Yeah, usually during holidays. Not often though, and less as time goes on and more charging stations come online.

Also Tesla will reroute you to a different charger if one of them is or will be full.

Only at what I later learned was the nearest charging station to the airport and got a ton of use from folks returning cars.

Here in Estonia, you sometimes wait for a ChaDemo cable to become available.

The operators of charger networks forbid hitting the red button (emergency disconnect) under any conditions unless it’s an emergency.

There’s a silent agreement among drivers that lack of charging opportunities is an emergency. :D If the other guy is not present and their battery has reached 80% or more (charging has slowed to a trickle and they have enough range to drive), it’s considered OK to hit the red button and hijack the cable.

But alas, some cars (guess which, the ones without door handles, specially designed for suicidal drivers) sometimes won’t release the cable.

You also frequently call customer support to restart chargers and watch Linux boot messages scroll by, and complain until blue in the face about specific chargers that stop working for some specific cars in cold weather.

In short, it’s pretty close to a mess. :o

I don’t do trips longer than my battery capacity because the DC charge rate on my car is abysmal (50kw). I therefore don’t use DCFC and as such haven’t experienced a line.

I fully expect that holiday traffic surges would result in lineups in my geographic area. There’s lineups at gas stations.

I’ve been to chargers that were full, so I kept driving. Usually EA stations.

No, but I live about 45 minutes outside the city, plus I charge at home. The only reason for me to ever use a DC fast charger would be if I was taking a road trip, but if that’s the case then I can intentionally plan to charge at a location with a lot of chargers and no line.

About two years ago I had to wait for a charger at Walgreens because a Walmart delivery van was hogging it.

Fortunately there are many many more chargers on my route these days.

I have waited with my older Leaf, but that’s only because it needs the Chademo plug and there’s usually only one per charging location.

I recently had my first road trip between major cities with my other EV with a CCS port. Twice I pulled up to an EA charger that was full, but there was another charger within range. I found that experience to be frustrating, but I could have looked at the app to see if chargers were available before I got there.

I guess I was frustrated because I paid for an EA plan to save a bit on charging but then ended up paying a premium at Tesla chargers because the EA chargers were full.

The only time I remember significant queues at DC fast chargers was during the 2024 solar eclipse. Not exactly a typical occurrence, as masses of people flocked to a tiny strip along the continent.

J.D. Power runs surveys which you’ll get if you use PlugShare (and if you aren’t using it, you should to find out about out-of-service chargers!). They publish their results, and a recent publication addresses no-charge and waiting visits:

Non-charge visits and availability vary by location: To better understand the EV charging experience, J.D. Power monitors non-charge visits and availability at public stations nationwide. The findings reveal that the Pacific region has the highest rate of non-charge visits (21%), with 12% of customers also reporting wait times for an available charger. In contrast, the East South Central region has the lowest incidence of both issues, just 7% for non-charge visits and 5% for wait times. Among major cities, EV owners in Seattle (25%) and Los Angeles (24%) report high rates of unsuccessful charging attempts, while a greater share of drivers in San Francisco (18%) and Denver (14%) experience wait times to access chargers. By far, the most common reason for non-charge visits is the charger being out of service or not working properly, which affects 60% of failed charging visits.

I’ve had an EV since March 2024. I’ve once found a charger that didn’t work, but wasn’t listed as such. All the DCFC I’ve been to have had empty chargers, or perhaps many / several empty chargers. Maybe I just have good timing. And mostly charge at home.

I have, yes. Both of the charging stations between work and home frequently fill up. Lines usually aren’t more than 1 or 2 cars waiting though and with 4 stations at each location the wait usually isn’t terrible.

Very rarely. I have an older ChaDeMo vehicle (Mitsubishi Minicab-MiEV) so don’t have as much competition as the CCS chargers, though there are fewer of them I do a lot of highway driving and the waits are usually at the busiest highway chargers, especially if any ultra fast chargers are down.

I’ve only used dcfc a handful of times, usually I can find one along the route so it isn’t an emergency when I get there, never have had to wait. Even google maps is getting better at reporting if chargers are available. I usually find a hotel that has level 2 charging and just let it fill up over night, which is usually MUCH cheaper than dcfc anyway.

I don’t have an EV but two years ago was in a rental Chevy Bolt EUV for 6 weeks while our Kia Soul waited on an engine replacement (Kia paid for the rental). Both times I tried to DC Fast Charge I had to wait because the locations only had 1 working charger. One location is nearby and I have seen the equipment there has since been replaced. I don’t know the status of the other one because it’s located a couple hours away from me. It looks like the charging infrastructure/availability has noticeably improved in that time, though, when I look into it.