Looking To Charge Your Tesla? Your Local EV Charger May Be Down
(TargetLiberty.org) – Electric vehicles (EVs) are being promoted as the future of motoring. Advocates say they’re better for the environment and cheaper to run. However, they’re never going to become popular if owners can’t reliably charge them, and that’s what’s happening in San Francisco right now.
STUDY: About 23% of public electric vehicle charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area don’t work. https://t.co/jSYg9zxsEh
— Newsmax (@newsmax) June 6, 2022
A new study in February and March found almost a quarter of public EV charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area weren’t working. The Bay Area has 657 rapid charging systems, and 151 of them — 23% — were “nonfunctioning.” Common problems included unresponsive screens, payment system failures, network failures, and broken connectors. In 32 cases, the cables were too short to reach the vehicle’s charging port.
Concerned researchers rechecked a sample of charging stations 8 to 10 days after their initial survey to see if their status had changed. Some that had been broken were now working; some that worked previously were now not usable. However, 77.5% hadn’t changed status and the overall percentage of functional ones was the same.
President Biden’s infrastructure package includes $5 billion to build a national network of EV charging stations. To qualify for federal funding, these stations are supposed to have 97-99% availability. Based on San Francisco’s performance, they’re falling well short of that figure.
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