National Drive Electric Month: A Readiness Checklist for CPOs

National Drive Electric Month: A Readiness Checklist for CPOs

National Drive Electric Month(NDEM) runs September 11 to October 12 this year, a full month, expanded from the single week it used to be. Local EV associations, dealers, and advocacy groups nationwide will host ride-and-drives, test-drive days, and other events showcasing the benefits of all-electric and plug-in hybrid cars, trucks, motorcycles, and more.

For charge point operators, it's more than an awareness campaign or a celebration, it's a stress test of your network's ability to convert curiosity into confidence. This phase-by-phase checklist is built to help you pass that test, before the surge, during the month and after the surge.

1. Before the Surge: Site Readiness

▸Audit uptime and port health across every site, not just flagship locations. NDEM traffic doesn't concentrate only at your busiest stations. Local events can route first-time drivers to whichever site is closest to the ride-and-drive, including ones that don't usually get much attention.

▸Check physical hardware condition, not just software status. A port can report healthy in your network management system while the cable is damaged, a connector is loose, or a screen is unresponsive. Walk the sites if you can, especially ones with a history of vandalism or theft.

▸ Test the full payment and authentication flow end-to-end, as a first-timer would. Not "does the app work" does someone with no account, no RFID card, and no prior session get from parking to charging without confusion or a support call?

▸ Make sure instructions are legible without assumed knowledge. Plug order, how to start a session, what the status lights mean.

▸ Confirm fallback options work. If a touchscreen freezes or a driver can't get through an app flow, is there a simple way to recover, a physical button, a support line, a QR code that actually resolves?

2. During the Month: What to Actually Watch

▸Session abandonment, not just session count. A spike in charging attempts looks good on a dashboard. A spike in attempts that don't convert into a completed session is the real signal, it means people are starting and giving up.

▸Failed-authentication attempts. These are quiet failures. No one calls support to report that the app wouldn't let them start a session; they just leave.

▸Which ports see traffic tied to local NDEM events. Cross-reference event locations and dates against your session data. A cluster of new accounts and short-duration sessions near an event site is a useful, self-generating dataset.

▸Support call volume and content, as a leading indicator. A rise in calls isn't just an operational cost. It's a real-time list of exactly where your network is confusing to someone.

3. After the Surge: What to Do with the Data

▸Rank failures by frequency, not severity. The site with one dramatic outage isn't necessarily the priority. The site with a small, recurring authentication hiccup that's tripped up thirty different drivers might matter more, because it's shaping thirty different impressions of the industry, not just your brand.

▸Feed the findings into where you invest next; hardware, software, or process. Some fixes are a firmware update. Some are a broken cable that needed replacing weeks ago. Some are simply better signage. Knowing which is which is the entire point of watching closely during the month instead of only checking the dashboard after.

▸Treat it as a repeatable exercise, not a one-off. NDEM isn't the only demand spike your network will see this year. Policy changes, a regional dealer push, a new model launch, a local incentive program can all generate the same pattern.