Calendar 2022 was a good year for Australian EV fast charger manufacturer Tritium, which has posted record sales orders, record revenue, and record order backlog for the past 12 months.
Tritium, which regularly made headlines at The Driven through 2022 with new supply contracts around the globe – and also on questions about reliability of its equipment – received record sales orders valued at $195 million in calendar year 2022, an increase of 38% over the 2021 calendar year.
Revenue similarly reached record levels of $102 million, hitting the high end of expectations. Importantly, $73 million of this revenue was secured in the final six months of 2022, a 27% increase over the final six months of 2021.
Tritium’s purchase order backlog also grew to record levels of approximately $159 million as of the end of 2022.
In an effort to ramp up production to meet accelerated demand, Tritium is scaling its Tennessee factory to five production lines and two shifts on two of those lines by the end of 2023.
Through this production ramp, Tritium expects to produce a total of 11,000 units, and projects global annualised production rates of 16,000 units by December 2023 and 28,000 units by December 2024.
“We remain focused on our goal of becoming the number one global manufacturer of electric vehicle fast chargers,” said Jane Hunter, Tritium CEO.
“We invested in a US factory earlier than our competitors and on a bigger scale.
“We expect our Tennessee factory to become our global revenue engine, in part by unlocking the benefits of the US government’s $US7.5 billion of funding for EV chargers and maintenance, which requires domestically built charging equipment and will ultimately require more than 55% locally sourced components.
“Our new factory started shipping products to customers in August 2022 and, with the recent announcement of the final Build America, Buy America guidelines for the NEVI program, we believe Tritium has a major head start and a leading position in supplying fast chargers for the US.
Tritium’s results made no mention of the downtime issues, and The Driven has not received a response to its multiple requests for data. The company has, however, sheeted many of its problems to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a shortfall in parts and equipment.
Tritium CEO Jane Hunter insisted late last year that her company’s products were reliable, and blamed some of the problems on the failure of charging operators to sign up for Tritium’s service agreements, which she said would have mitigated the worst of the problems.
Note: All $ figures in US.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.