NRMA fast charging network

[ausevdriver]

Evie Sutton Forest: One of the PK350 units was DOA. To this day the one on the left has never worked.

They even posted a comment last week on it:

"Please be advised, a technician is due to attend site today from 10am to replace faulty hardware in head unit 2."

Still dead though.

When chargefox and evie talk about technicians at sites, is that their own people usually? Or is Tritium supplying a support contract that is this abysmal?

 

[doggy1]

When Tritium was getting into full swing a couple of years ago, I thought it would be good to invest in the company. However, having seen the huge lack of spare parts and support plus similar comments about Tritium units in Norway I am pleased I didn't invest. Though it would be great if they could develop a good worldwide reputation else I fear for their future survival

 

[Onshore]

Evie Sutton Forest: One of the PK350 units was DOA. To this day the one on the left has never worked.
Evie Dapto: Both of the RTM75 units have been offline for a few weeks now.
Chargefox Goulburn: The screen on one of the PK350 units has been dead awaiting parts from Tritium since last December.

How is Tritium still in business?

 

[PC__LoadLetter]

How is Tritium still in business?

Rivers of government money. Governments don't really care whether or not the chargers work, they just want the ribbon-cutting ceremony opportunity.

 

[moa999]

How is Tritium still in business?

Seems they aren't the only manufacturer with issues. We just see more of it in Australia as they are so common.

Chargefox had issues with it's early ABB 350kW units and shifted to Tritium. The few 25kW Delta machines on Evie's CTR have also looked pretty poor on uptime.

Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software

EV owners say that Level 2 charging has gotten worse.

www.theverge.com

 

[qiSun]

How is Tritium still in business?

Oh yeah, we love to bash tall puppy in our family.

 

[cafz]

Governments don't really care whether or not the chargers work, they just want the ribbon-cutting ceremony opportunity.

Or more specifically, they'll provide grants to help with the capex installing a new site, but the operators still need to put aside opex in their yearly budgets for maintenance.

 

[Vostok]

Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software

EV owners say that Level 2 charging has gotten worse.

www.theverge.com

I know we like to complain about this here, but I think it’s worse in the USA for a simple reason. In the USA, third-party charging networks are effectively denied access to ~65% of the BEV market because Tesla vehicles have a proprietary connector over there. While some Tesla drivers will have the right adaptors and will occasionally use these networks, I suspect the vast majority never use them.

So having access to only about one-third of the BEV market has to significantly impact the financial viabiltiy of those networks and their capacity and capability to invest in maintenance.

We don’t have that issue here with a common connector. Evie, Chargefox and the others know that every BEV out there can - and do - use their networks. It lifts all boats.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t problems (plugshare is proof of that) but either through luck or good planning, over 2.5 years I have never gone to a third party DCFC site and been unable to charge.

 

[meloccom]

I know we like to complain about this here, but I think it’s worse in the USA for a simple reason. In the USA, third-party charging networks are effectively denied access to ~65% of the BEV market because Tesla vehicles have a proprietary connector over there. While some Tesla drivers will have the right adaptors and will occasionally use these networks, I suspect the vast majority never use them.

So having access to only about one-third of the BEV market has to significantly impact the financial viabiltiy of those networks and their capacity and capability to invest in maintenance.

We don’t have that issue here with a common connector. Evie, Chargefox and the others know that every BEV out there can - and do - use their networks. It lifts all boats.

Now I’m not saying there aren’t problems (plugshare is proof of that) but either through luck or good planning, over 2.5 years I have never gone to a third party DCFC site and been unable to charge.

It’s luck, complete luck.
Having said that, Australian Tesla owners are in a better place than North American owners, as we can use third party charging networks, but this is only because the EU forced Tesla to adopt the Type 2 charging standard for Model S and X that then developed into the CCS2 quick charging standard with Model 3.
In Australia we have no government regulated charging standard even today, just a “gentlmans agreement” suggested by the FCAI/MTA. So being in this position is also complete luck. That’s why events like today’s EV Summit in Canberra are so important.

 

[RareEarth]

Putting all the blame at Tritium's feet is a bit simplistic, the network operators also must implement proper maintenance schedules and as this is critical infrastructure there needs to be a mandated uptime for charging sites.

 

[Onshore]

Putting all the blame at Tritium's feet is a bit simplistic, the network operators also must implement proper maintenance schedules and as this is critical infrastructure there needs to be a mandated uptime for charging sites.

