This report assesses the user-friendliness of the existing public charging infrastructure networks for electric passenger cars in Canada, Europe, and the United States, focusing on three key factors: availability, reliability, and interoperability.
The analysis finds that there are significant geographic disparities in public charging infrastructure deployment in Europe, the United States, and Canada. These disparities are sometimes, but not always, correlated with income, unemployment rate, and share of people of color in the overall population. Governments have adopted various policies to target disparities in public charging deployment, including targeted funding to undersupplied areas.
To address issues concerning charger reliability, some governments are implementing uptime and successful charge rate requirements for public charging, which are enforced through reporting requirements, penalties, and data transparency measures. Tax incentives are also provided in some jurisdictions for meeting uptime requirements.
Governments have taken different approaches to address connector and software interoperability issues. The European Union has achieved significant harmonization of connector types, with over 95% of alternating current (AC) chargers supporting Type 2 connectors and over 80% of direct current (DC) chargers supporting CCS2 connectors. The U.S. and Canadian markets are more fragmented, but the J3400 connector standard, formerly used solely by Tesla, is expected to be widely adopted. In Europe, the United States, and Canada, software interoperability levels vary across communication interfaces within the public charging ecosystem. Recent EU and U.S. regulations have addressed constraints regarding payment options, such as eliminating membership requirements to use chargers.
