What’s Holding Back The EV Revolution In America? It’s The Charging, Stupid!

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EV sales around the world are gaining ground in many countries but sputtering somewhat in the US. They are well over 95 percent of sales in Norway, 50 percent in China, and 24 percent in France, but in America, they are struggling to get past the 10 percent mark. Alan Jenn is a transportation researcher at the University of California, Davis. Writing for The Conversation, he says that although EV charging infrastructure in the US has improved in the past several years, reliability is still a critical issue. A 2022 study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that nearly 30 percent of public non-Tesla fast chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area did not work. A national study in 2023 that used artificial intelligence models to analyze driver reviews of EV charging stations reached a similar conclusion.

EV Charging & Anxiety

These findings highlight the need for more robust maintenance and monitoring systems across charging networks. Federal guidelines require that chargers must have an average annual “uptime,” or functional time, of greater than 95 percent, but this metric is not always as clearcut as it sounds. While many charging point operators report high uptime percentages, their figures often exclude factors such as slow charging speeds or incomplete charges that degrade users’ experience.

Many drivers complain about throttling — chargers that dispense electricity at less than the maximum rate the car is capable of accepting, which means charging goes more slowly than expected. Other factors can include weather conditions and the number of other vehicles simultaneously using the charging station. Technical barriers such as payment processing and vehicle-to-charger communication issues can prevent a charge from starting or completing.

Other obstacles are more local, such as long lines at charging stations and chargers that are blocked by parked cars, snowbanks, or other obstacles. Finding vehicles with internal combustion engines parked in EV charger spots is common. There is a clear need for more comprehensive solutions to help the charging experience keep pace with demand for EVs.

The University of California, Davis is working with the California Energy Commission to understand the range of charging obstacles that EV drivers face. As part of a three-year study, it is sending undergraduate students out to test thousands of chargers across the entire state of California. To date, the results show just over 70 percent of charge attempts have succeeded. The failures were attributable to a number of factors, including traffic congestion at charging stations, damaged or offline chargers, difficulty using navigation apps to find charging stations, and malfunctioning chargers. Over the past four years, the number of public charging ports across the U.S. has doubled. As of August 2024, the nation had 192,000 publicly available charging ports and was adding about 1,000 public chargers weekly. Infrastructure rarely expands at such a fast rate.

Quantity & Quality

The UC Davis findings illustrate that the quantity of available chargers is only one piece of the puzzle. The quality of the charging experience is equally important. The research found a need for stricter oversight of charger maintenance; more robust uptime requirements that align with real-world performance; and better collaboration between automakers, charging point operators, and software providers to ensure that vehicles and chargers can work together seamlessly.

One vital improvement needed is simplifying the payment process. Too often, EV drivers need to manage a welter of apps and/or credit cards in order to initiate charging and pay for the electricity used. The industry has begun to shift to a standard called ISO 15118, which governs the interface between EVs and the power grid. That standard enables a plug and charge system similar to what Tesla owners are accustomed to when using the Supercharger network. Just plug in the charger and you’re done, without contending with apps or multiple payment systems. Many existing chargers can be retrofitted to use that standard, rather than needing to install totally new chargers. To ensure that all EVs can charge smoothly at any network, groups such as the National Charging Experience Consortium and CharIN are bringing automakers, charging providers and national laboratories together to address these issues.

J3400 Will Revolutionize EV Charging

Last week at The Battery Show in Detroit, the auto industry took a big step in the evolution of North American electric vehicle charging solutions when SAE International introduced its NACS J3400 Recommended Practice standard, which codifies the NACS developed by Tesla. Technically called the “SAE J3400TM: NACS Electric Vehicle Coupler Technical Recommended Practice,” the standard can be considered a “blueprint to build” and should set off a stream of new products from suppliers that OEMs and third party groups like UL will soon test, according to Rodney McGee, chairman of the SAE J3400 NACS Task Force and a research engineer at the Transportation Electrification Center at the University of Delaware.

“There’s going to be more interoperability testing, more work with the industry, as we look for opportunities for improvements in the document,” he said. “When we go from a recommended practice to a standard, we really want to see more of that happen. The ideal situation is that there are very few changes between the two.”

NACS is also getting an official name change with this next step. The acronym now stands for the “North American Charging System” (instead of “Standard”) in order to reflect that “it is a system comprising a set of industry standards covering aspects beyond the vehicle coupler,” SAE said in its announcement.

McGee told SAE Media that the move to J3400 gave the industry the opportunity to incorporate good ideas that have been introduced or made popular since the development of the last major North American EV standard — J1772 — which kicked off in 1996 and became broadly adopted by the industry in 2009. McGee said there are two main reasons why the upcoming massive shift to NACS should finally provide better charging infrastructure in North America.

First, once most new EVs can charge using the Tesla Supercharger network, other charging point operators will need to match Tesla in ease of use and reliability or lose business to Tesla. Second, the reason Tesla’s network has advantages over the OEM-and-supplier-built networks that non-Tesla drivers deal with is that Tesla engineers worked on both the vehicle and the EVSEs.

“When [Tesla] designed the basis of NACS over ten years ago, they were always focused on both sides,” McGee said. “They were a company building and operating a charging network and also building cars, and when you approach a system from that development, you end up maybe in a different place than when J1772 was started, when OEMs did not have these energy units and these huge investments in infrastructure. Now, they’re on both sides of the equation and so the system design of NACS really is about mass electrification — having a connector that can support more voltage types for AC charging and more connection methods. We really brought in a lot of that stuff to be THE standard to electrify transportation in North America, especially for passenger cars.”

Compared to the prior standard, J3400 will allow for digital communication between the car and the charger. J3400 will also update the North American charging landscape to allow for carry-along cord sets, McGee said. Common in the rest of the world, personal cords allow for smaller, cheaper EVSEs because the stations offer a standard port instead of a cable and plug that requires more investment and maintenance. It also makes it possible to use more charging points built into lamp posts. Both will help bring EV charging infrastructure to lower-income drivers and people who live in apartments.

It will also reduce the amount of vandalism at public charging points by thieves who steal the charging cables to get the copper wire inside. “The stuff that hangs around when there’s no electric car there needs to be minimized,” McGee said. “It needs to disappear into the infrastructure. And that’ll really drive curbside charging.”

The Takeaway

The biggest reason Americans shy away from driving an EV is fear, primarily the fear of being caught short when away from home with a depleted battery and no place to recharge it. This summer, my wife and I encountered some of those glitches that make EV drivers wary. One ChargePoint charger was reluctant to connect because the internet signal in the area was low, making it impossible for the app on our phone unlock the device. A Flo charging station would not recognize my phone until I restarted it. And another ChargePoint location was simply nowhere in sight when we arrived. None of those misadventures led to serious consequences, but they did introduce an unwanted element of suspense to our journey that a driver of a conventional car would never encounter.

The future of EV adoption depends not just on how many chargers are available, but on how reliable and easy they are to use, Alan Jenn writes. “By addressing specific pain points that drivers face, policymakers and industry leaders can create a charging ecosystem that truly supports the needs of all EV drivers. Reliability is key to unlocking widespread confidence in the EV charging infrastructure and ensuring that it can keep pace with the growing number of electric vehicles on the road.”

We could not agree more. Fortunately, the charging experience in the US is improving. Driving our Chevy Bolt this summer was less stressful than it was the previous year. With the availability of more charging stations that are properly maintained and work as intended when needed, the fear of charging will diminish and the adoption rate of electric cars will rise. Both are essential to make the EV revolution a reality.

Featured photo by Jennifer Sensiba.