Reliability of charging stations: These increasingly concerning figures

The availability rates of charging stations in September were extremely poor. This was compounded by a significant slowdown in new installations.

This summer, France reached the symbolic milestone of 200,000 charging points available to the public. As of July 31, there were 200,045 such points. According to the latest report published by Avere, as of September 30, the number had risen to 202,804. That’s only an increase of 2,759 points in two months, which is not much.

While France is among the best-equipped countries in Europe, it should be noted that it has set a goal of having 400,000 public charging points by 2030. This would require at least 20,000 new stations per semester if we count up to 2030. Yet from January to September, only 17,301 new points were added.

We need to regain momentum, especially as the number of electric cars on our roads is soaring. With rising fuel prices, these models are achieving market shares that we didn’t expect to see so quickly. In September, they reached 40%! This is evident from the usage of charging points—on average, one charging point saw 32.7 charging sessions that month, up from 25.2 a year earlier.

The new plague of cable thefts

But more than the pace of installations, it’s the reliability of the network that continues to raise concerns. The availability rates in September were poor: 89.9% for AC, 85.2% for DC up to 150 kW, and 88.3% for higher-powered systems. By September 2025, these figures had risen to 92.0%, 92.2%, and 95.7% respectively.

In addition, the proportion of charging stations that have been unavailable for more than 7 consecutive days (not due to maintenance or failure) remains high at 9%. It is also noted that the share of stations available 99% of the time continues to decline, standing at only 63% last month compared to 69% a year ago.

In this regard, operators are unfortunately affected by an increase in thefts of cables connected to charging stations, as these are brutally cut to retrieve the copper inside.

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