On paper, Canada officially boasts more than 32,000 public charging ports for electric vehicles, but on the web, EV drivers say the true number is far smaller because so many stations are out of service.

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Amidst broken stations, EV drivers ask, 'Why is it so hard to maintain an electrical plug?' Back to video

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“This has to be the worst station around. It’s constantly broken,” the driver of a 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV who goes by “Adam” said on Oct. 24 on a website called Plug Share about the Trenton, Ont., ONroute charging station just off Highway 401.

EV drivers also took to Plug Share from Sept. 15 to Oct. 14 to lodge an array of complaints about the charging infrastructure at the ONroute in Port Hope, Ont., before the issues there were finally resolved.

Across the internet, on forums such as Plug Share and chat boards like Reddit, EV drivers have catalogued a seemingly endless number of problems with Canada’s EV charging stations: some cords are too short while others are too heavy; many stations do not replenish batteries as quickly as advertised; most lack an easy payment system such as the credit card tap systems found at a gas pump; and others are just plain broken.

“Why is it so hard to maintain an electrical plug?” asked Chris McDermott, the driver of a Polestar 2 EV.

The question is apparently not an easy one to answer.

Some say that the problems with EV charging infrastructure fly under the radar because so many EV owners do the majority of their charging at home, not at public stations. But, increasingly, many EV drivers do not have access to home chargers and depend on public stations, and they’re expressing frustrations about the reliability of charging infrastructure.

Some EV advocates say poor reliability may deter would-be EV consumers, thereby slowing down EV adoption. With the federal and provincial governments having committed $52.5 billion to build out an EV supply chain, the success of the EV transition is now intrinsically linked with the country’s economy.

On the bright side, there is work underway to hold charging station operators that receive government funding to performance standards.

In the meantime, here are five ways that EV charging infrastructure is breaking down and the reasons why.

Not just an electrical plug

“The reason (the question) is hard is that EV charging is about a lot more than just a plug,” said Travis Allan, chief legal officer at Quebec City-based EV charging company AddÉnergie Technologies Inc., better known to consumers as Flo.

Allan, whose company has sold more than 120,000 chargers and is often credited with having high uptimes — meaning its chargers function much of the time — said chargers face unique challenges.

They usually aren’t under a canopy like you would find at a filling station. That means all the hardware needs to be designed to withstand the elements and that the screen must be visible under all lighting conditions.

The functionality of a charging station also depends on how closely it is monitored.

Cara Clairman, president of Plug N’Drive, a non-profit that supports EV adoption, said many EV stations were initially installed at businesses considered convenient locations. Some were coffee shops while others were fast-food chains, but they were left to maintain the charging infrastructure even though they had neither the expertise nor many incentives to do so.

“It’s a bit of a wild west,” said Clairman, who has been driving an EV since 2011. “Tesla owns their own infrastructure and makes sure it’s working, whereas some of the others sell theirs to a host and the host is typically not in the charging business.”

Location, location, location

Pollution Probe, a non-profit that conducts an annual survey of 1,500 EV drivers in Canada, said earlier this year that “the reliability of charging infrastructure is a concern.”

But that often depends where you live.

For example, asked whether stations are “often out of service,” just 18 per cent of Quebec’s EV drivers agreed or strongly agreed with that statement, but that figure rose to 40 per cent of Ontario’s EV drivers.

On Reddit earlier this month, a user named WeirdStretch posted sharply critical comments about some Ontario EV charging stations: “Was driving through Ontario this past week. The Ivy charging stations are absolute s**t. Cords so short I practically had to have my bumper touching the barrier in front of the station, and it was still putting a lot of strain on my charging port.”

The user, who could not be reached for comment, proceeded to complain about the Ivy app and the number of stations that are out of order.

The Ivy charging network is a joint venture between Hydro One Ltd. and Ontario Power Generation Inc. A spokesperson said Ivy is “unlocking endless travel possibilities” for EV drivers across Ontario.

“We actively monitor all our sites to ensure they operate smoothly and maintain high uptimes,” the spokesperson said via email. “We also monitor customer feedback, allowing us to quickly identify and address any issues and promptly update the Ivy app and social channels to reflect any maintenance updates.”

