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The Charger Worked, Almost Nothing Around It Did

Brad Crist

Co-Founder & CEO

The EV charging industry has had a lot of good news on uptime this year, and I think that deserves credit. My worry is that we treat it like the finish line, but for EV drivers, it's closer to the starting line.

I don't have a place to charge at home, so I rely completely on public charging. Living this way has changed how I see the problem. It's also given me more empathy for the roughly one in three Americans who rent and may never get to plug in overnight.

More often than not, my problem isn't the charger. It's everything around it.

One stop, four problems

A few weeks ago I was driving to an event in San Francisco and was going to arrive with under 10% battery. I found a charger from one of the big networks on Google Maps, right along my route. It looked perfect.

I couldn't find it. I pulled into the parking garage and saw no chargers and no signs.

I found the wrong ones. I eventually spotted chargers on the roof, parked, and opened the Tesla app. They were Tesla-only, so they wouldn't work with my IONIQ 5. Chargeway would have told me that if I'd thought to check. In the end a Google review told me the other chargers were on the bottom floor.

The app didn't have the station. I drove back down, found an open stall, and opened the network's app. The station wasn't in it. I was running late by then, so I tapped my credit card and paid the higher rate.

The plug fought me. I needed my NACS-to-CCS adapter, and the connector wouldn't fully latch. The cable was heavy and kinked, and the space was tight.

I did get charging eventually. On any uptime report, that charger worked fine. My experience said otherwise.

Drivers don't see uptime

A driver doesn't experience a charger by itself. They go through a series of steps, and any one of them can end the visit:

  1. Finding the site on a map and trusting the listing

  2. Getting into the lot or garage and finding the right spot

  3. Knowing whether the stall works with their car and connector

  4. Seeing the station in the app with the right status and price

  5. Paying without mobile app issues

  6. Reaching the port with the cable length

  7. Getting help fast when something goes wrong

Tesla is still the exception for Tesla drivers, because Tesla designed that whole chain. Most of the rest of us still treat the charger as the product, while drivers are judging the whole visit.

What I'd do this week

None of this needs new hardware.

  • Charge at your own sites like a first-timer. Use only what's public, ideally in a non-Tesla, and write down every moment you hesitate. Then ask your field techs where drivers get stuck, because they already know.

  • Fix the listings. Put the floor, entrance and stall location in your Google and PlugShare listings, with photos of how to get there.

  • Add signs. A few signs from the garage entrance to the chargers save more frustration than almost anything else.

  • Make sure every live station is in your app, with the right status and pricing.

  • Spell out compatibility. Say which connectors and vehicles work at each stall, and whether an adapter is needed.

  • Put help where drivers can find it, on the charger and in the listing, and answer quickly.

The drivers who rely on public charging every week are the ones who'll decide whether this works. If we want them to stay electric, we have to get the whole visit right.