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Yifan Liu
PhD graduate at Georgia Institute of Technology , Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University
May 4, 2026 at 5:00 PM PT -> my local time Add to Calendar
Location: Rm 786, Davis Hall, Berkeley Watch Live on Zoom / YouTube
Why EV Charging is So Unreliable? The Effects of Competition on Supplementary Service Quality poster
Abstract
Supplementary services---such as coffee shops providing free wi-fi and airlines offering airport lounges--are increasingly important to operational performance and customer experience. Yet little is known about what drives variation in their quality. While prior research shows that competition improves core service quality, we theorize that its effects on supplementary service quality depend on the source of competition. Competition from establishments offering the same core service enhances supplementary service quality, whereas competition from those offering different core services diminishes it. We test our hypotheses using data on the reliability of U.S. public EV charging stations, a widely-offered supplementary service across hotels, retailers, parking facilities, and other establishments. Analyzing 49,902 charging stations with 805,639 consumer reviews from 2011 to 2024, we apply machine learning methods to measure charging reliability. We find that competition among establishments offering the same core service is associated with higher reliability, suggesting that the positive effects of core service competition spill over to the quality of supplementary services. In contrast, competition from charging establishments with different core services is associated with lower station reliability. This latter effect is more consequential, as most nearby charging competitors provide different core services. Our results indicate that, within our sample period, a one-standard-deviation increase in such competition is associated with a 10.4% to 32.2% decline in service reliability scores over the subsequent five years. These findings have important implications for firms’ demand management and for public policy aimed at improving EV charging infrastructure performance.
Speaker Bio
Yifan Liu is an incoming postdoctoral fellow at the Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab at Harvard Business School. She recently received her PhD in Public Policy and her MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on energy and environmental policy, with a particular interest in transportation systems and emerging technologies. She integrates public policy and management theories with computational methods, including machine learning and causal inference, applied to novel datasets to study policy questions. Her current work examines how market competition and policy design can incentivize improvements in energy infrastructure quality and public service provision. Her work has been recognized with the William H. Read Award and the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award from Georgia Tech's Carter School, Stanford's 2025 Rising Stars in Data Science distinction, and the Best Paper Award from the Transportation Research Board. It has also been supported by the National Science Foundation and Microsoft Research.
Details for upcoming seminars will be posted soon.