EV Charging Experience Barometer – Q4 2025: A Second Consecutive Decline Tests the Network's Resilience

Global Performance Q4 2025: The Rebound That Didn't Come

After Q3's summer slide, Q4 was expected to bring at least a partial recovery, in line with what happened in fall 2024. It didn't. On average across the quarter, 56.7% of reported charging sessions were completed without any issues, down 1.4 percentage points from Q3's already weak 58.1%. That puts Q4 2025 a full 3.5 points below Q4 2024's 60.2%.

The failure rate rose to 28.4%, up 1.4 points from Q3's 27.0%. October was particularly difficult: 30% of reported sessions failed across North America, the highest monthly failure rate observed since our barometer began tracking sessions in early 2023.

Q3 vs. Q4 2025 — United States and Canada

"Any single quarter can be noisy. What Q4 gives us is a second data point that helps distinguish real trends from statistical variation. Q1 2026 will be the third, and that's when we'll have a much stronger read on where things stand," says Simon Ouellette, CEO of ChargeHub.

Canada vs. United States: The Gap Widens in a New Direction

The narrow U.S. lead that emerged in Q3 (0.3 points) turned into a clear 4-point gap in Q4. The U.S. posted 58.7% success, Canada 54.7%. This is the largest U.S. advantage over Canada recorded across three years of quarterly analysis. The U.S. had only briefly led Canada twice before: in Q1 2023 (+2.4 points) and Q1 2024 (+1.4 points), both during harsh winter periods.

Canada's October result of 53% stands as its worst monthly figure since data collection began. The failure rate in October reached 32%.

Technical Reliability: October Disruptions Stand Out

Sessions that started but went sideways mid-charge spiked to 6% in October across North America, the highest reading recorded for this category in the barometer's history. November brought it back down to 4%, and December settled at 4%. October stands as an unexplained outlier in the Q4 data, since November and December, both colder and busier, saw the rate normalize.

Q1 2026 Outlook: Can the Network Find Its Footing?

Q1 2024 averaged 58.0% success across North America. That's a reasonable benchmark for what a recovery could look like. But Q1 also brings the full weight of winter, which historically pushes both failure rates and mid-session disruptions higher, as the January 2025 data already showed (61% success, but with a 4% rate of difficult/interrupted sessions).

"Coming off two difficult quarters, Q1 2026 will tell us whether what we're seeing is a cyclical dip or a structural erosion. The infrastructure has shown it can perform when conditions are favorable. The real test is whether operators have done the maintenance and monitoring work necessary to perform when conditions aren't," adds Simon Ouellette, CEO of ChargeHub.

The full analysis follows, with methodology, country-level breakdowns, and a direct Canada–U.S. comparison.

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1. Methodology
2. Combined North American Performance
3. Detailed U.S. Results
4. Detailed Canada Results
5. Canada–U.S. Direct Comparison
6. Q1 2026 Outlook
7. B2B ChargeHub Solutions

The sections below walk through the full Q4 2025 dataset. The methodology remains consistent with our previous editions, allowing clean quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year comparisons.

This analysis is based on ChargeHub's proprietary data collected between October and December 2025, covering the full North American public charging network.

Coverage: All 50 U.S. states and all Canadian provinces and territories, across all charger types (DC Fast Charging and Level 2), for operators visible in the ChargeHub app.

Four experience categories:

1. Charged successfully without any issue: A seamless session, start to finish
2. Charged successfully, but at reduced power or with limited port availability: Completed despite constraints
3. Charging initiated but difficult or interrupted: Started, then went sideways
4. Charging failure: Didn't work at all

The quarter averaged 56.7% of sessions trouble-free, down 1.4 points from Q3 2025's 58.1%. That's the weakest quarterly performance recorded across three years of barometer data, below even Q1 2023's 57.0%.

How Q4 Compares to What Came Before

Q4 2024 averaged 60.2% success, 3.5 points above where the network stands today. That year-over-year regression, following a similar gap in Q3 (61.9% in 2024 vs. 58.1% in 2025), suggests the network is not holding its own against higher demand, or that the maintenance investments of 2023–2024 haven't kept pace with network expansion, or that something has shifted in the distribution of the pool of reporting EV drivers, or a combination of the above.

