The decision came amid growing criticism of the Air Resources Board for neglecting to include performance standards on the previous $600 million in settlement money it has approved for Electrify America. The company is a subsidiary of Volkswagen created to atone for an emissions cheating scandal.
“Our obligation is to make sure this infrastructure is as good as it can be going forward,” said board member Hector De La Torre at a hearing before the unanimous vote. “We’re the ones who are pushing this technology so we need to make sure it works.”
Electrify America’s almost 4,000 chargers make it the largest fast-charging network in the nation after Tesla, though it is just one of many public EV charging companies. Yet as more people drive EVs, concerns about reliability of the public network are growing.
Recent studies by UC Berkeley and data firm J.D. Power found public chargers operated by companies such as Electrify America don’t work for customers roughly 20-30% of the time.
Several board members, including chair Liane Randolph, shared their own personal frustrations with Electrify America chargers. At one station featured in CEO Barrosa’s presentation, Randolph said she requested maintenance that went unaddressed for several days.
“I do think it’s important to have some standards,” said Randolph. “What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to target in terms of getting out there and addressing the problem... perfection is not possible. But responsiveness makes all the difference.”
With this last $200 million, Electrify America has said it plans to retrofit and refurbish 490 “underperforming legacy” chargers and build 500 newest generation chargers in California. But the company did not include a specific maintenance or reliability plan.
Now the Air Board directed the company to work with its staff on forming charger reliability metrics, “including station uptime, performance and repair response time.” Those new maintenance requirements will be publicly released once approved.
The board also directed Electrify America to report more detailed information on charging stations built in low-income and disadvantaged communities, which was required of 35% of charging infrastructure in the original settlement.
President and CEO of Electrify America Robert Barrosa told board members that station reliability is the company’s number one investment area. He said many of the problems have stemmed from its reliance on outside manufacturers for chargers.
“Our head is not in the sand. We are listening to customers, we are looking at our data and we’re making substantial improvements to the system overall to better handle what we’re seeing in the field,” Barrosa told board members in a discussion that turned tense in moments. “We’re not perfect.”
Electrify America maintenance teams reduced average response times to broken chargers from 48 hours to almost 24 hours, he said. “It’s a struggle” to keep legacy equipment running at 90% of the time, even though newer generation chargers have a higher rate of success.
The company led by Barrosa has built more than 1,000 chargers in California, the result of an $800 million settlement to support EV adoption for 10 years starting in 2017. State Air Board regulators were tasked with overseeing its spending plans in four installments, and their approval of this last segment marks the beginning of the end.
California’s settlement with Electrify America was part of a larger $2 billion deal with the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 to promote EVs across the country. The idea was to compensate society for the air pollution created by Volkswagen’s faulty engines discovered in a scandal known as ‘Dieselgate.’
In 2015, the EPA charged Volkswagen with installing software on its diesel-powered cars that enabled vehicles to cheat on EPA emissions tests. On the road, the cars’ actual emissions were 40 times higher than U.S. standards permitted.
Last year, EVs made up a quarter of all car sales in California but unreliable charging is a hurdle discouraging potential buyers. An estimated 18% of those who switch to electric vehicles end up returning to gas-powered cars due, in part, to charging inconveniences.
Electrify America infrastructure makes up a significant share of the state’s publicly accessible charging network. Another $400 million in California Energy Commission grants and subsidies have also funded chargers built by companies including ChargePoint, Electrify America, Blink and EVgo.
Assessing reliability of the entire network is difficult, energy commission staff said in an October report, because the agency has collected extremely limited data on chargers. Some university research centers are now conducting field studies with state grants.
Advocates such as Carleen Cullen, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cool the Earth, want to see more teeth in the Air Board’s requirement for performance metrics, including verification and testing, and enforcement with the threat of fines.
She points to the text of VW’s initial settlement with the Air Board, which includes fines for failing to maintain charging infrastructure — $2,000 a day and $50,000 after 30 days “for each failure to implement the approved maintenance plan.”
“CARB took a significant step today by requiring performance metrics. Now it’s up to the agency to thoroughly analyze and verify the data Electrify America will be reporting,” Cullen said. “If it falls short, then CARB must take punitive action.”
Ultimately, she said, drivers will be the ones who interact with this network day to day. At the heart of these questions is whether Electrify America’s adherence to these metrics will make their experience better for current and future EV owners.
Sue Saunders, a Bay Area EV driver who started with a Chevy Bolt and has since transitioned to a Hyundai Ioniq 5, said the infrastructure needs to work for every day people — the mom taking kids to school and the family taking a weekend trip.
“If you give Electrify America another $200 million without metrics and threatened fines, we’re going to see more people choose gas cars,” Saunders said. “That would be a tragedy.”
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