ChargerHelp’s mission is to improve the parlous state of public EV charging reliability. The company offers a Reliability as a Service contract, under which customers pay a fixed monthly fee for unlimited Operations & Maintenance (O&M) support and a guaranteed level of uptime. (See our in-depth interview with ChargerHelp CEO Kameale Terry.)
The company also publishes a yearly EV Charging Reliability Report. The latest edition contains a detailed assessment of the EV charging industry from the standpoint of reliability, along with insights into the issues that are most important to EV drivers.
One of these may be a bit surprising: among other findings, ChargerHelp’s latest analysis concluded that uptime is not the most accurate metric for assessing infrastructure functionality. Rather, a statistic called first-time charge success rate (FTCSR) has emerged as a more accurate measure for evaluating the driver experience.
According to ChargerHelp, while reported uptime has improved, nearly one in three charging attempts still fail, and success rates fell from 85% at new stations to below 70% by year three of operation—a tragic flaw that uptime monitoring fails to capture.
“Uptime tells us if a charger is available, but it doesn’t tell us if a driver can actually plug in and get a charge on the first attempt,” said Kameale Terry, CEO of ChargerHelp. “First-time charge success rate captures the real driver experience, and by centering on this metric, the industry can close the gap between availability and usability and build the trust needed for mass adoption.”
As ChargerHelp sees it, FTCSR is a more accurate and actionable metric, because it matches the driver experience. More than a third of failures occur on chargers that appear to be operational. Many chargers report 100% uptime, yet still fail without multiple retries, resets or errors. Unlike uptime, which shows whether a charger is technically “available,” FTCSR reflects the true customer experience: whether a driver can successfully start charging on the first attempt.
Your correspondent can confirm this from personal experience. Just last week, a public fast charger refused to do its duty, forcing me to call tech support and have someone in a call center on the other side of the world remotely initiate charging. The charger was technically “up,” but the charging process took much more time and aggravation than it should have.
As ChargerHelp’s latest report also notes, reliability isn’t the only factor that makes for a satisfactory charging experience. The study identifies common traits of top-rated charging sites, including higher-powered chargers, multiple ports per location, longer cables to accommodate diverse vehicle designs, streamlined payment processes, and essential amenities such as covered parking and restrooms. (Amen. The charging site that irritated your favorite EV journalist is located in a sun-baked parking lot with no restaurant or restroom anywhere in sight. And a competitor has a charging site just down the road.)
Source: ChargerHelp
