The Juicebox and Enel X shutdown: What comes next?
There are open source projects and companies looking to help.
Earlier this month, the Italian energy company Enel X announced an abrupt withdrawal from the North American market. For its residential customers—owners of the popular Juicebox level 2 home chargers—the physical hardware will continue to work, but from tomorrow Enel X will have ended all software support, including updates and its apps. But Enel X also had commercial clients, and they’re even more out of luck—from tomorrow those stations “will lose functionality in the absence of software continuity,” Enel X says.
Juicebox
For Juicebox customers, the loss of Enel X’s servers and apps isn’t great—they will lose the ability to remotely manage the charger, or schedule charging sessions from it. But most electric vehicles—both battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs—have their own built-in software to schedule charging sessions, and to hear some owners tell it, Enel X’s software was a poor substitute for the original Juicebox software written by eMotorworks, which was bought by Enel X in 2017.
Whether owners still have any kind of warranty support remains up in the air. A community of volunteers called Juice Rescue has put together a guide on preparing for the shutdown tomorrow. This includes useful advice like making a note of the device’s Juicebox ID and double-checking that the charger’s maximum capacity is correctly set for its circuit.