Report: 1 in 4 Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in San Francisco Out of Order

One in four public electric vehicle charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area does not work, according to a new study.

The report, produced by David Rempel of the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that while California — especially the Bay Area — is trying to make the shift to electric vehicles in a hurry, the current infrastructure is not ready.

The study notes:

In order to achieve a rapid transition to electric vehicle driving, a highly reliable and easy to use charging infrastructure is critical to building confidence as consumers shift from using familiar gas vehicles to unfamiliar electric vehicles (EV). …
This study evaluated the functionality of the charging system for 657 EVSE (electric vehicle service equipment) CCS connectors (combined charging system) on all 181 open, public DCFC (direct current fast chargers) charging stations in the Greater Bay Area. An EVSE was evaluated as functional if it charged an EV for 2 minutes or was charging an EV at the time the station was evaluated. Overall, 72.5% of the 657 EVSEs were functional. The cable was too short to reach the EV inlet for 4.9% of the EVSEs. Causes of 22.7% of EVSEs that were non-functioning were unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.

The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on the study results, notes that it did not include Tesla vehicle charging stations in its survey, since those are only usable to drivers who own Tesla vehicles.

In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California would ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035, hoping to make an impact on climate change — though the state’s emissions are a tiny fraction of rising global emissions, which are driven largely by China today.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.