Design an EV Charging Station Platform

Design an EV charging station platform that supports the following capabilities: customers can search for nearby charging stations and view real-time availability; customers can reserve a charging slot up to 24 hours in advance; upon arrival, the system validates the booking and unlocks/activates the charging hardware; the system tracks the charging session from start to completion, including charging status and energy consumed; once charging is complete, the system calculates the final amount and processes payment (assume an existing payment gateway handles banking integration). Design the overall system architecture including major components, APIs, data stores, booking and concurrency handling, charging-station communication, and the end-to-end flow from station discovery through payment, with particular attention to handling system failures.