America’s Electric Vehicle Dream Plagued By Broken Charging Stations, Study Finds

The Daily Caller

America’s Electric Vehicle Dream Plagued By Broken Charging Stations, Study Finds

John Hugh DeMastri on February 21, 2023

Electric vehicle drivers found that the nearest public charger was unusable in more than one in five charging attempts, according to an updated survey by J.D. Power, Kelley Blue Book (KBB) reported Tuesday.

J.D. Power had reported in August that 20% of more than 11,500 surveyed drivers failed to charge their vehicle at the nearest station in the first half of 2022, but the number climbed to 21% when data for the second half of 2022 was included, according to KBB. Customers reported software issues, vandalized chargers and payment processing problems as primary reasons for charging failures.

“We can’t add new chargers and let all those old ones fall into a state of disrepair,” Brent Gruber, executive director of global automotive at J.D. Power, told KBB. “We have to manage the maintenance of those as well because that’s the only way we’re going to meet the consumer demand.”


The study found a significant performance disparity between different companies, with one company’s chargers failing at a rate of just 3% while another’s failed at a rate of 39%, according to KBB. J.D. Power did not identify the companies by name.

Electric vehicle sales nearly doubled in the U.S. to 5.8% of market share in 2022, from 3.2% in 2021, and investments in technology supporting electric vehicles are a major component of President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act. Tesla, which remained the worldwide top seller of electric vehicles in 2022, agreed to upgrade nearly half of its 17,000 charging stations nationwide to be universally compatible with other cars, making it eligible for a portion of $7.5 billion in federal incentives for charger development.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

You appear to be using an ad blocker

Shore News Network is a free website that does not use paywalls or charge for access to original, breaking news content. In order to provide this free service, we rely on advertisements. Please support our journalism by disabling your ad blocker for this website.