Intelligent Octopus

Just out of curiosity, and maybe only for those with IO controlling the charge via the car (CupraConnect app in my case) and a granny charger rather than a 7KWh charger, but what happens if you block Octopus access to the car (change the app password for example) and just control the charge yourself using a timer from 11:30 to 0530?

Do they detect they no longer have access to the car, assume you're not charging it that night / week / month, etc.?

Sorry, but letting Octopus do the rest hasn't worked for me, and would probably end up being very expensive!

gmaz, I will give your steps a go. Thanks for this. It's all I've wanted from Octopus after spending weeks going back and forth with them trying to sort this out. Contrary to what some have said, the customer service has been awful!

I've just swapped over to them but I'm not 100% convinced everything is set up as it should so I'll need to call them today.

On the app its still showing me as being on the Flexible tariff and the £50 sign up cost hasn't been credited to my account yet (I got a referral code). I linked the BMW app, the Ohme Pro charger and the Octopus accounts while it done a test charger for about 7 mins. It came up successful but they haven't confirmed that via the app or email and that's making me uneasy to try and charge at home.

Lucky for me I have free charging in the council car parks where I live so I've not had to use the home charger yet until I get all this confirmed.

For anyone with a Cupra hybrid or electric car, you can get £90 towards your Octopus Intelligent or Go energy bill by supplying proof of the car purchase at the following link: https://www.cupraofficial.co.uk/owners/about-your-...
Link for lease drivers too on the page.

I think you'll get charged the rate that is applicable at the time of charging. Just manually stop the charge in your cars app, thats what I do. IO will still do its calculations.

Indeed, you're charged at the standard rate unless you're in the guaranteed cheap rate hours or unless the app has scheduled extra hours for the time in question.

I had this with my iPace, typically it took ~10 minutes to stop/start the charge as intended. I used to keep an eye on it via the app when I remembered and a few times it was obviously just not going to turn off after ~20 minutes, at that point I would use the cars app to stop the charge and every time, when the charge was supposed to start according to the app, it did - albeit probably sometimes with the same sort of delay. I've no doubt that over the last 18 months of using IO with the iPace that I've paid for plenty of needless peak rate charging time due to the flakey control, but I doubt more than a £100 or so in total.

However, with my new car, BMW i4, it seems to work seamlessly. The thing is.. all Octopus can do is send a command to the car to start/stop charging. It's up to the cars manufacturer to ensure the car and their network with the car is reactive and reliable - in the iPace, sadly it wasn't always ideal. Not just with regard to Octopus, but even me using the app to turn the AC on sometimes took forever for the car to wake up and take action.

I guess some EV's were designed with connectivity seen as a perk, not a critical requirement and hence some aren't as reliable as Octopus ideally needs them to be. I'm sure this will improve and I think some standards for connectivity such as reliability and response times, confirmation times of response etc need to be mandated so car manufacturers have a standardised set of min requirements to work to - because ultimately solutions such as IO need to know what they're working with in terms of response times and confirmation from the cars.

They can make you the most perfect car in terms of how it drives, how it feels and how it looks inside and out.

But when it comes to actually working, reliably... I'll give them a charitable 7/10. With extra points for effort - it's the effort that counts. Sort of.

Only had mine a week but IO hasn't missed a beat yet, touch wood! I still stop the charging as soon as I've plugged it in around 7pm via the Jag app (as I noticed it can take 10 mins, money down the drain), and then 30 mins later Octopus have worked out the nights 'schedule'. By the morning, it's all done and dusted. Wonder if something improved in a software update along the line...

Yeah I'm on old tech non-Pivi, but I've come from F-series BMWs so pretty much on par haha It's a little 'laggy' at times, but does the trick. Hopefully it'll keep on performing the way it's done so far...

The Rolec is useless (in this context)

Is the i3 supported ?