About 23% of public electric vehicle charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area don’t work, according to a study published Monday by researchers at the University of California Berkeley.
The study, conducted between Feb. 12 and March 7, found that 151 of 657 DC fast-charging public EV charging stations were “nonfunctioning.”
"Chargers need to be working well, and functionality needs to be at a high level for there to be large-scale EV adoption," said David Rempel, a Berkeley professor and of the study’s authors. "Do you really expect EV drivers to go to one charger, call the 1 800 number because it's not working, and then spend 45 minutes going from one charger to the next — and be happy with that? No."
Of the chargers that were broken, 22.7% had an unavailable or unresponsive screen, exhibited payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or had broken connectors.
“The findings suggest a need for shared, precise definitions of and calculations for reliability, uptime, downtime, and excluded time, as applied to open public DCFCs [direct current fast charging], with verification by third-party evaluation,” the researchers conclude.
The U.S. is preparing to spend up to $5 billion in federal infrastructure funds to build a nationwide electric-vehicle charging network over 5 years as part of the bipartisan infrastructure package that includes $7.5 billion to build a sprawling network of EV charging stations across the country.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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