While I agree with that, only Tritium can supply spare parts for their chargers.

Several sites have been down awaiting parts for 6 months or more.

 

[positiv]

It’s luck, complete luck.
Having said that, Australian Tesla owners are in a better place than North American owners, as we can use third party charging networks, but this is only because the EU forced Tesla to adopt the Type 2 charging standard for Model S and X that then developed into the CCS2 quick charging standard with Model 3.

I am very grateful for this. We are very lucky. Honestly I probably wouldn't have bought this car if it had a proprietary connector (like Tesla connector) or something obscure (like chademo).

 

[scully]

While I agree with that, only Tritium can supply spare parts for their chargers.

Several sites have been down awaiting parts for 6 months or more.

They should let whoever runs the roadside assistance vans look after the chargers. They need to have a supply of parts, not be ordering each time from Tritium. Their roadside guys should be checking the chargers and be trained to fix them.

 

[moa999]

^ Don't think your typical roadside guy is qualified to work on high powered electrical equipment.

 

[scully]

^ Don't think your typical roadside guy is qualified to work on high powered electrical equipment.

They are definitely qualified to see if the lights are on and the cable it attached. They could report obvious issues instead of waiting for stranded customers to do it. They could have one guy who is qualified who's whole job is maintenance/fixing the chargers. They should keep plenty of spares and commit to fixing within 24hrs.

 

[Vostok]

In ChargeFox’s “Lessons Learned” report to ARENA in 2021, I thought it was really interesting that they said most failures were due to software not hardware:

“Previous thinking on reliability assumed this was largely to do with the quality of the components used. High-quality components such as internal power supplies and vehicle connectors solve much of the maintenance problem, but in practice these rarely fail. Instead we find chargers failing due to software and fundamental design faults. Nothing breaks, but the software fails for a wide range of reasons.”

I don’t know if this is still the case, but it points to poor charger software architecture, where it should be possible to remotely rectify any software failure of a unit and not require an on-site visit to do so. It should be possible, for example, to remotely upload new firmware to the unit even under the most extreme software failures, restart, and be able to remotely diagnose what is going on.

A bit like Tesla‘s ability to update firmware over-the-air, a capability designed in from the start, and which even today most other BEV manufacturers don’t do (firmware being the bootable kernel of the entire computing architecture, as opposed to OTA software updates which are merely apps that run over the top of that).

 

[Maximillan]

In ChargeFox’s “Lessons Learned” report to ARENA in 2021, I thought it was really interesting that they said most failures were due to software not hardware:

“Previous thinking on reliability assumed this was largely to do with the quality of the components used. High-quality components such as internal power supplies and vehicle connectors solve much of the maintenance problem, but in practice these rarely fail. Instead we find chargers failing due to software and fundamental design faults. Nothing breaks, but the software fails for a wide range of reasons.”

I don’t know if this is still the case, but it points to poor charger software architecture, where it should be possible to remotely rectify any software failure of a unit and not require an on-site visit to do so. It should be possible, for example, to remotely upload new firmware to the unit even under the most extreme software failures, restart, and be able to remotely diagnose what is going on.

A bit like Tesla‘s ability to update firmware over-the-air, a capability designed in from the start, and which even today most other BEV manufacturers don’t do (firmware being the bootable kernel of the entire computing architecture, as opposed to OTA software updates which are merely apps that run over the top of that).

To further your reference to OTA updates, the challenge is that doing Software well is very hard, doing it well to a legacy code base and architecture is even harder. If you don't have the basics right like decent development practices, automated testing and QA built into the development process, etc, you're never going to be in the right place to push out new fixes quickly.

If this is the core of the problem, then their problems are far bigger than just improving the hardware. Just like your bank today likely still shuts down for a few hours over the weekend for maintenance, it's possible that they'll never be able to fix the core issue.

 

[scully]

Casino open

 

[moa999]

Interesting. Not even listed as Coming Soon on the NRMA map.

From Plugshare.

Interesting the co-branding with Council logo (assume in a Council carpark)

Again a bad design.
Ideally I'd say with these RTM units you'd have three car parking spots, and one unit with dual CCS2, and the other with CCS2/CHAdeMO.

Hopefully Wollongong is next, it's looked near compete for weeks.

 

[scully]

Yeah one Chademo is enough per location