If you see something, say something.
That’s one of the messages that EV charging network provider ChargePoint is hoping to get across to EV drivers with the introduction of a new AI-powered tool that allows users to more seamlessly report issues with charging stations.
Rob Newton, ChargePoint’s senior director of product marketing, told Tech Brew that the new feature is just one way the company is trying to improve one of the charging sector’s most nagging issues: reliability.
“There’s a lot of things we can’t see,” he said. “We could make [charging stations] prohibitively expensive and put a trillion sensors in them and sense everything, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. So, we do rely on users to help us with that. In doing so, we thought, ‘Why don’t we make this an even stronger offering?’”
That offering is a feature within ChargePoint’s app that uses an image recognition model to diagnose problems. The idea is that this process will encourage users to report issues more frequently, cut down on on-site visits, and speed up the resolution. Ultimately, the goal is to boost uptime, or the percentage of time a station is functional.
Be reliable: Reliability is a key priority for the charging sector, especially against the backdrop of an ongoing EV retreat by some automakers.
A massive study by EV equipment company ChargerHelp found that actual charger uptime is often lower than reported. And although there were signs of progress, a recent JD Power study on the public EV charging experience found that 19% of respondents reported being unable to charge because of issues with charging stations.
Back in January, following a cold snap that led to charging chaos in Chicago, ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer told us that network reliability was crucial because mainstream consumers are less willing to tolerate snafu-ridden charging experiences than early adopters of EVs. And there’s evidence that consumers are holding back from going electric because of charging-related concerns.
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Get by with a little help from AI: During ChargePoint’s Q2 earnings call, Wilmer highlighted the new AI tool, saying the approach “reduces downtime and ensures our stations are reliable, solving one of the biggest challenges in our industry.”
Here’s how it works, according to ChargePoint: When a driver rolls up to a charging station to find that it’s not working, they can submit photos using the “report a problem” feature in the company’s app.
“This app links the issue to the driver’s location and analyzes the images for anomalies, discovered thanks to a multitude of inputs utilized to train the technology for the EV charging domain,” according to an August 29 press release.
The diagnosis is sent to ChargePoint’s Network Operations Center. Drivers can follow the repair status in the app, and the report prompts an alert to the owner of the charging station.
“Because we’ve fed this AI model with thousands and thousands of images, it’s able to pretty quickly diagnose what’s going on, and it helps the station owner make a repair more quickly,” Newton said. “This is one of many initiatives that we’ve launched in recent weeks and months to try to think about how to drive high reliability at stations out in the wild.”
Ultimately, he said, this effort is geared toward increasing the number of charging ports that are available to drivers. And already, according to Newton, ChargePoint’s operations team is seeing an improvement in resolution times since rolling out the tool.
“If we’re able to encourage more people to do it,” Newton said, “I think we’re going to see incredible results from this.”