Evoforce
Well-known member
More and more ABB (QC) charge stations are biting the dust in the Phoenix metro area. These are the stations located at the Nissan dealerships. I want myself and others to do what is necessary to keep charge stations up and running. My initial reaction was to believe that the dealers were not caring to maintain them. Here is what I found out so far...
After speaking with the General Manager at one Nissan dealership, he told me to complain to Nissan Corporate and gave me the number yesterday. He told me that they contact Nissan Corporate through a technical service line and they get ahold of ABB. So today I called Nissan Corporate to complain of the situation. No one knew how to field the call and I eventually was given a number to call that was a regional number for Nissan. They proceeded to tell me that it was out of their hands because the dealers were given a choice of equipment vendor and Nissan Corporate was not in the loop.
So, back to the dealership I went to again talk with the General Manager. Here are some facts that I gleaned today. Nissan Corporate did not give them a choice of vendors but rather said here is the equipment vender that we want you to use. For this dealer the cost was $12,000 because it was a short electrical run. We will also subsidize a percentage of the install and you can choose to bill or not bill your customer for the service. ABB would have also received a percentage of the proceeds if dealers billed for service to the customer end user per charge. Since most dealers in the metro Phoenix area opted to offer free charging this General Manager believes that ABB has lost some incentive to repair equipment.
In this round of equipment failure at this dealership, the main motherboard failed. ABB wanted to bill the dealership over $4000 for repairs. The dealership says however that the machine is still under warranty and should owe nothing. Said dealership is procuring a copy of the contract from Nissan Corporate just to confirm what was remembered.
In the meantime, tomorrow, I will be talking to the person at this dealership who is responsible for making contact with Nissan and ABB and will get the contact number for ABB. ABB appears to have raked in the money for installs but does not want to put any back into repairs or maintenance.
This begs the questions, why are these equipment failing? Heat? Poor quality circuit boards? Are replacement parts easily procured? What needs to be changed to stop these failures? I believe that dealers will not want to pay what appears to be high costs to maintain these QC machines once out of warranty.
I suspect it is heat that is causing failures. I directly asked the GM if thought had been given to shading the equipment. He responded that when the QC was installed he posed that question to the installers and ABB said that it was not necessary. The dealer said, that he would have been willing and still is, but he would have to have plans and approval from Nissan Corporate because everything has to be exactly how Nissan wants it designed to look. He also said that he would entertain a different QC company once the warranty period was over.
After speaking with the General Manager at one Nissan dealership, he told me to complain to Nissan Corporate and gave me the number yesterday. He told me that they contact Nissan Corporate through a technical service line and they get ahold of ABB. So today I called Nissan Corporate to complain of the situation. No one knew how to field the call and I eventually was given a number to call that was a regional number for Nissan. They proceeded to tell me that it was out of their hands because the dealers were given a choice of equipment vendor and Nissan Corporate was not in the loop.
So, back to the dealership I went to again talk with the General Manager. Here are some facts that I gleaned today. Nissan Corporate did not give them a choice of vendors but rather said here is the equipment vender that we want you to use. For this dealer the cost was $12,000 because it was a short electrical run. We will also subsidize a percentage of the install and you can choose to bill or not bill your customer for the service. ABB would have also received a percentage of the proceeds if dealers billed for service to the customer end user per charge. Since most dealers in the metro Phoenix area opted to offer free charging this General Manager believes that ABB has lost some incentive to repair equipment.
In this round of equipment failure at this dealership, the main motherboard failed. ABB wanted to bill the dealership over $4000 for repairs. The dealership says however that the machine is still under warranty and should owe nothing. Said dealership is procuring a copy of the contract from Nissan Corporate just to confirm what was remembered.
In the meantime, tomorrow, I will be talking to the person at this dealership who is responsible for making contact with Nissan and ABB and will get the contact number for ABB. ABB appears to have raked in the money for installs but does not want to put any back into repairs or maintenance.
This begs the questions, why are these equipment failing? Heat? Poor quality circuit boards? Are replacement parts easily procured? What needs to be changed to stop these failures? I believe that dealers will not want to pay what appears to be high costs to maintain these QC machines once out of warranty.
I suspect it is heat that is causing failures. I directly asked the GM if thought had been given to shading the equipment. He responded that when the QC was installed he posed that question to the installers and ABB said that it was not necessary. The dealer said, that he would have been willing and still is, but he would have to have plans and approval from Nissan Corporate because everything has to be exactly how Nissan wants it designed to look. He also said that he would entertain a different QC company once the warranty period was over.
