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The numbers, and what they are worth
We work to around eight to ten years for a well made unit. That is a deliberately conservative figure, and it is the one we use when advising on whether to repair or replace.
Published estimates run higher. You will see ten to fifteen years quoted for wall mounted units and up to twenty for commercial equipment. Those figures are not wrong, they are describing best case conditions. DC rapid chargers, which work far harder and carry power electronics and cooling, come in lower than any of it.
Treat all of them as rough. A charger is not a consumable with a predictable end date, and the spread between a sheltered unit used twice a week and a coastal unit cycling every night is wide enough to make an average close to meaningless.
What actually decides it
Cycles. The switching gear and the connector both have a finite number of operations in them. A depot unit gets through those in a fraction of the time a domestic unit does, and it is the connector that usually shows it first.
Heat. Full sun, poor ventilation and a hard working unit all age the electronics faster. This is the quiet one, because nothing looks wrong until something fails.
Water. Aged gaskets, poorly sealed cable entries, low mounting and bad drainage. Of the units we see that have failed well short of their expected life, water has usually played a part.
Handling. The cable and connector wear out faster than anything else, but they are replaceable on many units, so this shortens the life of a part rather than the charger.
How it was installed. Undersized cable, poor terminations and the wrong protective device all shorten the life of what hangs off them.
The part that ends most chargers first
Not the hardware. The support.
Smart chargers depend on a manufacturer back office for scheduling, app control and tariff integration. When a brand stops updating a model, or the company disappears, the unit can keep charging while losing everything that made it smart. Security updates stop, tariff integrations break as energy suppliers change their systems, and the app eventually stops working.
That is why the practical life of a smart charger often runs shorter than the electrical life of the box on the wall.
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What extends it
Keeping water out is most of it. That means the seals and cable entries being sound, the unit mounted where water does not collect, and nobody pressure washing near it.
Keeping the connector clean and off the ground protects the part most likely to fail. Coiling the lead properly rather than tightly protects the cable.
Catching problems early does the rest. A connector with a poor contact, or a protective device that has begun tripping occasionally, gives warning signs well before anything fails outright. Those signs are only useful if somebody is looking.
When age alone is not the answer
An eight year old charger in good condition on a sound circuit is not due for replacement. A three year old charger that has had water in it twice may be.
Age on its own is a weak signal. Condition, supply arrangement and whether the brand still supports the model tell you far more, and all three can be established in a single visit.
