Joanna Stern has an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal. In it, Stern chronicles 48 hours in a Rivian R1T, stopping at over 120 non-Tesla EV chargers, and 40% had issues. Stern categorizes the problems into 3 categories: chargers out of order, chargers that failed to accept payments, and chargers that experienced “handshake” issues when communicating between the charger and EV.

The unevenness of the charging experience drove me to buy a Tesla over other EVs, and every time I attempt to use a different EV charger, I’m reminded of how great of a decision that was. Just two weeks ago, I stayed at a hotel with EV chargers in the parking garage, and try as I might, the darn things didn’t work. 

EV chargers are a mess and will continue to hold back EV car adoption.  

I Visited Over 120 EV Chargers: Three Reasons Why So Many Were Broken

Our columnist’s Los Angeles power struggle featured out-of-order signs, payment errors and connection problems.