There is a good movie called “The Station Agent” starring Peter Dinklage. It is about a man that inherits a property with an old train station depot building on it. Peter’s character moves into the old building in an attempt to live a life of solitude. The movie is a dramatic comedy about life, friendship, and figuring out how to do what you love.

For some reason, I think about this movie every time I find myself at an electric vehicle charger that doesn’t work. It has happened a few times now, where I am more or less stuck talking to the customer service line of one of the charging networks or scrambling to search for another nearby charger on my phone. I think it reminds me of “The Station Agent”, because the story is based around an abandoned train station.

It is interesting to think about abandoned infrastructure. The train station depot was built for a reason. It was used by many humans at some point in time, but eventually it became obsolete. And now it just sits there and degrades without any human intervention.

Electric vehicle charging “stations” are interesting pieces of infrastructure. Train stations, when they are in use, have a regular schedule of people using the station. And there are people that operate the train station, selling tickets, keeping the station clean, and interacting with train operators when necessary.

Electric vehicle charging “stations”, on the other hand, have very low and irregular utilization. And there is no one on site assigned to operate and maintain the electric vehicle charging “station”. This is problematic from a human perspective.

When there are problems at a train station, there are people on site to address the issues. When there are problems at an electric vehicle charging “station”, there is often no immediate fix. It can take days to fix a broken electric vehicle charger, which can make an electric vehicle charging “station” unusable for that amount of time.

Electric vehicle charging networks need to transform into fueling station chains that include a well-designed integrated user experience that includes convenience stores and maintenance staff on site. Remember design is the first signal of human intention. What does the design of electric vehicle charging “stations” currently say to the users?

The electric vehicle charging industry is so disjointed right now. There are the charging networks, the utilities, the property owners, the businesses operating on the property, the electric vehicle charging apps, the car companies, and of course the government organizations, all with their hands in the process and all shrugging off responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

Tesla has the best charging experience, because they’ve taken as much ownership as they possibly can. They are the car company, the integrated app, the charging station, and they are taking on more and more of the charging experience including maybe some day owning the properties and producing the energy on site in many locations with solar.

Right now, America’s electric vehicle charging stations ignore user experience, and they have taken all of the humanity out of their charging stations. The electric vehicle charging stations in the United States could just as easily exist on Mars.

Sometimes the easy thing to do isn’t the right thing to do.

Electric vehicle charging stations should have educated and well-trained humans operating and maintaining them on site. This is obviously more expensive than a group of stand alone chargers that are mostly ignored by their human owners.

We’re not Martians. There are lots of people here on planet Earth that would be great station agents. We should be able to talk to a human in person while charging our electric vehicle, and talk to a trained professional in person when things go wrong.