Why Public Charging Still Fails — and Where It’s Improving (2025)

“Four apps, one bay, zero luck”

Friday night, rain on the forecourt, two bays lit up and three cars circling. Mara tries one app, then another. A pre‑authorisation holds €50 on her card, a second app demands a new login, the charger times out. Fifteen minutes in, she gives up. The bay works — the experience doesn’t.

What’s actually going wrong

Public charging fails for a handful of stubborn reasons that journalists and researchers keep documenting:

Payments & apps are fragmented. Many sites still require a vendor‑locked app or RFID, while a nearby competitor insists on its own app. Drivers juggle credentials and pre‑auths, and abandon sessions when anything misfires.
Authorisation & session handshakes. Even when the plug and cable are fine, authorisation can fail between the app and the operator, or a stuck session prevents a new start.
Tariff opacity. Price shown in an app doesn’t always match the on‑site rate; idle fees appear late or not at all.
Availability vs reality. Apps show green, but the car park is shut, bays are ICEd, or the site is down for maintenance.

“Our data shows clear improvement in the reliability and success of public charging — a promising sign of progress.” — J.D. Power, 2025 EVX Public Charging (press)

Surveyed users cite ‘station not working’ and payment issues among top reasons for failures. — NREL reliability review (2024)

The multi‑app maze — why vendor lock‑in drags everyone down

A year of coverage across broadsheets and consumer columns paints the same picture: cross‑country trips become a game of app whack‑a‑mole. One network’s app refuses a card; another demands an account before showing a tariff; a third uses an RFID that newcomers don’t carry. The result isn’t just frustration — it’s lower throughput on hardware that already exists. Every extra app, wallet, or pre‑auth is a drop‑off point that throttles utilisation.

Good news: the fix is not science fiction. It’s interoperability by default and price transparency visible before you tap Start.

What 2024–2025 actually fixed (and what it didn’t)

Fixed: From April 2024, new public sites in the EU must offer ad‑hoc access (card/contactless or secure web/QR) and — at high power — show a per‑kWh energy price before you start. That baseline cuts through paywall friction and makes comparisons possible.
Not fixed: AFIR doesn’t give you one invoice, roaming by default, or an app that compares on‑site ad‑hoc to your membership price. That’s still down to networks, apps and the protocols between them.

Where it’s improving — three real trends in 2025

1) Alliances & roaming grow up. A pan‑European alliance launched in April 2025 is knitting together 1,700 stations / 11,000 chargers in 25 countries under a “one‑account” approach. Under the hood, roaming relies on OCPI — a lingua franca between operator and app — via bilateral links or hubs.

2) Payment UX gets a blueprint. An industry‑lab consortium published payment guidelines for simpler flows: show full price up‑front, minimise pre‑authorisations, and keep a card fallback next to account starts.

3) Reliability metrics tick upward. Independent studies report fewer failed charging attempts year‑over‑year. The pain hasn’t vanished, but it’s moving in the right direction.

What drivers can do today (without more apps)

Use one account as default, not as a prison. Start sessions from your account for receipts and price history; keep card/QR as a clean fallback.
Compare before detours. If the ad‑hoc kWh price on site is lower than your membership rate tonight, use it — that’s why ad‑hoc exists.
Have a Plan B. If authorisation fails once, pick the next site; don’t fight a stuck session.

What operators and cities can do (tomorrow)

Roaming by default. If a site is public, it should be reachable by multiple apps via OCPI; don’t bury access behind a single brand.
Price clarity. Show per‑kWh energy price and idle fees up front — on the screen, on a totem, and in every app.
Fix the long tail. Maintain opening hours/access in data feeds; audit authorisation success; reconcile CDRs to kill “stuck sessions”.

Sources / Further reading