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Tritium asks Qld government for up to $90m bailout
- Thread starter jamesgo
- Start date
Ah thanks, the starting cash position was $120m post IPO and redemptions.
What did Decarbonisation know that the rest didnt?
usually hardware. I've heard of various issues. Capacitor failures mainly. Other failure modes include breakers tripping and environmental factors such as heat and humidity
Ive also heard poor post installation service or non existent service agreements??
Definitely can't rule this out. But as I continue to point out to people, I know of brand new Tritium locations that have failed within two weeks of commissioning
Think it was more the SPAC investors who redeemed.. which generally means they thought the effective price paid for Tritium was too high (proven right).
And as at 30 June 2023..
It did however have a large amount of inventory
It did however report a slightly positive gross margin for the six months to June 2023, albeit still a long way from profitability.
Max Spaghetti
Member
Some would get swapped out promptly with other hardware from more reputable vendors. Kempower. Ingeteam. Whoever can get supply and parts into the country promptly.
The working parts from the removed units would get scavenged to keep the remaining Tritium units running until they can all be replaced too.
Remember that once you have the site lease sorted, council sorted, grid sorted, the hardware is trivial to replace.
And more importantly, the debacle was repeatedly blamed on external suppliers supply chain issues. Much of those units are just cobbled together parts from elsewhere. It a network or service provider goes to the source, problem solved!
With the rate of cash burn the entire thing is at risk. The Qld factory argument is just an attempt to access funds from the govt.
Remember most of the networks were part Govt funded and I suspect at best breakeven. They simply don't have the $$s to fund a wholesale replacement of machines. We'd either see growth curtailed for a while or machines left broken for a long time - neither good for drivers.
And at least from the Euro and US experience Tritiums reliability seems better than most.
Tesla Bjorn and OutofSpec in Europe are often seen using Ionity machines (which are mostly Tritium units in a custom form factor).
And in the US Electrify America has had to replace almost all cycle 1/2 machines (made by ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet) which were installed in 2018-20. About the same time as NRMA and Yurika started rolling out Tritium RT50s some of which are still working (others have been poor).
Worst case would be for Tritium to fail and in a couple of years to realise that the replacements are not much better in Australian conditions.
Would certainly not be good for charging infrastructure in Australia.
Remember most of the networks were part Govt funded and I suspect at best breakeven. They simply don't have the $$s to fund a wholesale replacement of machines. We'd either see growth curtailed for a while or machines left broken for a long time - neither good for drivers.
And at least from the Euro and US experience Tritiums reliability seems better than most.
Tesla Bjorn and OutofSpec in Europe are often seen using Ionity machines (which are mostly Tritium units in a custom form factor).
And in the US Electrify America has had to replace almost all cycle 1/2 machines (made by ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet) which were installed in 2018-20. About the same time as NRMA and Yurika started rolling out Tritium RT50s some of which are still working (others have been poor).
Worst case would be for Tritium to fail and in a couple of years to realise that the replacements are not much better in Australian conditions.
Yeah I think people are forgetting that the Chargefox ABB units and the various 25kW Delta units have been pretty unreliable too. I strongly suspect the maintenance arrangements of the owners are the biggest factor no matter what the brand. Even Superchargers fail, they just seem to get onto it pretty quickly.
3 factors I think:
1) Maintenance arrangements, and availability of trained technicians
2) Manufacturer's supply of spare parts
3) How failure prone are the units
Tritium does poorly on 2 and 3. Most of us are aware of tritium chargers that have at times been offline for months awaiting parts.
Even 1 is somewhat within their control, in terms of training 3rd party technicians on how to repair their equipment.
They fail rarely from what I've seen and are handled like critical infrastructure when they do.
To be fair, the Supercharger network is also the most expensive DCFC network in Australia.
Which brings up the old point, you get what you pay for.
Max Spaghetti
Member
Plenty of Tesla owners will drive straight past a perfectly good 350kW Tritium and then wait in line to share 130kW at a more expensive Supercharger, just because the car told them to!
My brother has owned his Tesla for nearly 2 years and used a non-Tesla DCFC for the first time last week
