We've talked a lot in this industry about getting technicians to broken chargers faster. And technician response absolutely matters.
But there's a problem. You can get a technician on site quickly and still have a charger sitting offline days later. That's because getting someone to the charger is only one part of getting it back into service.
EV charging infrastructure is supported by an ecosystem of hardware manufacturers, software providers, network operators, site hosts, utilities, service providers and other partners. When something goes wrong, several of those organizations may need to help resolve it.
The challenge comes when it's not clear who needs to do what next.
Maybe the technician identifies a hardware issue but needs manufacturer approval before replacing a component. This may be a software issue that needs to be escalated to another provider. A replacement part may need to be ordered. Or a purchase order or repair approval may be sitting on someone else's desk.
The charger is still down, but nobody is physically repairing it. This is why Mean Time to Repair, or MTTR, is such an important way to think about reliability. The clock doesn't stop while you're waiting for an email, an approval, a part or another organization to take the next step.
So reducing MTTR can't only be about repairing faster. We also have to make the process around the repair faster. And that work starts before something breaks.
Everyone involved in operating charging infrastructure should understand who owns each part of the recovery process. Service-level agreements should define more than response time. They should clarify what happens when an issue moves from one organization to another, when it needs to be escalated, and who is ultimately accountable for getting that charger back online.
This isn't just our perspective. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has emphasized the importance of clearly defining operations and maintenance responsibilities among the different contractors supporting a charging station. Without that clarity, organizations can lose valuable time simply determining who is responsible for the next step.
Data also needs to move with the issue.
If a technician diagnoses a problem and that information stays inside one company's system, the next organization may have to start the investigation all over again. Shared operational data can give everyone working on the issue a common understanding of what's already been learned, what's already been tried and what needs to happen next.
We've talked about this before at ChargerHelp. In our article on four steps to improve EV charging reliability, we discussed why service agreements, access to diagnostic data and clearly defined expectations matter long before a charger experiences a problem.
The goal isn't to lay blame when something goes wrong. It's the opposite. It's about creating a process where everyone knows their role, everyone has access to the information they need, and the next action is clear.
Because when a charger goes down, the driver doesn't care which company's ticketing system the issue is sitting in. They care whether the charger works.
Register for our September 17th event now to hear from our co-founder and CEO, Kameale Terry, on the forthcoming 2026 Reliability Report, offering industry leaders a view of a future where charging downtime is minimized and operational efficiency is maximized.
