Normally, there’s a lot of balance in people’s travel needs. While some routes certainly carry more traffic than others and holiday weekends can be busier, people tend to head one way and then head back. But, everyone has different destinations, so it’s rare for any one part of the charging meta-network to shoulder too many travelers at one time.
On the day of the eclipse, traffic was fairly light. People weren’t headed home yet, so charging networks weren’t congested. But, that evening and night, and the next day, things started to get congested again as people made the trek home from the line. The other providers put together are still building out even basic highway support, so it definitely makes sense for that to continue a little longer.While I’m not going to use this to take a dump on anybody’s EV charging efforts, there’s still a “needs improvement” takeaway here that’s both reasonable and something haters wouldn’t think to say.
One big thing we can probably take from this is that interstates and other major highways aren’t going to be served for much longer with stations that only have 4-8 stalls. But, the NEVI plan that’s supposed to guide the next five years of charging only calls for 4 stalls every 50 miles. It should be painfully obvious that it won’t take much additional demand for charging to completely swamp that.