying with cash or there's an issue with the payment system at the pump. Inside that building is also likely to be public restrooms, food and drinks, maybe even hot food and drinks as well as a place to sit to eat. These are often convenient places to shop while pulled off the road for fuel, which is why they are sometimes called a convenience store.
It's amazing to me to see that it took this long to figure out that the complaints about charging times at an EV charger is less about the actual time to charge, but that there's nothing to do while the car charges. In every case I've seen there's not even a kind of awning to shield people from sun, rain, snow, or bird droppings.
With the miserable places to charge that I've seen there's no wonder people are often regretting getting an EV. Or at least an EV without an ICE backup for such occasions, a PHEV. Every PHEV I've seen with have an all electric range of 30 to 50 miles, which is often enough for most Americans to perform their daily commute on all electric power so it can be driven like any BEV for their daily driving. When going on long trips it has the ICE to allow driving much like any ICEV, and that means being able to drive past the miserable EV chargers.
I do agree with how the article ends, the solution to not enough EV chargers (while not having the experience be miserable) will be solved by private businesses.
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You've basically described a Buc-ee's - lots of chargers (and gas pumps, too), good selection of food, and very clean bathrooms. Only catch is, they're about the size of a department store, not your typical gas station. Still, when one does happen to be along the route I'm taking, it's a place I'm happy to make a pit stop at.
Wawa has started adding Tesla Superchargers, too. They've got passable food and coffee, and well, a bathroom that technically is a bathroom. Still beats charging in the parking lot
So the problem with that (Score:2)
If you're going to have somebody hanging around for 20 to 40 minutes you can't have them doing that if you're not continuously making money off of them. Very few businesses own their land they have to lease it from extremely large corporations and that means they need to be bringing in tons of money continuously for every minute that y
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Is that as a business which you really want is much much higher turnover than that. You want to get your customers in and then get them out after they've giving you money.
If you're going to have somebody hanging around for 20 to 40 minutes you can't have them doing that if you're not continuously making money off of them.
First off, presumably they'd be staying put regardless for 20 to 40 minutes because that's how long it takes to charge their car to get to their next stop. Keeping the charging rates low will attract them to stop in the first place to buy high priced drinks or whatever, kind of like how a filling station attracts people to stop to then buy stuff they don't need. So long as they are paying for their charging then money is being made. More money is made if they buy stuff while waiting.
Secondly, if they don
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By my understanding there's still plenty of BEVs that are incapable of DCFC which means a longer stop, as much as an hour with L2 AC charging or even the low end of DC charging power before having enough charge before the driver feels comfortable there's enough charge to the next stop.
An EV without DCFC really isn't practical to road trip in. L2 charging speeds can realistically be thought of as an overnight charge from a heavily depleted battery, so unless you're arriving at your destination within the usable range of the vehicle, you're going to have a miserable experience.
Re: So the problem with that (Score:2)
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Electricity is much cheaper than gas though. In fact it's free if you just put some solar panels and some batteries at the site. With the kind of usage EV charging will bring, the payback on initial investment will be fast, and then it's all pure profit.
Public charging is often as or more expensive than fossil fuels in the UK. We are a rip-off country at the best of times, but the message is very clear. To prevent worsening economic divides, we need to make sure people have access to cheap AC charging at ho
Spot on (Score:2)
Is that as a business which you really want is much much higher turnover than that. You want to get your customers in and then get them out after they've giving you money.
If you're going to have somebody hanging around for 20 to 40 minutes you can't have them doing that if you're not continuously making money off of them. Very few businesses own their land they have to lease it from extremely large corporations and that means they need to be bringing in tons of money continuously for every minute that you're there. Otherwise they won't be profitable enough to pay the rent demanded by the private equity firms that own basically all of the valuable commercial real estate in America.
As a result I think the profitability is going to have to come from selling the electricity itself which means that charging up your electric car is going to be very expensive. More expensive than buying gas...
Right now that's not true but mostly because of heavy duty subsidies from the government. But those subsidies won't last forever.
I don't know solution to that problem either. The reason gas stations work is you get in you buy a bunch of overpriced snacks and drinks and a bit of gas and you get out.
A restaurant might work. They generally want you out of there within half an hour that might be enough time for a quick charge. But if the charging time gets more than that then restaurants are going to have a hard time being profitable on charges without charging for the electricity and making a good profit on top of it
I just did a 1000 mile round trip. I had to refill every 250 miles or so. I estimate the throughput of vehicles refilling their car was about 1 every 5 minutes or so. I'll be liberal and say 6 minutes to get out, refill, get back in and drive off. At a station with 12-pumps that would be 120 cars per hour max. Likely less on average. Assuming 20 minutes to recharge an EV (and that is being liberal), that would be 36 cars per hour max.
