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Jolt EV charging network
- Thread starter moa999
- Start date
No, or at least very little. For the last couple of months at least (since Tesla released whichever firmware it was) I have been getting 22kW or thereabouts actually into the battery (so over 150km/hr charge rate) from those notionally 25kW Jolt chargers at Mona Vale, even on days with relatively low ambient temperatures and only a short drive to the chargers. Maybe a small amount of heating at the start of the session but nothing at all like it used to be. I charge at the Jolt chargers at Mona Vale 2-3 times a week so I keep a good eye on things like that.
Previously you would often see effective charging speeds around half that - with my dual-motor car - because of both motors and the HVAC unnecessarily heating the battery.
My car has the 75kWh LG battery - maybe the reduction in heating is different for other batteries/chemistries but it is super-noticeable (and welcome) for mine.
I did substantially worse than expected with the Jolt charger(s) in Mona Vale this morning. Tried the one in the library carpark twice, then the one the other side of the roundabout in Bungan St straight afterwards. In each case, despite the charger showing as available in the Jolt app, it did the following:
* Connected car, started charge from Jolt app.
* Car showed “starting to charge“
* Jolt app showed “waiting for car”
* After about 30 seconds car showed “charging stopped”
* Jolt app continued to show “waiting for car”.
No session was recorded at all in the History in the Jolt app.
Worried that it might be a problem with my car - I updated to firmware 2022.44.30 yesterday and hadn’t DC charged since - I drove to the Evie 50kW DC charger at the HomeCo centre at Belrose and charged there. Worked perfectly, session started up immediately and I got the expected full 48-49kW for the full 15 minute or so session I did there.
I have checked PlugShare a couple of times later today, and someone with a BYD Atto3 has reported the same problem today with the Bungan St Mona Vale charger, and also someone (with an MG EV) this morning had the same problem at the Forestville Jolt charger.
So it seems Jolt has just changed/broken something that has made charging not work at those 3 Sydney Northern Beaches chargers at least, and whatever it is affects at least 3 brands of EV. Very glad I don’t actually need to charge at any of those chargers, ie my 3-phase wall connector is fine, but I feel bad for people in broadly the Pittwater area particularly who need to charge out-of-home because there isn’t much else available for DC charging other than the Jolt chargers. The Bungan St one has been really reliable for me - the library carpark one has been hit-and-miss, especially the last couple of months - so hopefully they get on top of it quickly.
I haven’t contacted Jolt Support yet today but I will email them shortly; was actually waiting to see on PlugShare if others had the same issue to avoid going down a rathole with them about it being potentially an issue with my specific car.
They should have to turn the ads off when the charger isn't working. That might be a bit more motivating
I heard back from Jolt Support this morning. They don’t know why my sessions on the weekend - or those for the other people who reported the same in PlugShare with other brands of car - failed, and they reckon some people *did* have successful charging sessions there on the weekend.
Anyway, this is what they said about the NBE004 charger in the Mona Vale library carpark - which has been the problematic one for the last month or so:
Hopefully both these things - the general brokenness of NBE004 and whatever made the sessions fail on the weekend on several different chargers for several different brands of car - will get fixed soon.
I charged successfully at NBE001 (the kerbside charger in Bungan St, Mona Vale) this morning. Emailed Jolt Support to tell them so, as last I heard from them they could see my failed sessions I mentioned above but were still investigating what had happened on their backend to cause them.
As far as I know, NBE004 (the charger in the Mona Vale Library carpark) is still broken and awaiting full replacement. Weirdly someone with a Polestar reported a successful charge session there yesterday evening, but it has been in an ”unknown” state in the Jolt app for some time, was earlier this morning and still is right now, so I suspect that person actually charged at NBE001 instead - the two chargers are only 50m apart so it’s fairly easy to tap on the wrong one when checking-in in PlugShare.
In my email to them this morning I asked if there was any new ETA on the replacement charger for NBE004 (since obviously it didn’t make the date they had first told me which was 2 days ago). I will update this thread when I hear back or otherwise have a successful charging session there.
i just got an update from Jolt Support, regarding the Mona Vale Library carpark charger (NBE004):
Definitely working. I am charging there now. Good turnaround for the hardware replacement too; I had visions of it taking a month or more based on what has happened with other (brand) DC charging equipment that has needed replacement.
