When a gas pump fails, a service truck is dispatched within hours. When a DC fast charger fails, it can sit dark for months.
This single contrast captures a core truth: the fueling industry mastered reliability through lifecycle discipline — warranties, service contracts, inspections, and preventative maintenance. EV charging, by comparison, is still in its adolescence.
The Lifecycle Mindset
Traditional fueling systems have always been treated as infrastructure, not gadgets. Each dispenser’s lifespan, calibration record, and service history are tracked and audited. Manufacturers such as Gilbarco Veeder-Root, Wayne Fueling Systems, and Bennett Pump rely on authorized regional service partners who maintain those assets through multi-year contracts.
By contrast, many DC fast-charging deployments were executed as capital projects — install and move on — with little provision for long-term O&M once the warranty clock runs out. This oversight is now surfacing as stations age out of warranty and into unpredictable downtime.
Warranties and Service Models
Fuel dispensers typically ship with 1- to 3-year warranties, and operators almost always extend coverage via service agreements. EV chargers have similar manufacturer warranties — usually 2–3 years — but far fewer hosts purchase extended protection or formal maintenance contracts.
This gap has left a growing portion of the U.S. fast-charging fleet in a risky gray zone. If roughly 60,000 DC fast-charging ports exist nationally and even one-third were installed more than three years ago, some 20,000 units may already be operating out of warranty.
What Fuel Retail Spends to Stay Reliable
In the petroleum-fueling world, lifecycle management isn’t optional — it’s a fixed line item in every P&L. Industry fee schedules and vendor contracts show operators spend about $2,500 – $5,500 per dispenser per year on operations, maintenance, and certification.
That range covers:
• Preventive-maintenance contracts: $1.5k–$3k per dispenser annually for quarterly inspections, filter changes, and 24/7 on-call support.
• Calibration & regulatory certification: ≈ $200–$300 for required Weights & Measures visits plus $500–$1,500 for meter calibration.
• Environmental & compliance testing: ≈ $150–$500 per dispenser allocated from underground-tank and forecourt-compliance work.
Therefore, the average U.S. gas dispenser represents $3,000 ± per year in OpEx just to keep it certified, calibrated, and operational — before any major repairs.
Compared to the EV-charging world, most DC fast-charging sites budget little or nothing for post-warranty service, even though each charger contains high-power electronics, thermal systems, networking gear, and payment terminals. If fuel retailers treat $3,000 per dispenser per year as the cost of reliability, what’s the equivalent for a 350-kW charger tied to the grid?
Regulation and Accountability
Fuel retailers operate under strict oversight: environmental testing, metering accuracy, PCI payment compliance, and brand-mandated uptime. EV charging has only recently begun adopting similar obligations — the NEVI 97% uptime rule is an early step toward that maturity. Once uptime metrics become enforceable, O&M budgets will need to look much more like the fueling world’s.
Lessons for DC Fast-Charging Operators
- Adopt lifecycle thinking: treat chargers as assets requiring predictable O&M budgets.
- Build regional service capacity: emulate “authorized petroleum equipment technicians.”
- Contract for uptime: bundle preventive maintenance, spares, and response-time SLAs.
- Design for maintainability: modular components and remote diagnostics.
- Report transparently: publish uptime dashboards the way fuel retailers publish pump accuracy results.
The Next Frontier
If the petroleum industry sustains 99.9% uptime across 150,000 stations, there’s no reason a modern charging network should accept 80%. The next frontier in EV charging isn’t faster kilowatts — it’s longer life and lower downtime. Reliability isn’t just good customer experience; it’s the business model.
Learn more about Reliability as a Service here.
