Public electric vehicle charging stations in America have a bad reputation. They’re notorious for breaking down, charging at a snail’s pace, refusing customer payment and leaving drivers stranded without juice.

Advocates for electric vehicles, or EVs, worry that reliability concerns are hampering adoption at a critical moment in the campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but data on the topic is limited.

To address this problem, researchers at the University of Washington designed a survey to tease out exactly how much a car owner’s perception of public charging reliability influences their willingness to buy their first EV. The research was published in Transport Policy.

The team created a series of hypothetical scenarios to study the factors that might nudge a skeptical shopper towards an EV over a gasoline-powered car, including vehicle and gas prices, driving range and public charging access.

The results were dramatic. Participants with a negative view of public charging were much less likely to choose an EV than those with a moderate view. It took some serious hypothetical improvements to offset those negative perceptions: The EV needed to be discounted 30%, have 366 extra miles of range or there needed to be 30,000 additional public charging stations.

“No one knew how much charger reliability was coloring the decisions of prospective EV buyers,” said senior author Don MacKenzie, a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

“I was not at all surprised by the direction of the response. What surprised me was the size. These were monster results. This is a warning for the whole industry.”

The results come at a tenuous time for EV adoption in America. The market continues to grow, but political factors like the end of federal tax incentives are complicating sales outlooks. The federal government is also challenging California’s plan to phase out gas car sales, which could threaten similar efforts in Washington and several other states.

The state of public charging isn’t inspiring confidence in buyers, either. Studies in recent years have shown significant reliability issues with public networks. There are signs that the situation is improving, and home charging is an option for some drivers, but the threat of slow and flaky public chargers remains a powerful deterrent for anyone venturing outside their “home range.”

“We know there’s a lot of range anxiety out there,” said lead author Rubina Singh, a UW doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering. “EV owners often tolerate charging problems, while newcomers are less aware of the hurdles. If trust erodes, adoption could slow.”

The team found it tricky to measure the link between station reliability and buyer behavior because there weren’t obvious real-world groups to compare. Tesla’s stations get consistently higher marks than other networks, but Tesla cars and their owners are too different in other ways to make for a useful comparison. Simply asking people for their thoughts about charging may produce answers that are colored by their overall feelings about EVs.

Instead, the researchers turned to hypothetical scenarios. They recruited roughly 1,500 participants who had never owned an EV and surveyed them in three groups, asking the first to picture a world where public charging is a mess, the second to imagine a charging utopia and the third to simply give their preexisting opinions about charging.

Each group then went “shopping.” Each round of the survey, participants chose between an EV and a comparable gas-powered car. The researchers tweaked variables such as vehicle cost, gas prices and range, and trends emerged over several rounds.

Participants with a negative view of public charging demanded strikingly large concessions before choosing an EV. In some cases, the adjustment needed was nonsensically large.

“People wanted a 366-mile increase in range before they bought an EV,” MacKenzie said. “Lots of EVs don’t even have a 366-mile range today. That’s obviously not a practical demand. But it illustrates the strength of this effect.”

There were other surprises in the data, too.

“The results were basically the same for people who have access to home charging and people who don’t,” Singh said. “So even if they wouldn’t actually have to rely on the charging network, respondents were still concerned about reliability.”

As the auto industry works to bring EVs into the mainstream, these findings are both a warning and an invitation for further study. Little is known, Singh said, about what specific improvements would have the greatest impact on public charging perception. Asking the right questions could help stakeholders throughout the industry figure out where to invest.

“What are the specific factors that would convince skeptics?” she said. “Does a station need to be online 90% of the time to improve a user’s perception? Or 95%? Or 99%? Or would improving the point of sale system help more? Where do you put your dollars to have the greatest effect on public perception?”

What’s clear, MacKenzie said, is that reliability must be prioritized as charging networks expand.

“This is the Achilles’ heel right now for EVs,” he said.

“If we push the broader market towards EVs, or if it grows on its own before we can fix this problem, it’s really bad news for continued growth. I think it could engender a real backlash. It only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. That’s a big danger for EV adoption.”

Microsoft’s plan to halt updates for its Windows 10 operating system in mid-October has raised hackles among campaign groups and left some users worried they must buy new computers to be safe from cyberattacks.

Here is what you need to know about the planned end of support for the software.

What happens on October 14?

Computers running Microsoft’s 2015-vintage Windows 10 will receive no further updates from the American tech giant from October 14.

Such downloads were used to “regularly patch (update) the operating system because it had become the target of many cyberattacks,” said Martin Kraemer, a computer security expert with American firm KnowBe4.

What does this mean for users?

Microsoft has urged its customers to upgrade to the latest version of its operating system: Windows 11, released in 2021.

But the company is also offering a $30 one-year extension of Windows 10 security updates for users whose computer hardware is not compatible with the new operating system.

Consumer groups have blasted the move.

“The lack of backwards compatibility for certain Windows 10 machines sold only a couple of years ago is a blow to consumers’ pocketbooks” as they face being forced to upgrade, US campaign organization Consumer Reports said in a blog post last week.

