Blog Post
Reliability
Whitepaper
Redefining EV Charging Reliability & Uptime
Redefining EV Charging Reliability:
How Electric Era Measure and Ensures Superior Uptime
Charging reliability is a significant roadblock for the EV charging industry. Beyond increasing the number of charging stations, delivering consistent uptime and successful charging sessions is essential to bolster driver confidence and widespread EV adoption. While these are complex challenges for stakeholders in EV charging to navigate, they also breed opportunity: where some charging station operators fall short, operators who provide superior reliability can build trust with drivers, attract more business, and grow strong relationships with recurring customers.
In this white paper, Sith Dharmasiri, VP of Engineering at Electric Era—who formerly led software development for SpaceX’s Starlink Satellite Bus and integrates his learnings and expertise from advanced space technologies to improve EV charging —explores the nuances of EV charging reliability, breaking down:
- Metrics and Measurement: Why the absence of industry-standard reliability measurements obscures the “true” rate of charging success that drivers experience
- Root Causes: What the most common drivers of reliability issues are
- Accelerating Superior Uptime: How solutions across hardware and software can promote a higher standard of reliability and exceptional customer experiences
Metrics and Measurement: An Opportunity for Higher Standards
Several metrics are commonly used to measure reliability in EV charging. Examples include charger uptime and session reliability:
Charger Uptime:
Measures the percentage of time a charger is operational and available for use.
Why it matters:
While high uptime is critical for accessibility, it doesn’t guarantee a seamless user experience. For instance, a station can be functional but fail to provide a successful charge due to payment processing errors or vehicle compatibility issues.
Session Reliability:
Reflects the success rate of complete charging sessions.
Why it matters: This metric factors in each step of the charging process, from connecting to the charger to completing the session, offering a more driver-centric view of reliability.
While simple on the surface, how EV charging developers and station operators use these metrics, measure, and report on reliability can differ considerably, making it hard for drivers to understand who and what metrics to trust. Standardized measurements and metrics—especially ones that most faithfully reflect drivers’ charging experiences—can help ensure the EV charging industry as a whole delivers reliable, frustration-free charging experiences.
For example, one metric, “successful charge attempt rate,” or SCAR, evaluates any attempt a driver makes to charge their vehicle. While some hardware developers or station operators don’t count things like payment failures against their measurement of SCAR, Electric Era’s metric is comprehensive: it takes into account many potential causes of failure, ranging from payment declines to improper cable insertions. Making metrics like SCAR more comprehensive incentivizes infrastructure design and deployment that promotes ease of use and reliability. At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer!
Electric Era demonstrates our commitment to comprehensive reliability metrics and transparency through our 2024 performance data. Our network of 60 ports maintained 98.42% per-port uptime from January through November 2024 (surpassing our 98%+ per-port uptime guarantee). We delivered 92.6% fleet-wide session reliability as measured by our 30-day SCAR (Successful Charging Attempt Rate) average across our charging sessions, proving how we measure and deliver reliable charging experiences for our customers. We provide complete transparency in the appendix of the white paper, where you'll find detailed daily session reliability data, including successful sessions per day and 7-day moving averages from our operations between January 1, 2024 and November 25, 2024.
Root Causes: Why Reliability Fails
Problems with reliability can stem from several complex and interrelated factors:
- Connectivity Issues: Many chargers rely on cloud communication for session authorization and payments. Connectivity disruptions can cause session failure.
- Payment System Failures: Offline payment capabilities are not prominent in many if not most public charging systems, making them vulnerable to failures.
- Interoperability Challenges: Variations in how EVs and chargers communicate can lead to session failures, particularly as many EV and charging manufacturers and station developers don’t adhere to the same standards.
Beyond the above, physical and environmental damages—like harsh weather, vandalism, and normal wear-and-tear—can also take chargers offline. User error itself can cause charging sessions to fail. While these are not always the fault of station operators or manufacturers, they still diminish reliability and should be factored into measurements that purport to represent what customers and drivers experience when they try to charge their vehicles.
The Electric Era Advantage: Building Resilient Charging Stations
By starting with measurements for the Electric Era network that comprehensively assess reliability as experienced by the driver (including not carving out causes of downtime like scheduled maintenance), we challenge ourselves to set a higher standard for network reliability.
Further, Electric Era measures reliability on a per-port basis rather than at the level of entire charging stations, which may have some active charging ports but others that are not. This measurement distinction offers another layer of differentiation and aligns reliability measurement more closely to a given driver’s actual experience when charging their vehicle.
Based on this foundation, Electric Era delivers high uptime and session success by offering:
- Offline Payments and Edge Computing: Unlike many other EV charging stations, Electric Era’s stations support offline payment authorization. An on-site edge compute system allows the charger to run entire sessions offline and then reconcile payments when internet connectivity returns, maintaining service continuity even when networks are down.
- Advanced Fault Detection and Recovery: Borrowing principles from aerospace, Electric Era employs fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) mechanisms to resolve issues proactively and promptly. For example, systems can autonomously reboot malfunctioning components like payment terminals without requiring field intervention.
- Vehicle Interoperability Enhancements: To combat compatibility issues, Electric Era tracks and analyzes charging session data across its network. This allows the team to identify and address problems down to specific EV models or firmware updates quickly.
- Ruggedized Hardware Design: Electric Era’s battery-backed charging stations are built to withstand extreme conditions and include robust protections against environmental damages, vandalism, and thermal stress to reduce outages.
The tl;dr
EV charging reliability forms the foundation of driver satisfaction, which in turn impacts everything from consumer adoption to the revenue and reputations of businesses that host charging stations, public sector investments, and the time it will take to electrify transportation in general. The stakes are high: every failed session undermines trust, whereas seamless charging sessions benefit brands and accelerate the energy transition.
At Electric Era, our EV charging stations are designed to keep drivers in the fast lane. Whether accomplished at the technical level via heightened redundancies for offline payments or by promoting measurements and metrics that more comprehensively assess and communicate charging reliability as experienced by customers, we strive to set a higher standard for individual chargers and the EV charging industry as a whole.
Explore More:
If you’re ready to improve reliability and accelerate the future of EV charging, get the full white paper here.