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Blog15 July 2026 · 6 min read

Why a charger being “available” is the least useful thing a map can tell you

Availability is a status flag. Working is a fact. The distance between them is most of the frustration of driving electric in India.

Prateek Joshi · ATEV

Most charging maps will tell you a station exists and, on a good day, that a connector is free. Neither answers the question a driver is actually asking, which is whether they will leave with charge in the battery.

Three failures that all look like “available”

A unit that reports free but is throttled to a fraction of its rated output. A unit that authorises and then faults thirty seconds in. A unit physically blocked by a petrol car. All three are indistinguishable on a status feed, and all three are obvious to the last driver who tried.

The driver who just left is a better sensor than the charger.

Prateek Joshi, Co-founder

What we are building instead

Live operator status where we have it, combined with member reports on what actually happened at the gun, weighted by how recent they are. Neither is sufficient alone. Together they get close to the truth.

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