In a nondescript office park in San Jose, California, ChargePoint Holdings Inc. runs a torture lab of sorts. It’s here that the operator of the U.S.’s largest network of electric vehicle chargers subjects its products to extreme temperatures and rain, and puts them through simulated dust storms and earthquakes. Pulley systems tug on charging cords over and over, mimicking years of use, and a different device slams a steel ball against chargers to see if they’ll crack. Every year, the lab tests about 3,300 chargers, which then can’t be deployed in the wild.
“You take this thing that’s expensive, and you basically burn it up,” said Pasquale Romano, ChargePoint’s chief executive officer, as a row of machines nearby simulated plugging and unplugging the chargers’ connectors.
ChargePoint’s process is geared at fixing one of the EV transition’s most pressing problems: public charging stations that often don’t work. Parts break, information screens freeze, payment systems malfunction. Copper thieves steal the cords. Vandals damage charging plugs or, in one infamous instance, stuff them with ground meat. In the U.S., nascent networks mean that if the machines at one station aren’t working, there may not be another nearby.
