A Wall Street Journal journalist who owns an electric vehicle (EV) was dismayed to find that about 40 percent of the chargers she tried throughout LA county were out of service. A troubling data point for car companies and government officials claiming that the entire country will soon go electric.

A test of 30 non-Tesla fast-charging stations in LA County, the EV capital of America, revealed that at least 40 percent of them had some type of issue, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

“From the beach in Santa Monica to parking garages under Rodeo Drive, my video producer Adam Falk and I visited 30 different non-Tesla DC fast-charger stations in a Rivian R1T pickup. I ran into problems at 13 of them — that’s over 40%. Oof is right,” WSJ columnist and EV owner Joanna Stern wrote.

The WSJ columnist added that she had deliberately limited the experiment to Level 3 chargers, noting, “I ignored the more common chargers known as Level 2 because they’re just too slow for quick fill-ups.”

Stern explained that she came across “three problem categories” during her testing expedition: first, the charging station was broken, second, there was a problem with payment, such as it being rejected, and third, there was a software error between the charger and the vehicle.

“I pressed the companies on why [these issues] happen, and what can be done to fix them,” Stern wrote. “And while it’s good that Tesla will start accepting non-Teslas in 2024, that might not put an end to the issues I’ve encountered.”

When it came to the broken chargers, Stern said she found that fully 27 percent of the 126 Level 3 fast chargers at the EVgo, Electrify America, and EVCS stations tested weren’t working for one reason or another.

In some cases, the problem could be solved by a company technician turning a charger off and on again, she said.

As for the payment issues, Stern explained her “favorite” incident, which happened at an EVgo in Culver City.

“After  I repeatedly tried the credit-card reader with several different cards, the system demanded: ‘CASH ONLY,'” she wrote. “As if this was some hot-dog stand in the park — except there’s no money slot!”

Stern’s problems come at the same time as EV makers are facing weak demand and slashed production targets. Tesla competitor Fisker recently reported weak earnings and lowered the number of vehicles it plans to produce.

 

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.