| Wanted: Electricians to fix thousands of broken EV chargers |
Electric vehicle adoption suffers from a giant black eye: There are nowhere near enough certified technicians to fix all the broken chargers.
Nearly 4,000 public charging stations with more than 7,000 ports were out of service as of early October, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That's an outage rate of more than 6 percent.
The DOE estimate may be modest. Here Technologies, which pulls real-time data from connected chargers, says 4,673 chargers were out of order, but it expects many more "unconnected" charge points were inoperable.
Thousands of unusable chargers could hinder EV adoption as frustrated drivers complain about searching for working ports to keep their cars running. One in five charging attempts failed in the first half of the year, according to research firm J.D. Power.
"We need this transition to be seamless for consumers," said Betony Jones, director for the office of energy jobs at the DOE.
Private and public infrastructure investment will increase demand for technicians, both to install the chargers and to keep them operating. But there is a dearth of electricians to do those jobs. Electricians, training companies and installation providers all say the ambitious charger goals will make that labor shortage even more acute.
"If you came to me right now with a journeyman that's been in the EV charging industry for the last couple of years, he'd be hired on the spot," said Matt Trout, president of Trout Electric, which services and installs chargers and other electric equipment in Southern California.
— Hannah Lutz
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