https://transportevolved.com/2015/04/01/opinion-why-electric-car-charging-networks-need-impartial-third-party-regulation-or-face-collapse/
Opinion: Why Electric Car Charging Networks Need Impartial, Third-Party
Regulation Or Face Collapse
April 1, 2015 By Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
[images
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Charging stations are great, but how do we improve the reliability of them?
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Regulation would help ensure that uptime and reliability were pushed up.
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If your charging station fails, who is responsible? And who pays for the
inconvenience?
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Paying for charging isn’t always popular, but it does at least make it
easier to complain when things aren’t right.
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Knowing how much you’re going to pay to charge can help you plan your
journeys more effectively.
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Regulation could make charging in public far more pleasant for all involved.
]
All over the world, governmental bodies, agencies, and charities are jumping
on the electric vehicle bandwagon. They’re embracing the dawn of the age of
the zero emission vehicle with enthusiasm and gusto, helping to install
charging point after charging point for the benefit of electric and plug-in
hybrid drivers.
Thanks to generous grants and financial support from automakers like Nissan,
BMW and Volkswagen, we’ve even seen an explosion in rapid charging stations,
offering customers with suitably-equipped cars the ability to recharge their
cars from empty to 80 percent full in as little as 30 minutes. With the
exception of Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] — whose Supercharger network is
owned and operated by Tesla exclusively for its own customers — the
remaining non-Tesla charging stations are owned and operated by a dizzying
array of different organisations, companies and municipalities.
But while more electric car charging stations is a great thing for
encouraging more people behind the wheel of a plug-in car, there’s a global
endemic threatening the operation of charging stations and the very future
of plug-in cars through poor reliability, a lack of accountability and
inconsistent access.
We think all three comes from a lack of regulation and accountability among
the charging station providers, which is why we think car charging networks
need impartial, third party regulation in order to survive. What’s more, we
think that regulation needs to happen quickly, or the charging industry
faces major collapse.
With that in mind, here are three things we think plug-in networks need —
and why they can only be regulated by a third party in the interests of true
accountability. There’s a possible exception for sites with low-powered
110-volt charging and so-called ‘dumb sockets,’ but we’ll come to that
presently.
Reliability, Accountability
Here’s the biggie. Reliability among electric car charging networks isn’t
good enough. And while different networks and even different sites will have
wildly different reliability and uptime to neighboring stations a few miles
down the road, the lack of reliability is proving a challenge to many users.
Here in the UK, we recently visited a location with four different type 2
(level 2) charging stations installed. Of those four, only one was in
operation, and the one we tried using inadvertently locked on to our
charging cable but failed to provide any power. The emergency out-of-hours
helpline — staffed by volunteers from the company in question — tried to be
as helpful as they could but couldn’t help us retrieve the stuck cable until
the following day. Luckily, some persuasion enabled us to retrieve it.
But we’re not alone. Look at any online charging database form the Open
Charge Map through to PlugShare, and you’ll see tales of woe from electric
vehicle owners around the globe who have found a broken charging station,
unresponsive card reader, or simply haven’t been able to get their cars to
communicate with the station.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in Boston, Lincolnshire or Boston,
Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon or Portland, Devon, charging station
reliability is a major issue. It’s the same no matter the network too — with
perhaps the exception of Tesla’s privately-owned and privately-operated
Supercharger network — there are just too many faults across every charging
network we’ve looked at, although we note some are worse than others.
Worse still, many charging provider