In Europe, French groups such as End Planned Obsolescence (HOP) have started a petition demanding free updates extending to 2030.

And Germany’s Verbraucherzentrale federation of consumer groups said in May that the move “worries consumers and leaves them unable to make free purchase decisions.”

“Such a large volume of new (computer) purchases are also bad for the environment,” including by creating large amounts of hard-to-recycle electronic waste, they added.

How many users are affected?

Microsoft declined to answer AFP’s request for data on how many Windows users are unable to upgrade.

But Consumer Reports tallied 650 million people worldwide still using Windows 10 in August.

Another American outfit, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) estimates that up to 400 million computers are incompatible with Windows 11.

What are the dangers ?

Users unable to make the switch and who do not pay for security updates face a heightened threat of cyberattacks.

“By receiving no updates, you’re no longer protecting yourself against the most recent cybersecurity risks,” Kraemer said.

Although the increase in exposure is “very difficult” to quantify for individual users, as a group they would become priority targets for attackers sniffing for security holes.

As time goes on, Windows 10 users may also find themselves unable to install the latest third-party software, said Paddy Harrington of American consulting firm Forrester.

“Application vendors rely on the operating system vendor to provide certain features and functions,” Harrington pointed out.

“If these are not updated, the app vendor can’t be assured that their application will continue to function properly.”

What alternatives do users have?

Even the most recent antivirus software may not be enough to protect an operating system no longer receiving updates.

“There’s a limit to how much protection they can offer… it’s much better than doing nothing, but should be a temporary patch while you find a permanent solution,” Harrington said.

Users determined to stick with their existing hardware could switch instead to a different operating system, such as the open-source alternative Linux—already the choice for many devices like internet servers and the basis for Google’s Android smartphone operating system.

“As long as your applications support that OS and your management and security tools will support it, it’s a good choice,” Harrington said.

© 2025 AFP

With the pace of development of 6G communications technologies ramping up, especially in Europe and Asia, one of the leading communications providers in the US, Verizon, has announced it is setting up a 6G Innovation Forum, with the aim of driving the collaborative evolution of connectivity and delivering transformative experiences for consumers and enterprises.

Even though with every generation leap, mobile networks have transmitted more data, faster, with added network capacity and lower latencies, opening up new vistas in applications and service, 6G networks have, since development inception, been seen as no mere “logical” progression. 6G networks are fundamentally designed to revolutionise how consumers, networks and devices communicate with and among each other, and are being developed to form the basis of 2030 societies and businesses, with the new and integrated features potentially advancing digitisation.

In particular, 6G is set to change how networks perform tasks such as joint communication, sensing and positioning. It promises to build critical bridges between physical and virtual spaces to enable new use cases while optimising industry operations.

In setting up its 6G Innovation Forum, Verizon says it has brought together a group of companies driving innovation and enabling the 6G era, shaping the future of wireless technology.

The initiative includes companies across the technology ecosystem, including leading network suppliers Ericsson, Samsung Electronics and Nokia; and device and chipset firms Meta and Qualcomm Technologies. Verizon says all of these firms are in the early stages of development to define 6G together by identifying potential new use cases, devices and network technology. The forum aims to establish an open, diversified and resilient 6G ecosystem and develop foundational 6G technologies while ensuring global alignment.

The forum emphasised that it intended to “move beyond theoretical discussions” and progress “rapidly” towards tangible 6G advancements and the realisation of potential new and innovative use cases.

Key areas of focus will include: unlocking the full potential of 6G by testing new spectrum bands and bandwidths; fostering a globally harmonised 6G landscape by actively working with global standards bodies like 3GPP to ensure that the forum’s work aligns with mainstream 6G development and promotes interoperability across the industry; and allowing forum partners to test and refine 6G technologies in a real-world environment by establishing dedicated Verizon 6G Labs, starting in Los Angeles, to serve as hubs for collaborative research, prototyping, and early lab and field trials.

Verizon said its networks form the backbone of the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) economy, adding that for over a decade, the firm has integrated AI into its operations to optimise network performance and infrastructure, a commitment that it said would continue with the evolution of 6G.

To that end, Verizon said the forum and labs represent significant strides towards a world where connectivity is even more seamless, more intelligent and continues to empower entirely new possibilities.

“Verizon is consistently at the forefront of network innovation,” said Joe Russo, Verizon executive vice-president and president of global networks and technology. “We were the first in the world to turn up 5G and continue to enhance our best, most reliable and fastest 5G network in ways that open the door to possibilities far beyond what we can imagine today.

“5G Advanced lays the foundation for the 6G future – whether that’s new wearables, AI experiences, or entirely new use cases we haven’t even thought of yet, and that’s what excites me the most. With the best team in the industry, we will build the future of these solutions with our partners. We’re already building a network designed for the next era – one that will transform how we live, work and play.”

Charlie Zhang, senior vice-president of Samsung Research America, added: “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Verizon to revolutionise the future of wireless communication with 6G and AI technologies, building on the large-scale vRAN capabilities developed together to unlock innovative user experiences in the 6G era.”