In the Pollution Probe survey, EV drivers from other provinces expressed even more concerns about station reliability than EV owners in Ontario. For example, in British Columbia, 45 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that charging stations are often out of service. The remainder of the provinces polled even higher at 47 per cent.

Not charging as advertised

A common complaint is that some stations advertise one rate of charging, but deliver a much slower rate.

Why this happens remains a mystery to many drivers. Are the station owners simply lying? Are the stations broken? Is it some glitch related to electrical distribution? On chat boards, everyone seems to have a different answer.

Allan at Flo said there are various reasons why rates may differ. Some stations with multiple charging ports are splitting their advertised power capacity among all the users, so the more people who plug in, the slower things go.

In other cases, some stations are not maintained and the advertised rate is no longer correct, he said.

But the problem can often be traced back to the vehicle, not the charger, Allan said. For example, older EVs are not rated for fast charging. The weather can also affect the charging rate.

“Think of (the EV charger) like a garden hose, where it’s just sort of putting out energy,” he said. “But the vehicle has a battery management system, and it is the careful protector of the vehicle’s battery and how much energy it is capable of taking.”

App fatigue

Another common complaint is that paying for a charge is highly inconvenient.

Rather than a simple tap system for credit cards like there is at gas pumps, there’s more often an app that the user has to download and register to use.

“I will say that with every charging company, you’ve got to download a different app,” said Joanna Kyriazis, program manager at Clean Energy Canada, a think tank at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and an EV driver. “It’s slightly less convenient because in the moment you’re like, ‘Do I have the app?’”

If you come from a different province, you may not have the app. But if you’re on a road trip, you also may not have great internet access, so you’re stuck.

Clairman said she has heard that credit card tap systems have been deemed too expensive.

“A few companies have it, but most didn’t want to pass that (cost) on,” she said. “Charging at home is pretty cheap, so they didn’t want people to have a shock of how much it would be when they went out and charged” at a public station.

Allan said Flo spent hours searching for the right payment technology to use at its stations and it is increasingly installing credit card tap systems at its stations.

Lack of reliability standards

One common explanation for the many out-of-service charging stations is that there’s a lack of skilled workers who know how to maintain them.

Allan flatly rejects this.

“They are available if you are able to go through the work to identify and train them,” he said. “It’s an issue of who has the will.”

He said Flo has achieved 98 per cent uptime — the term for how often a station is functional — throughout its entire network. In 2023, the New York City Department of Transportation evaluated 100 of Flo’s public charging stations located around the city and said they had achieved 99.9 per cent uptime.

But Colleen Kaiser, program director for the Smart Prosperity, an Ottawa-based think tank focused on the environmental economy, said part of the problem stems from the rapid emergence of EVs.

Many governments doled out money to build charging infrastructure in an effort to keep up with demand, but because of the novelty of the situation, they did not attach “reliability metrics” to ensure the equipment performed well, she said.

“There was nothing to say, ‘Hey, we gave you half a million dollars, you need to make sure they work.'”

That has since started to change. In 2023, the Canada Infrastructure Bank announced it would loan about $435 million to Flo and another EV charging company to expand the charging infrastructure, but it requires at least 97 per cent uptime or the terms of its financing change.

A Natural Resources Canada spokesperson said its Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program, which has a $630-million “funding envelope,” requires station operators to post uptime stats for their first six months of operation.

“Requiring public uptime disclosure puts a greater onus on station operators to ensure charger reliability,” the spokesperson said via email.

Many EV advocates like to point out that station reliability is not an issue for the majority of EV drivers. Pollution Probe’s survey said most drive less than 80 kilometres per day and own an EV with at least a 300-kilometre range, meaning there’s no need to charge at public stations every day.

Still, for road trips, public charging is a necessity and, as Clairman said, “the road trip looms large in the public imagination.”

Arthur Zhang, a research associate at the Canadian Climate Institute think tank, said more people who live in condos or apartments will drive an EV as they become more mainstream, and they will depend on public charging. If the kinks aren’t straightened out, it will turn into a serious problem.

“I think it’s definitely a barrier to EV adoption,” he said.

• Email: gfriedman@postmedia.com

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