GordonED7's profile
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90 Messages

Monday, June 10th, 2024 1:48 AM

The Parlous State of EV Charging in the country

It's a long weekend in Tamworth, the NRMA charging station has been out of order since Friday, and the only other fast charger in town, Tesla in West Tamworth, has had 2, sometimes 3, of it's 4 chargers out of action since late April, with generally slow speeds from the working 1 or 2 chargers. The Tesla chargers have very short cables, many vehicles have to park side-on, meaning one of the chargers might not be accessible when it is working.

The nearest working fast chargers, both NRMA, are well over 100km away to the south in Scone (130km) or north east in Armidale (115km), although this one has been having intermittent dropouts for some lately.

The government sponsored "coming soon" Fast Cities chargers are mostly non-existent, so it's generally a pretty bad situation for travelers along the New England Highway at present. 

I've heard it said that the inland route along the New England Highway is best avoided when traveling between Sydney and Brisbane, which is quite understandable given the current state of charging infrastructure!

1 Message

6 months ago

Yea the charging via the Inland route from Sydney to Brisbane is a joke.

Each charging station needs multiple chargers & penalties to the operators for charger downtime, accumulating from day 2.

Unless EV charging is fixed along the new England HWY, drivers will stick to the coastal route.

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90 Messages

6 months ago

Coming up to a week and the NRMA charger is still out of action, note on the app says case logged with supplier.

@NRMA_Paul, what is the typical time for a response and repair? I was hoping to charge there tomorrow.

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90 Messages

Update: Tamworth NRMA charger still out of action today. Surely a week is an unacceptable time for an important piece of infrastructure to be out of action?

Went to the Tesla charger in West Tamworth to find a Polestar driver trying to charge at 1B, I told him it had been out of action since April, and directed him to 2B, but there was still not enough space for me due to the very short charging cables, so I had to wait an hour in the car park before I could start charging.

Finally charging to see a measly 25kW rate, which persisted for a while before it rose to 78kW after half an hour.

My wife has a 220km trip for work tomorrow, so I had to charge for an hour, to be sure of enough energy to get home in case the single charger in Gunnedah, NRMA, is not working.

I'm starting to suspect that those who say Australia isn't ready for EVs may have a point, at least when away from the capital city areas.

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90 Messages

NRMA_Paul - are you able to find out how long it will be before the Tamworth charger is repaired?

I spoke to the Australian Tritium agent at the Gunnedah NRMA charger yesterday and he said there is no shortage of parts, and they have 6 complete units in stock at the moment, so there shouldn't be long delays in fixing broken chargers.

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251 Messages

Hello @GordonED7​ , Sorry for the delay here. A technician had attended this location earlier today to repair, but has found that further parts are needed which are not on hand. We do want this location to be up and running ASAP, as we understand the importance of this location for locals and visitors and hope to have this up and running by the end of the week. 

Currently out of the 50 plus locations, we have outages across 4 sites, including 2 locations vandalised. https://www.mynrma.com.au/electric-vehicles/charging

We will continue to work with our service partners to ensure these locations are up and running, making trips further accessible for EV owners. 

EV community admin

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