How are CPOs delivering a better EV charging experience?

  • Scaling for Growth: The UK government aims for 300,000 public EV chargers by 2030, requiring CPOs to upgrade infrastructure and meet increasing demand.
  • Enhancing Reliability: New regulations demand 99% uptime and robust customer communication, as CPOs tackle issues like faulty chargers with capable service partners.
  • Collaborative Solutions: CPOs emphasise the need for industry-wide collaboration, from equipment manufacturers to service partners, to improve EV charging experiences.

As the UK’s electric vehicle market expands, how are charging point operators (CPOs) addressing reliability issues and delivering the experience customers expect? 

Guest Editor: Neill Emmett, Global Marketing and Brand Director – Konect

Demand for public charging is growing quickly in the UK. There are over a million electric vehicles on the road – twice as many as two years ago – while sales of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars and vans are set to end by 2035, so that population will continue to grow. 

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Charging networks have an important role in that transition, and operators are under growing pressure from drivers and regulations to deliver an experience that’s as reliable and intuitive as filling with fuel. At the 2024 EV Summit, a Konect-hosted panel of CPOs discussed the hurdles ahead – and the solutions needed to overcome them.  

What are the biggest challenges for CPOs?

Operating an EV charging network isn’t easy, and it’s a fast-evolving landscape: 

How are CPOs maximising EV charger uptime?

1. Better data 

One important advantage of EV chargers, according to James Gale, global operations lead at Konect, is they offer much deeper connectivity than traditional fuel pumps. The Konect solution enables 80% of issue to be fixed in software, while faults can be diagnosed remotely enabling service teams to arrive prepared.

“We have got the ability to be monitoring this equipment constantly and fix the issue even before a customer has a problem,” James said. “We’ve got an industry ahead of us that’s got even more opportunity [than fuel retail] that we can connect further going forward.”

2. More collaboration:

EV charging is a complex ecosystem, as Lewis Gardiner, director of operations at Osprey Charging, highlighted. CPOs work with stakeholders including equipment manufacturers, payment system suppliers and other service partners – even including the cellular networks that units rely on to exchange data. 

This should be easier, he said: “It is quite fragmented and that is probably one of the biggest challenges. There definitely could be a lot more collaboration to get the whole industry aligned. [Reliability] shouldn’t be just on the CPO – everybody needs to be bought in to improve the uptime across networks.”

3. Customer communication

Chris Pateman-Jones, CEO of Connected Kerb, stressed the importance of managing trust. To reassure drivers, the company installs two to six sockets at each location and aims to notify users in advance if units will be offline for maintenance – which has been well received. This is more important than setting targets, he added. “What our customers care most about is whether they’re going to be directed to a charging point that’s working. There is no point in being directed to one that isn’t.”

4. Uptime is good for business 

From November, CPOs will face fines of between £10,000 to £250,000 if CPOs don’t meet requirements set out in The Public Charge Point Regulations (2023). However, Elizabeth Warren, director of public charging at Mer UK, pointed out that reliability is critical for ROI, so networks are already under pressure to maximise uptime. Penalties and reporting costs could push up costs for end-users, she said.

“We absolutely want 99% uptime as a CPO,” Warren commented. “Being penalised when not everything is under our control, is very hard for us to manage. I would hope that [CPOs] are striving towards [99% uptime] with or without regulation, so I wouldn’t see a massive change [in reliability].”

5. The bigger picture 

Reliability is a talking point, but the hardware isn’t always the problem – as Chris Pateman-Jones, of Connected Kerb, explained. Feedback from his customer service teams suggest drivers are more likely to face blocked bays than faults with the EV charger itself. This requires both enforcement and measures to incentivise courteous usage. 

Some issues require wider consideration, as Osprey Charging’s Lewis Gardiner added. “One of the key things that’s out of our control at the moment is vandalism – cables being cut,” he said. “We would want to replace those cables as quickly as possible, and in many cases we could do it the next day, but would that get cut [again] the next day? It’s looking at what other things we need to do on that site [such as] adding CCTV and lighting.”

How is Konect maximising EV charger uptime?

Gilbarco Veeder-Root has worked with fuel retailers for 159 years, and recognises the importance of reliable infrastructure. 

Konect, its turnkey charging ecosystem for fleets and fuel retailers, includes industry-leading hardware that can fix up to 80% of faults in software, diagnose replacement parts where needed and instruct a field team to attend.

Find out how Konect could help you, or download our whitepaper on how to create an EV charging Ecosystem

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