Almost a quarter of Scotland’s public charging points for electric vehicles (EVs) were faulty when BBC Disclosure did spot-checks on the network.
A snapshot over a six-week period of the state of the 2,200 chargers installed using Scottish government grants uncovered issues at 535 units.
Faults ranged from broken plugs and screens to the system being offline.
Transport Scotland said it would review the data but its own measurements suggested only a 2% fault rate.
There are still only about 50,000 electric vehicles (EVs) on Scotland’s roads, just 2% of the total.
But uptake has grown rapidly over the past year.
By 2030 new petrol and diesel cars will be banned and there are forecast to be up to a million EVs in Scotland which will all need somewhere to charge.