The other charger in Bungan St is in use too. So 100% of the DC charging in the Pittwater area is in use at 8am on a Sunday morning… I keep seeing kerbside substation boxes that would make great Jolt chargers but I don’t know if there are any more in planning stage in the area.
I’d like to know what their sustainable business model is. First 7 kWh free is nice as an introductory offer, but as we have seen with NRMA, free really perverts people’s behaviour to the detriment of others. I’m sure the ads are paying for part of it. But what is their long-term plan if these things don’t cover their operating costs, let alone repay the capex?
What *i* think is that the ads _are_ their business model, and as long as the charging revenue is enough to maintain the chargers they are all good. Look at my session this morning, about 30 minutes for 12kWh at a cost to me of $2.27. My sessions there generally end up about 1/2 hour, it’s the time it takes me to buy and drink a coffee then go to Coles for some groceries, so I pay about $0.19/kWh for that size of charge (first 7 free and the rest at $0.46). They won’t be making money at that price but they won’t be losing much anyway (not like their maximum demand charge will be too high on a 25kW charger). More importantly they got to put computerised advertising signs in two _really_ good locations in Mona Vale where Northern Beaches Council probably wouldn’t have permitted a straight-up advertising sign to go, but with the application formed around “installing an EV charger at no cost to the council with the low charging cost for ratepayers subsidised by an advertising sign” I reckon the council couldn’t sign up soon enough
I really don’t like the all-free-all-the-time DC charging, but I really don’t mind the “first 7kWh/day free then $0.46/kWh afterwards” (plus an idle fee for staying plugged in) that Jolt has. It doesn’t seem, for the two chargers I use relatively often anyway, to have people just taking that 7kWh then leaving and for twice-as-fast-as-home charging for me the price is fairly ok, especially on a cloudy morning when my home solar isn’t doing the heavy lifting for me and I am paying for the power anyway.
How many people are scabby enough to just go regularly for 7kWh? Maybe they think you will end up staying longer and paying
I saw a Jolt box in council car park at Lagoon St, Narrabeen last week. It's not on Plugshare yet. It seemed to be "lit up" as the advertisements were running. Could not see the charging cables from the road. Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture as I was driving.
I also found this....
Thanks, good pickup. I hadn’t been keeping an eye on that page on the Northern Beaches Council website (EV charging hasn’t had a mention in the weekly email newsletter for a while and I admit to having forgotten about that page).
I added the PlugShare entry for the Mona Vale Library Carpark one back when it opened (hence why that is what it is called in Plugshare, rather than whatever the proper name for that carpark is, or Jolt’s actual name for the charger
). I don’t know whether Jolt has added any of their other ones “officially” or whether they were all typed in by just normal users?Next time I am going to the RipCurl store at Narrabeen, which is only a couple of hundred metres from that new charger, I might give it a try. Actually the other proposed/upcoming one in Ocean St Narrabeen is about the same distance from RipCurl, just in the other direction, so I might have a look at that one too.
Neither of those chargers are in the Jolt app yet, but if they have the QR codes on the chargers and are lit up hopefully they can be used.
Also this newish entry on Plugshare in Alexandria. No photo and I suspect incorrectly says Type 2
Also not yet on Jolt map.
Also not yet on Jolt map.
PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find a place to charge
Find EV charging stations with PlugShare, the most complete map of electric vehicle charging stations in the world!Charging tips reviews and photos from the EV community.
www.plugshare.com
Here’s the problem where charging providers (and I don’t mean to single Jolt out here) don’t get on the front foot to be the ones to enter their new/updated locations in PlugShare and OpenChargeMap… and if I were really dreaming to also expose their real-time free/busy/broken status per plug to PlugShare (as Evie for example has done).
Leaving it up to all user submissions only, when providing charging services is their core business, is a little lassez-faire.
Also this newish entry on Plugshare in Alexandria. No photo and I suspect incorrectly says Type 2
Also not yet on Jolt map.
PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find a place to charge
Find EV charging stations with PlugShare, the most complete map of electric vehicle charging stations in the world!Charging tips reviews and photos from the EV community.www.plugshare.com
I can understand it at Mittagong, but with charging after 7kWh and idle fees, you would have to a dedicated seagull
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