As we stated in previous articles, Epic Charging stands for epic customer service and we are committed to delivering on that brand promise by pursuing 4 pillars:
At Epic Charging, we believe that EV chargers are critical transportation infrastructure and need to be well supported. In this blog post we will be discussing the importance of problem solving with technical excellence.
Some of the latest industry reports indicate that consumers in the US face serious reliability issues with public EV charging. For example, J.D. Power research from early this year indicated that at least 1 in 5 charging attempts by EV drivers failed, as quoted by Automotive News.
EV charging stations can fail due to various factors, spanning from firmware updates by the charger manufacturer to issues with the local electrician's power supply installation. In this article, we'll delve into examples of failures our engineering team encountered in the field and how we used applied technical excellence to support our customers in delivering reliable EV charging.
Power supply failure
One of our electrical distributor partners got a call from a client regarding a faulty charger. The site host had finished installing a 48 amp charger and it wasn’t working properly. We were asked to support their troubleshooting process because the client was asking for a replacement unit. Prior to our involvement, the B2B partner would have swapped out the unit and incurred about $1,000 in additional project costs (cost of hardware, shipping, staff time). Instead, our engineering team used the Epic OCPP Toolbox to diagnose firmware level messages and identified that the problem was due to an electrical issue that resulted in voltage that was incorrect (the power supply was offering 197V while the chargers required 208V). This remote technical assistance saved $1,000 for our B2B customer and provided better service to the site host who was able to get the company’s chargers going faster.
Universal RFID access
Our engineering team applied technical excellence to help another reseller partner close a new deal. The prospective site host was a municipality who had installed several charging stations from a leading market player but started experiencing accessibility issues when a software update was pushed by their OCPP-network provider (a competitor to Epic Charging). The fleet manager at this municipality wanted to prevent any service disruptions and requested that we support their existing equipment (chargers and RFID cards). Within a few days, our engineering team pushed out a software update that allowed us to support RFID cards from leading EV charging companies including ChargePoint, FLO, EnelX, and others. The site host was delighted by our team’s technical excellence and placed the order with our B2B partner.
Charger or vehicle issues?
There are also situations when our technical team is called to support a fleet owner who is unable to properly charge their electric vehicles. One of our B2B customers was deploying an industry leading energy management system called ChargePilot and experienced unexpected project delays (you can read more about the case study here). We problem-solved by using our patented vehicle-charger handshake to identify a failure with one of the school bus’ onboard charging unit. The site host shared our insights with his school bus manufacturer and got them to fix the issue.
Conclusion
EV chargers are prone to failure and site hosts need to choose EV charging providers who can effectively problem solve. At Epic Charging, we take pride in our technical excellence to help our B2B partners deliver epic customer service.
Contact us to explore how we can help you solve technical EV charging problems more efficiently.
- Saving you money (qualifying for utility and state incentives)
- Providing responsive and reliable service
- Problem solving with technical excellence
- Securing reliable EV charging solutions
At Epic Charging, we believe that EV chargers are critical transportation infrastructure and need to be well supported. In this blog post we will be discussing the importance of problem solving with technical excellence.
Some of the latest industry reports indicate that consumers in the US face serious reliability issues with public EV charging. For example, J.D. Power research from early this year indicated that at least 1 in 5 charging attempts by EV drivers failed, as quoted by Automotive News.
EV charging stations can fail due to various factors, spanning from firmware updates by the charger manufacturer to issues with the local electrician's power supply installation. In this article, we'll delve into examples of failures our engineering team encountered in the field and how we used applied technical excellence to support our customers in delivering reliable EV charging.
Power supply failure
One of our electrical distributor partners got a call from a client regarding a faulty charger. The site host had finished installing a 48 amp charger and it wasn’t working properly. We were asked to support their troubleshooting process because the client was asking for a replacement unit. Prior to our involvement, the B2B partner would have swapped out the unit and incurred about $1,000 in additional project costs (cost of hardware, shipping, staff time). Instead, our engineering team used the Epic OCPP Toolbox to diagnose firmware level messages and identified that the problem was due to an electrical issue that resulted in voltage that was incorrect (the power supply was offering 197V while the chargers required 208V). This remote technical assistance saved $1,000 for our B2B customer and provided better service to the site host who was able to get the company’s chargers going faster.
Universal RFID access
Our engineering team applied technical excellence to help another reseller partner close a new deal. The prospective site host was a municipality who had installed several charging stations from a leading market player but started experiencing accessibility issues when a software update was pushed by their OCPP-network provider (a competitor to Epic Charging). The fleet manager at this municipality wanted to prevent any service disruptions and requested that we support their existing equipment (chargers and RFID cards). Within a few days, our engineering team pushed out a software update that allowed us to support RFID cards from leading EV charging companies including ChargePoint, FLO, EnelX, and others. The site host was delighted by our team’s technical excellence and placed the order with our B2B partner.
Charger or vehicle issues?
There are also situations when our technical team is called to support a fleet owner who is unable to properly charge their electric vehicles. One of our B2B customers was deploying an industry leading energy management system called ChargePilot and experienced unexpected project delays (you can read more about the case study here). We problem-solved by using our patented vehicle-charger handshake to identify a failure with one of the school bus’ onboard charging unit. The site host shared our insights with his school bus manufacturer and got them to fix the issue.
Conclusion
EV chargers are prone to failure and site hosts need to choose EV charging providers who can effectively problem solve. At Epic Charging, we take pride in our technical excellence to help our B2B partners deliver epic customer service.
Contact us to explore how we can help you solve technical EV charging problems more efficiently.