I’m a relatively new EV buyer, having had my car for a year. One issue that I haven’t seen much coverage about is the public EV charger reliability and the apps that are required. I travel up and down the east coast and I have had to download and use (putting my credit card details into each one!) 9 apps in order to recharge at whatever location is nearest… and while a few of them use the same app platform the rest are a hodgepodge. I discovered the very worst of them is the NRMA one. This was diabolical to try and register as a previous NRMA customer (their app kpet freezing when they recognised I wasn’t a current customer) and then trying to add a credit card and actually make the app and the charger work. It took me 40 minutes to get it going and I figured I must be pretty dense until a couple who had just bought a BYD tried to register at the Charger I had just used and it took them and I an hour to sort out… (I logged a problem ticket with NRMA but have yet to get a response). The second issue is with the unreliability of the Tritium (Australian designed, apparently) Chargers. I’ve encountered a half a dozen not working, including one rural location where I really needed it (and instead had to trickle charge from a motel)… I wonder how may other EV users are struggling with these issues?
4 Likes
I had a conversation with a Tesla-owning friend who lives in the same regional/remote village as myself, that mirrors your letter. He had recently gone through exactly the same experience at an NRMA charger and when he contacted them got Nil response. There needs to be a lot more effort put into the support system if they want widespread uptake of EV’s; particularly into simplifying things. Good luck. Hope you never need to recharge in a country town when they’re having a “planned outage” for the whole day… or an “unplanned outage”…
3 Likes
