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Unfortunately for some EV drivers, the first time’s not always the charm when it comes to successful public charging.
That problem is at the heart of EV supply equipment operations and maintenance company ChargerHelp’s 2025 EV Charging Reliability Report.
The analysis, which included data from more than 100,000 charging sessions across 2,400 chargers, found that nearly one-third of charging attempts fail, despite improvements in uptime. That’s why the authors urge the EV industry to rethink the way it assesses the public charging experience for consumers, and to look beyond a traditional metric—uptime, which indicates whether a charger is available when a driver wants to use it. Instead, the report argues, a metric known as first-time charge success rate (FTCSR), is more useful in gauging driver experience.
“Uptime tells us if a charger is available, but it doesn’t tell us if a driver can actually plug in and get a charge on the first attempt,” Kameale Terry, ChargerHelp’s CEO, said in a statement. “First-time charge success captures the real driver experience, and by centering on this metric, the industry can close the gap between availability and usability and build the trust needed for mass adoption.
Reliability is key: Last year, as Tech Brew previously reported, ChargerHelp’s inaugural reliability report revealed that actual charger uptime is frequently lower than reported. The analysis found that more than one-quarter of test charges failed.
This year’s analysis found that uptime had improved, but still indicated drivers were encountering issues with public charging.
“We found that despite EV chargers reporting an average of nearly 97% uptime, drivers experienced charge start success at dramatically lower rates,” according to the report. “These discrepancies between uptime statistics and the EV driver experience expose a hidden reliability crisis that’s often invisible in real-time monitoring of EV charging sessions.”
Just over 70% of charging attempts were successful, according to the analysis. Meanwhile, 35% of charging failures “occurred on chargers that appeared operational.”
The report also found that current and prospective EV drivers consider charging speed an even bigger “pain point” than reliability. The data suggests that older stations had lower charging success rates. But simply swapping out charging hardware was more of a temporary fix than a long-term solution, according to the authors.
“Reliable, accessible, and convenient public charging is foundational to accelerating EV adoption,” Will Hotchkiss, COO and head of public charging for GM Energy, which participated in the report, said in a statement. “We believe that we have the ability—and responsibility—to solve the challenges with charging infrastructure, if we truly want customers to go all-electric.”
Recommendations: ChargerHelp’s report recommends adopting “more precise reliability metrics and standards to improve the EV charging experience,” building trust with drivers by creating user-centered designs and communicating clearly, and standardizing firmware updates.
Other research on the public charging experience in the US has shown signs of progress as more fast-charging infrastructure becomes available and charging networks invest in reliability upgrades. JD Power found in its latest US EV Experience Public Charging Study, for example, that instances of drivers abandoning public charging stations because they encountered a problem had reached the lowest level in four years.
ChargerHelp’s Terry told Tech Brew that the EV industry is taking consumers’ charging woes seriously.
“We know, we understand,” she said, “and we are actively pushing forward to work toward fixing it.”