It isn't only charge time that is the problem. You have to increase
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First, gas stations don't actually make a lot of money. The actual profit a gas station makes is a few pennies per gallon (or about a penny per litre). That's the profit at the pump.
That's
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Are you sure? https://driveteslacanada.ca/ne... [driveteslacanada.ca] and https://www.caa.ca/app/uploads... [www.caa.ca] suggest there's not much difference.
just get rid of EV charging altogether (Score:2)
I don't understand why EVs need to be charged. Eliminate the charging process entirely and just swap in an empty battery with a pre-charged one. A robot can do it in less than a minute. For this, all batteries need to be standardized. We do this with electronics batteries, so it should be a no-brainer.
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Better? (Score:3)
>"But are things getting better?"
I have never actually used a level 3 charger yet. But I was curious, so I went to the nearest charging site. There were two spots. Both empty. I walked up to the first one and it had both a CCS and an ancient chademo cable. On the screen it said "CCS not available", even though the cable and plug looked fine. That means that maybe 90% of current vehicles can't use the charger. So I walked up to the other one and the screen said it was out of service and please call XXXXXX number. 100% failure. (And going through the menus to FINALLY find the pricing, it was about 500% that of residential electricity.)
So that is a poor anecdote- a single experience at a single time, sample size of two. But it certainly helped me appreciate and validate the complaints I hear from people. Either I have really bad luck, or there is something to these complaints.
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Sorry, forgot to add, this was 2 weeks ago.
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Either I have really bad luck, or there is something to these complaints.
Nope, that's been my experience as well. The only fast chargers I've ever had reliably work every time I've used them are Tesla's. Even then, a few times I've driven past the Supercharger station near where I frequently go grocery shopping and witnessed a line of cars waiting to use the chargers (thankfully, since it's near my home, it's not a site I ever need to use).
There's definitely still some growing pains to EV ownership, and I wouldn't recommend one to anyone who isn't able to rig up charging at ho
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It used to be an issue in Europe too, years ago. But we have so many chargers now, and the technology has improved so much, that on the rare occasions when you do find a broken one, there are always several more to use anyway.
Until the US catches up, here's a little tip. "Broken" chargers can often be revived just by rebooting them. There is an emergency stop button. Hit that and see if it fixes it.
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Does Europe not fine or prosecute people for using emergency stop features in non-emergency situations?
No private company can levy a fine for hitting an E-stop, not in Europe, not anywhere else. Only specific legislated situations allow such a thing to be finable: e.g. hitting the e-stop in a train, tram, or metro.
Failure rate of 16 percent (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure, but overwhelmingly the most common reason a gas pump is out of service is because the underground tank is empty. It's extremely rare for a gas pump to break, so almost all faults to refuel a gas car are due to the station being out of fuel. It's the most analogous cause of a similar user experience, so it's a fair comparison. If we limited the comparison to equipment failures in a gas pump, the comparison of failure-to-refuel rates would be much more favorable to gas pumps.
For comparison .. Norway has ~9500 fast chargers. (Score:3)
And we're only about 5.5M people. That is one fast charger per 580 person or somesuch.
The US has quite a bit more population, but you only have one fast charger per ~6200 person.
We're spoilt when it comes to charging infrastructure for our electric cars. Given that most folks charge at home, I think we've pretty much saturated our need for more at this point.
Re: For comparison .. Norway has ~9500 fast charge (Score:2)
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Fast chargers are not the issue. Norway has some 30,000 L2 chargers as well. Destination and source charging are the key for EVs. Fast chargers are only critical for taxis/road trips.
The answer is 'NO' (Score:2)
Betteridge's law of headlines with question marks demands it.
16% failure rate?! What an absurdly low bar (Score:2)
To count a move from 20 to 16% failure rate for charging attempts as a sign of real improvement in the American charging experience just shows how, once again, the US nowadays tends to deliver shittier experiences than other developing markets. I've driven EVs here in the UK for 10 years. In the last three years, I've never encountered a broken charger, and I've always been able to pay with Apple Pay for rapid chargers, so the experience is drive up, plug in, double-click for Apple Pay, walk off. (7kW charg
The price for energy is too high (Score:2)
Fixing reliability is only one thing (Score:2)
The real issue is with people remaining in the charging bays when their EV has completed its charge.
Unless you own a Tesla.... (Score:2)
I've had a Tesla 3 for 5 years (on my 2nd one now). While I almost always charge at home (using a bog standard 240V power outlet), I sometimes top up or use Tesla superchargers on longer trips. I have never (not once) had an instance where a Tesla charger didn't just plain work. Plug in, charge up, it bills my CC, and I'm out. That's been true up and down the eastern coast of the US.
Charging at home is the cheapest/simplest. US$0.11 per KwH and I plug it in when I get home from work and it's fully char