One in four public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area does not work, according to a new study.
The report, produced by David Rempel of the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that while California — especially the Bay Area — is trying to make the shift to electric vehicles in a hurry, the current infrastructure is not ready. [bold, links added]
The study notes:
In order to achieve a rapid transition to electric vehicle driving, a highly reliable and easy to use charging infrastructure is critical to building confidence as consumers shift from using familiar gas vehicles to unfamiliar electric vehicles (EV). …
This study evaluated the functionality of the charging system for 657 EVSE (electric vehicle service equipment) CCS connectors (combined charging system) on all 181 open, public DCFC (direct current fast chargers) charging stations in the Greater Bay Area.
An EVSE was evaluated as functional if it charged an EV for 2 minutes or was charging an EV at the time the station was evaluated.
Overall, 72.5% of the 657 EVSEs were functional. The cable was too short to reach the EV inlet for 4.9% of the EVSEs.
Causes of 22.7% of EVSEs that were non-functioning were unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.
The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on the study results, notes that it did not include Tesla vehicle charging stations in its survey, since those are only usable to drivers who own Tesla vehicles.
In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California would ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035, hoping to make an impact on climate change — even though the state’s emissions are a tiny fraction of rising global emissions, which are driven largely by China today.
Read more at Breitbart
This is another case where all the conditions might be in place to move into a new era, dominated and empowered by electric vehicle energy, but the available infrastructure turns out to be insufficient to support all existing expectations. How can one hope that the majority of drivers will choose an electric vehicle when they cannot be guaranteed a suitable number of charging points?
We hope that this problematic situation can be resolved as soon as possible, to facilitate the transition from fuel-powered to electric vehicles. A rich infrastructure of charging points allows electric cars to be used effectively even for long journeys, which is not always possible today.
I just looked up local to me charging stations.There’s one Tesla Supercharger and three ChargePoint charging stations. What’s really amusing is the ChargePoint stations are open 24 hours on Sunday and Wednesday ONLY. What does that say for apartment dwellers that don’t access to home charging?
If the charging station access doesn’t keep up with EV sales you’re going to see more mad people than during the 1970’s oil crisis.
Just imagine driving you EV into a recharge Station only to see a Out of Order sign its a windy stormy night your 50 miles from home and all the motels are full up and all we get from that idiot Joe Biden is Buy a EV just as stupid as urging us all to junk our cars and get Bicycle made in some Sweat Shop in China. the DNC was nothing good for us at all
Imagine driving to a local charging station with 10% charge after or during a rain storm and having to plug in to charge in the rain on standing in water. I’ve seen many charging stations with no overhead sheltering from the weather.
This story reminds me of the time when we have pubic pay phones around our cities. In the years before they were removed, most of them didn’t work mainly because of vandalism. The other problem – when a broken phone was (eventually) reported, it took ages for it to be repaired.
I wonder if this is what people will experience in the future with EV charging stations?
And – one other thing – We are never told what it costs to charge and EV. Why is that?