Are You Thinking Big Enough?
- Jennifer Buchanan
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Raising the Bar on Reliability
Every industry that has lasted, has solved for reliability.
Commercial aviation operates at 99.999% dependability
Financial networks like Visa process billions of transactions with near-perfect uptime
Telecommunications networks keep billions connected every second of the day
Utilities deliver uninterrupted power and water to millions, built on decades of operational discipline
And global data centers deliver always-on performance across continents
Even the phone in your hand connects instantly - every call, every map, every payment.
Reliability isn’t luck. It’s engineered.
And it’s time for EV charging networks to catch up - with a new focus on operational reliability and intelligent AI for uptime.
The State of Charging Reliability
According to the IEA Global EV Outlook 2025*, more than 1.3 million new public chargers were added worldwide in 2024 - a year-over-year increase of over 30%. Yet despite this rapid expansion, driver experience and charger reliability remain inconsistent across most markets.
The report notes that while many networks report high uptime, field data still shows failure rates between 20–25%, driven by connectivity issues, hardware faults, and payment errors. As public infrastructure scales, the IEA identifies consistent reliability and interoperability as critical challenges that must be solved to sustain EV adoption globally.
It’s clear that a scalable EV reliability strategy requires more than more chargers - it demands smarter systems that integrate data, automate maintenance, and learn over time.
The Gap Between Reported and Real
Many networks still celebrate “99% uptime,” but that metric no longer means what it used to.
A charger can appear online in a Charge Point Management System (CPMS) and still fail the driver - blocked by a faulty connector, frozen payment screen, or communication drop that never shows up in the data.
That’s not reliability. That’s optics.
Drivers don’t care whether a charger pings “online”. They care whether it actually delivers energy.
That’s charge success - and it’s the only metric that matters.
The Future of Reliability
The next generation of CPOs won’t be judged by uptime. They’ll be judged by how reliably their chargers perform, how efficiently their teams operate, and how consistently drivers trust their brand.
Clockwork is helping operators lead that shift - from reactive maintenance to maintenance automation, from reported uptime to real-world reliability.
Because in every high-performing industry, operational reliability isn’t a goal. It’s the standard.
The Reliability Benchmark Is Changing
The leaders in this industry aren’t chasing uptime anymore. They’re designing for performance.
They know that reliability doesn’t come from more dashboards - it comes from smarter ones. The kind that connects data from the charger, the CPMS, the communications gear, the electrical equipment and the field into a single, actionable view.
Clockwork was built as the reliability layer for EV charging - empowering operators with AI for uptime, predictive analytics, and automated maintenance workflows that keep networks performing at their best.
It’s how the most forward-thinking CPOs are building their EV reliability strategy - by integrating the intelligence, automation, and insight needed to deliver consistency at scale.
Because those industries already proved what’s possible through discipline, data, and design.
If you’re still measuring uptime, you’re not thinking big enough.
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