Major Australian electric car charging network Chargefox is suffering from widespread disruption caused by a communications outage which began on Sunday at 340am when the Chargefox Status page published this message:
Investigating - We are investigating an outage with a third party that is impacting the operation of some chargers on the Chargefox platform.
A few minutes ago Chargefox confirmed that it was a Telstra outage.
An earlier version of this story speculated that the cause of the outage was possibly Telstra M2M service, Telstra spokesperson Steve Carey has advised Zecar that this is not the case:
A hardware issue is affecting a cloud service for a small number of Enterprise and Business customers.
Our teams are working urgently to restore services as soon as possible.
This charging network disruption is having the most impact in Western Australia because they have a public holiday today and the WA EV fast charger network along the West Coast all the way to NT border is all on Chargefox.
According to WA AEVA member Ant Day the WA EV fast charger network has failed into Free access mode.
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However zecar warns that there is no way to confirm this is actually the case for all WA EV fast chargers because of the comms outage.
Other states in Australia are also impacted but not as much as WA.
Chargefox doesn't own all the chargers on the Chargefox app.
They are owned by various organisations and some of them have clearly decided to use Optus or Vodafone comms, likely because their chargers are located in a more urban area where these mobile networks have strong coverage.
In theory it could be good if government rules required that all highway EV chargers failed into Free access mode in the event of a comms or payment processing outage.
Some people would abuse this and fill their battery to 100% unnecessarily but at least failing into Free mode would prevent electric car drivers being stranded as they can't get a charge.
Readers may ask why don't Chargefox put multiple SIM'cards in their chargers, that's probably because most fast charger manufacturers don't make chargers that have multiple SIM slots.
Even if chargers did have multiple SIM slots many parts of Australia have only a Telstra mobile signal anyway, the Telstra mobile network is vastly larger than Optus and Vodafone.
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Latest Advice
The latest Chargefox Status Page advice as of 15:59 AEST on Mon 3 June is:
Update - We have received an update from Telstra regarding the ongoing service failure which is impacting charger availability on Chargefox.
"Telstra is currently conducting a major incident response for an issue that is affecting a Telstra Cloud service for a small number of Enterprise and Business customers. The issue is being treated as our highest priority.
The issue was identified as a faulty storage array in our Clayton data centre that was removed and replaced at 4am on Sunday. We are now progressively restarting processes to restore customer services while recovering impacted data storage. Right now, we are conservatively estimating that services will be restored by the end of the business day. Due to the nature of storage related incidents, recovery activities may take longer than expected as recovery tasks can be dynamic and difficult to predict."
We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and understanding during this time. Our team is actively working with Telstra to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
What Drivers Can Do:
Check the Chargefox app for real-time updates on station availability.
Plan trips accordingly and consider alternative charging options if necessary.
Stay tuned to our social media channels for ongoing updates.
Some charging stations may still be available and operable during an outage, even though they are not appearing as available on the app.
Please be aware that due to this communications failure we cannot guarantee the availability of any charger.
We apologise for any inconvenience and are committed to restoring full service as soon as possible.
Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Chargefox Team
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