LEBANON, Tenn. — Tritium, an Australian producer of electric vehicle chargers, is arriving in the U.S. market with a new assembly plant here at a less-than-auspicious moment for the EV charging segment.
Two recent industry surveys have thumped charging networks for doing a poor job at pleasing the growing numbers of American EV buyers.
One of them, a J.D. Power report in August — just as Tritium was opening its plant — said EV charging satisfaction is declining and dampening EV buyer enthusiasm.
“Public charging continues to provide challenges to overall EV adoption and current EV owners alike,” Brent Gruber, J.D. Power executive director of global automotive, said when the report was released last month. “Not only is the availability of public charging still an obstacle, but EV owners continue to be faced with charging station equipment that is inoperable.”
But Tritium CEO Jane Hunter knows all that.
In fact, customer dissatisfaction is the reason her company sped up its timetable to launch U.S. production of its PKM150 DC fast chargers.
“We have a bit of a different take on what the market wants,” Hunter told Automotive News. “We intend to offer a solution to the problem.”
