May 11, 2022—Over 27 percent of electric vehicle charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area are not working correctly.
According to Fox Business, a recently released report titled "Reliability of Open Public Electric Vehicle Direct Current Fast Chargers" has revealed that California drivers are facing issues at charging stations that range from payment problems to unexpected shut-offs and broken plugs.
It is worth noting that the study looked at 657 charging plugs at 181 public stations in nine counties and did not include Tesla charging stations.
Seventy-two percent of the plugs were functional. Twenty-three percent were unresponsive, had screen issues, difficulty processing payments, network failures, charge initiation failures, or broken plugs.
Additionally, 4.9 percent of stations had a charging cable that was too short.
Some stations even required a call to a 1-800 line for help and assistance, which adds to the overall time spent at the station.
According to Fox Business, the California Energy Commission said that it "is committed to and investing in improving charging access and reliability, and working with the charging industry, automakers, standards organizations, community organizations, and other stakeholders."
EVgo, a charging network operator, told Fox Business that it is "committed to 98 percent uptime of its network across its more than 850 locations and offers multiple payment options for charging: via our mobile app, on the charging screen with an RFID card or credit card, or remote start from our call center if necessary."
