Many public EV chargers are unusable - despite being 'online'

More public electric vehicle (EV) chargers will be built across Australia through a A$40 million funding boost, according to a recent government announcement. The new chargers will be a mix of fast chargers and kerbside chargers.

More chargers should mean more confidence for drivers to make the switch to EVs. But as researchers who study charging networks, we see a critical design flaw. The government is focusing on expanding the number of chargers. The problem is ensuring chargers actually do what they should: charge your car.

Most EV drivers charge at home. But when they use the public network, they need to know the charger is working. To track this, the government uses a metric called “uptime”, requiring chargers to be online 98% of the time. That sounds good. But it only measures whether a charger is connected to the network – not whether you can actually use it.

Fixing this gap will be essential to give motorists confidence in EV chargers – and speed up the slow shift to electric transport. 

The uptime fallacy

Imagine you’re on a long road trip. You pull into a regional town, low on charge, and find the only fast charger is blocked by a petrol car. Or maybe the payment system is down. Or the cable has been vandalised. Or the charger simply refuses to “talk” to your car, failing the digital handshake needed to start a session.

For all these cases, the charger would still pass the uptime test. It’s online, communicating with its network. But it’s not actually able to do what drivers need it to do: charge the battery.

These issues are now common in Australia, especially the failed handshake problem where charging attempts fail right after they begin due to a communication problem between car and charger.

Australia has limited data on the prevalence of the problem. Our analysis of DC fast chargers funded by the Californian government shows the scale of the problem in a similar market. We found that while charger networks reported roughly 95–98% uptime, the chance of drivers successfully charging was substantially lower at 75–83%.

Public chargers aren’t just convenience – they’re essential

Around 80% of EV charging happens at home or at work in Australia.

But the public network is a lifeline for three crucial groups.

First, the millions of people who live in apartments (about 10% of the population as of 2021) or homes without off-street parking (about 25%). For them, public kerbside chargers aren’t a backup – they’re essential.

Second are the long-distance drivers who depend on highway fast chargers to travel between cities and towns. At present, our charger locations don’t always match up with where people actually want to drive and charge. This creates potential charging deserts. A single broken charger in one of these low-access areas can ruin a family holiday or a crucial work trip.

The third group is the growing number of freight and fleet operators shifting to electric vans and trucks. Charging reliability directly affects logistics schedules and business costs.

For all these users, charger reliability is especially important. Uptime won’t cut it.

Most popular EV charger apps rely on uptime as a way to show charger reliability, but some apps go beyond this to show more useful data, such as the last successful charge. Drivers can feel more secure choosing a charger proven to have recently delivered a successful charge.

Reliability beyond uptime

One solution is to shift away from a reliance on uptime and use a better metric.

In the United States, a large industry consortium recently hashed out what this might look like. Our research contributed to one of the outcomes: new customer-focused KPIs (key performance indicators) for chargers.

How do they work? Rather than relying on network data showing a charger is online, these KPIs draw in multiple sources of data, such as:

• using charger reviews to quickly spot repeat failures such as blocked charging, payment glitches and safety issues
• using vehicle and charger telemetry to pinpoint where and why charging sessions fail (while protecting privacy)
• regular on-site audits for damage, accessibility, lighting and the ease of locating the charger to catch issues missed by data
• verifying these data sources by comparing reported uptime with actual charging success rates.

Better still, by combining this data with maintenance logs and weather patterns, we can build predictive models to forecast when a charger is likely to fail and schedule proactive repairs.

This rigorous approach would give drivers far better confidence in public chargers.

Australia could easily adopt a similar approach, given the data, partners and capabilities already exist.

The first step would be a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how to fuse data from networks, vehicle telemetry and user check-ins and reviews with real world audits. Next would be publishing an open standard for charger KPIs and work with states and networks to roll it out nationally.

Boost security

A truly reliable network must also be secure. In the US, vandalism and copper theft have become real issues. One operator has installed GPS trackers in its charging cables.

Thankfully, Australia hasn’t yet seen these issues at the same scale. But it would be naive to think our network is immune. As the charger network grows, so does its vulnerability.

The solutions are to invest in proactive measures such as good lighting, CCTV and tamper-proof designs, as seen across Norway and other leading EV nations.

If these problems escalate in Australia, it will be another source of charger anxiety, where drivers fear being left with a drained battery far from home.

The end result will be that more drivers stick with petrol cars or choose plug-in hybrids.