Pump to Plug – Part III: A 97% Uptime Goal Isn’t a Hardware Challenge

Brad Juhasz

December 13, 2025

For many observers, the reliability challenge in EV charging still sounds like a familiar refrain: “If the chargers were just better, we’d hit 97% uptime.”

The underlying assumption is that higher quality hardware, more rugged enclosures, better power modules, improved connectors and smarter firmware would solve the nascent problem.

All of that matters—but none of it is sufficient. The hard truth is this: Uptime isn’t built into hardware. It’s built into systems—hardware + software + humans, amplified by AI—operating at scale. And until the EV charging industry fully absorbs that reality, no amount of capital, kilowatts, or code will consistently deliver the level of reliability drivers now expect—and federal policy increasingly demands.

On paper, 97% uptime sounds forgiving. In practice, it’s not.

A 97% uptime target allows only about 260 hours of downtime per year per charger. That’s 10–11 total days of permissible outage—spread across random failures, weather, grid interruptions, vandalism, payment faults, thermal derates, and software crashes.

More importantly, uptime isn’t measured by intentions. It’s measured by response speed: