Almost every EV post ends up with a discussion about broken chargers but I wonder why are they broken so often? How much maintenance do they need? I had use of a friend's Leaf for a couple of months and was disappointed in how frequently I came across broken chargers. Luckily there was usually at least one in the bank of chargers that still worked and my travel habits only required 30-40 minutes of charging to extend the range enough for me to get home but it still gave me anxiety that one day every charger would be out of service and I'd be looking for an extension cord and someone who'd let me use a 110v outlet.

The Department of Energy gave a resort town in my state a grant to add a bunch of charging stations. The thought was that people from the city would be more willing to use their EV to travel to the resort town if there were plenty of chargers. But after a year almost all of them were broken. On review sites, there were also complaints about ICE vehicles sitting in the EV charging spots all day and no one would do anything about it. Even the chargers outside City Hall were broken. Most (all?) EVs won't allow you to drive off while they're plugged into a charger, so I doubt it's vehicle collisions, at least not EVs, causing the charging stations to need frequent maintenance.