American electric car fast charger manufacturer FreeWire Technologies, Inc has filed a WARN notice with the State of California to say they plan to close their HQ at 7200 Gateway Blvd. Newark CA 94560 permanently on 24th June 2024, laying off 113 workers.
NRMA hasn’t had great luck with it’s choice of public fast charger hardware, which is a shame because the NRMA’s early rollout of chargers well before EV sales took off made it possible for many early adopter EV drivers to drive across NSW.
The member owned motoring association decided to choose Tritium 6 years ago so they could support a locally manufactured market leader for their public charging network.
As I explained recently Tritium is currently under voluntary administration because it was about to run out of money to pay debts.
After getting burnt by often unreliable first generation Tritium chargers NRMA decided last year to diversify and try out a few different other brands of fast chargers including Freewire.
In late 2023 I was the first member of the public to use the new NRMA Mittagong Freewire Boost Charger 150, with 160 kWh built in storage.
Now just over 4 months later it looks like FreeWire Technologies is in big financial trouble and will most likely shut down as of 24th June 2024.
According to a plugshare comment by NRMA spotted by reader Beau Giles, it looks like NRMA is removing the Freewire chargers from Mittagong. It will be interesting to see what replaces them.
In a recent NRMA blog post they mention “NRMA Energy is now including Freewire battery-integrated chargers in its stable of charging units from a broad range of suppliers as it seeks to shore up reliability and roll-out time.”
Hopefully that doesn’t mean NRMA has already bought more Freewire units planning to install them somewhere else in Australia.
This Freewire news is also a blow to NRMA’s installer partner at Mittagong go EV, an enterprising Australian importer and distributor of electric vehicle and sustainable energy products.