Analysis of the four measured categories:

• Trouble-free sessions: Second straight quarterly decline, now back to Q3 2023 territory
• Outright failures: Up from Q3, with October posting the highest monthly rate since we began tracking
• Mid-session disruptions: Stable quarter-over-quarter overall, but October's 6% is the highest continental reading recorded for this category
• Reduced power or limited availability: Essentially flat vs. Q3, with December's 12% elevated by early winter demand patterns

November stood apart. At 60%, it was the only month in Q4 to approach Q3's quarterly average, suggesting the network can still perform but isn't consistently doing so.

The U.S. averaged 58.7% success across Q4, a marginal 0.4-point improvement over Q3's 58.3%. It's a modest result, but in the context of two difficult quarters, it signals that the American market is at least holding its ground.

What Defined the American Drop

Three elements stand out in the U.S. Q4 data.

1. October's disruption spike. The rate of sessions that started but became difficult or were cut short hit 6% in October, the highest single-month figure recorded for the U.S. since data collection began in January 2023. November and December both settled back to more typical levels (4% and 3%), which limits the concern but doesn't erase it.
2. November and December's recovery. At 61% and 60% respectively, the final two months of the quarter show the network is capable of performing above the Q3 floor. The U.S. result in November was the strongest single-month figure for either country in Q4.
3. Failures remain stubbornly high. The quarterly average of 27.9% sits within the historical monthly range (22%–32%), but represents no meaningful improvement. Nearly three in ten attempts still fail.

Year-over-year: Q4 2024 posted 59.3% success for the U.S. The 0.6-point decline is narrower than the gap seen in Q3, which could indicate the worst of the regression is behind the American market.

Canada's quarterly average of 54.7% is the weakest result recorded for the Canadian market since Q1 2023 (55.5%). The 3.3-point decline from Q3's 58% extends the summer's slide into a full-blown second consecutive drop.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Canada's Q4 data tells a story of two outliers at each end of the quarter, with November as the only stable month between them.

• October 2025: Canada's most difficult month on record. At 53% success and a 32% failure rate, October is Canada's worst monthly result since data collection began in January 2023. That failure rate, nearly one in three sessions, sits well above Canada's historical average of 22.6% over the 24 months from January 2023 to December 2024.
• December and the reduced-power increase. December's reduced power or limited port availability rate climbed to 14%, up 2 points from November. This category measures sessions that were technically completed but with degraded performance. The Q4 figures (10%, 12%, 14% from October to December) show a steady month-over-month climb in this category on the Canadian side.
• November as the exception. Canada's 58% in November nearly matched its Q3 average, demonstrating that the network can recover. But the October and December results suggest that recovery isn't holding.
• Year-over-year perspective. Q4 2024 saw Canada post 61.4% success and 23.3% failures. The Q4 2025 figures (54.7% success, 28.9% failures) represent a significant step back: -6.7 points on success, +5.6 points on failures.

The Q3 Lead Widens Sharply in Q4

Q3 2025 had already shown the U.S. edging slightly ahead of Canada (58.3% vs. 58%), the first time that dynamic appeared since Q1 2024. What was a 0.3-point gap in Q3 became a decisive 4-point gap in Q4, with the U.S. at 58.7% and Canada at 54.7%.

This isn't a marginal shift. Canada held a consistent advantage through most of 2023 and 2024, with the gap reaching 4.1 points in Q3 2024 (64.2% Canada vs. 60.1% U.S.). What changed in Q4 is not that the U.S. dramatically improved: at 58.7%, its result is solid but not exceptional. Canada simply declined more sharply, pulled down by October and December.

Q1 will test two things at once: whether the Q4 Canadian decline was temporary, and whether the U.S. can maintain its relative stability through full winter conditions.

Historical Q1 benchmarks vary widely. Q1 2024 averaged 58.0% success across North America; Q1 2025 came in noticeably higher at 61.6%. The 3.6-point spread between two consecutive winter quarters shows how much conditions can vary from one January to the next. And within Q1 2025 itself, January showed clear winter pressure, with a 4% rate of difficult/interrupted sessions and a 25% failure rate across the continent.

Key metrics to monitor:

• Canada: Does October represent a floor, or does early 2026 bring a further slide?
• United States: Can failure rates drop back toward the 24–25% range seen in spring 2025?
• Continental: Will mid-session disruptions stabilize at Q4's 4.4%, or trend back toward the 3% level achieved in Q2?

ChargeHub connects EV drivers, charging network operators, and industry partners across North America. Learn more about our solutions for industry professionals.

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