The DOE may get more replies than it bargained for to its recent Request for Information (DE-FOA-0002797, PDF) regarding “the prevalence of and solutions to electric vehicle no-charge events.”

As every frequent user of public charging knows, the uptime performance of public chargers can be abysmal—the doggone things seem to be out of order a good third of the time.

The DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) is interested in “no-charge events,” including “interoperability issues between EVs and [chargers] and other parts of the charging ecosystem.”

“The VTO is developing plans to implement the Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI) Research, Development, and Demonstration Program as directed by the Energy Act of 2020 and one of the barriers to VGI to be addressed is the issue of some EVs failing to charge satisfactorily when connected to electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE or chargers). These no-charge events either fail to start charging or fail to complete the charge without interruption.”

The purpose of the Request for Information is to solicit input from industry (EV manufacturers, EVSE manufacturers, charge network operators) and other stakeholders on “issues related to EVs failing to charge properly when connected to chargers.”

Alas, this is merely a Request for Information (RFI) and not a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), so there’s no money involved. However, it’s possible that the agency will issue an FOA based on the input received from this RFI.

If you just have a list of complaints about non-working chargers, we’d advise you to hold your peace, lest the VTO become overwhelmed with responses within hours. However, if you’ve got some information about why public chargers so often fail to charge, or better yet, suggestions about how to alleviate the problem, you could do a great public service by responding to the RFI, and you might just earn yourself some FOA.

Source: DOE via Green Car Congress