Independent analysis

Published 19 June 2026 · Reviewed 26 August 2026

AFIR EV charging data: what it can and cannot show

The EU Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) put a large amount of public charging data within reach. Operators can now be held to the same terms: how much of the time their chargers worked, and how fast they came back when they did not. Whether a driver actually charged and paid is a different question. Public status data was never built to answer it.

What AFIR makes public

Article 20 requires operators of publicly accessible charging points to publish specified static and dynamic data through application programming interfaces and National Access Points. Some of it never changes: where a site sits, what connectors it has. The rest moves through the day — operational status and availability, plus the ad-hoc price a driver would pay.

Access to comparable evidence improved. A shared formula for charger uptime or charging success never followed. Nothing in AFIR supplies one, so a tender or a service-level agreement has to define its own calculation, reporting period, exclusions and minimum evidence. Two parties reading the same feed can otherwise reach different numbers and both defend them.

What status data can measure

Public EV charger availability
Was a charging point in a working status during observed time?
Limit: Does not confirm that energy was delivered or payment worked.
Failure and recovery
When did a fault appear, and when did a working status return?
Limit: Missing or delayed status events can weaken the conclusion.
Signal quality
Is the public feed timely, complete and stable enough to use?
Limit: Describes the evidence source, not the physical charger by itself.
Status-derived charging sessions
Do status changes show a credible sequence of charging activity?
Limit: These are inferred sessions, not operator-confirmed billing records.

How Symbioen uses the data

We normalise the public National Access Point and infrastructure status feeds. Every observation stays at EVSE level — one individual charging point — before the same published method runs across stations, operators, municipalities and markets. Hold the method still and the baseline holds still with it. Only then does one quarter compare honestly with the next.

The Q2 2026 guides for Sweden and Norway show availability and successful charging sessions separately because they answer different questions and use different denominators.

Match the evidence to the decision

  • Public status data supports consistent market, network and location screening.
  • Operator session and maintenance records can verify delivered service and interventions more directly.
  • Consented fleet or vehicle data can add the driver and vehicle perspective.

Keep the sources apart before you compare them. Agreement firms up a conclusion. Disagreement is better news than it looks, because it points straight at the thing worth investigating. And when a source simply has nothing to say, leave that gap visible — a silent charger has never been a successful one.

Where the evidence is useful

  • Operators can benchmark network performance and prioritise weak stations.
  • Site owners and public authorities can monitor tenders and service-level agreements using a documented baseline.
  • Investors and lenders can test operational assumptions before deeper commercial and financial diligence.
  • Fleets can identify locations that need direct vehicle-side validation.

What remains outside the conclusion

Public status data does not establish delivered energy, payment completion or revenue, and it attests to nothing about legal compliance. We produce operational analysis, not legal certification. When a decision turns on any of those outcomes, the scope has to widen to operator, payment, maintenance or vehicle records. Say so up front. Stretching a public feed past what it can carry is how a confident report ends up wrong.

Apply the evidence

Put AFIR data to work on a real decision

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Sources and standards