Pasadena has prided itself in having EV charging in Pasadena.  And we will focus on DC Fast chargers.

For a long time, there’s been a decline in the Pasadena PWP’s ability to not only manage but maintain the city EV charging infrastructure.

In particular we see that with DC Fast charging which is what the majority of people who charge their vehicles want.  Having over 200 L2 chargers is a waste of city resources.  They could get rid of 75% of these chargers and very few people would notice or care.  The focus needs to be on DC Fast charging and having a bunch of 50kW chargers that are older than five years is contributing to the problem.  The city blames contractors and manufacturers for the state of the chargers, but there are other EV networks using the exact same chargers with remarkable reliability.

For instance EVCS a local company based in Arcadia has more EV chargers than PWP and from personal experience the reliability of these chargers is almost 100%.  The biggest problem with EVCS is access to the chargers, for instance with EVCS the DC Fast chargers at LA Fitness which they have a partnership with, most of the time at the Pasadena location there are cars blocking access to the chargers.  Vehicles are parked in the spots not charging, may times not even an EV.  There is a CVC 22511 that if posted would allow for the citing and towing of vehicles in violation.

The city needs to strongly consider engaging with providers who know how to manage this space.

Mistakes have been made, to double down with spending even more money to haphazardly try to “fix” what is broken doesn’t seem to be working.

The disarray of EV chargers at Glenarm/Arroyo has been disastrous, to have basically one out of eight working.  And the that works has a electrical tape patched connector and is a handicap parking spot.  The Powerflex app shows two chargers working, only one works as of the past few days.