[Steve007]

Hi Steve, I have an i4 on Octopus Go. Can i ask what Charge Mode setting you have in the BMW app. Is it set to "Charge immediately" or "Charge in timeslot"?

I use the BMW app and charge in time slot. Octopus gives me cheap electricity from 12.30 to 4.30 overnight.
I set a departure time and the car does the rest and I set off with 100% battery charge.

 

[MINi4]

I have an e35 due in Feb and I notice that IO isn't recognising the e35 yet for integration via a dumb charger.

e35 is available for IO? So a dumb charger would be fine. Must admit the Octopus vehicle model drop down listing couldn’t have a more random order.

 

[Iridium]

Haven’t been able to buy ‘dumb’ charge points in the UK since July 2022 when the law mandated ‘smart’ only could be sold.

 

[MINi4]

Haven’t been able to buy ‘dumb’ charge points in the UK since July 2022 when the law mandated ‘smart’ only could be sold.

Yes, I meant dumb as no integration with IO rather than what you mean.

 

[FortyTwo]

I'm going to change supplier to Octopus ready for my e40 due in 2024.

For best interoperability, is the advice to accept the Bmw PodPoint free charger or go for the Ohme through Octopus and take the Bmw charge credit?

 

[AndyJ]

I'm going to change supplier to Octopus ready for my e40 due in 2024.

For best interoperability, is the advice to accept the Bmw PodPoint free charger or go for the Ohme through Octopus and take the Bmw charge credit?

I don’t think it matters which charger you use really, my PodPoint is just scheduled to charge between 11:30pm and 5:30am And I’ve had no problems. You’ll find with the BMW free one that it is untethered without any surge protection and minimum warranty. You can add circa £250 to the “price” to get a cabled, protected one with a 5 year warranty. However, I reckon, sticking my finger in the air and feeling the breeze, a full price purchase and install is likely to be around £1000.
I took the charger from BMW and have so far spent the grand sum of £0 on the BMW charge card that come with the car over the 4 months I’ve had it (publicly charged only 3 times, none of which was payable with the card). So the answer for me would be to pick over this info and see what works best - with a home charger would you need to do a lot of public charging? Enough to spend over £750 in the year?

So, you could spend £0 to £250 for a charger, depending on the convenience/protection you wanted, and pay for public charging at normal rate (bit of a discount with the BMW card for a year), or pay £1000 for a home charger and get £750 of free charging for a year (Equates to approx. 3,300 miles @ 80p/kW and 3.5m / kWh)

 

[Iridium]

I have a Hypervolt 2 which with a 10m cable, armoured feed (inc a Cat5 Ethernet within), fully separate feed from the meter tails and all the necessary circuit protection hardware was just over £2k a year ago. That price also included a pre- and post install safety check and survey.

Beware of some of the on line indicative prices. A colleague was quoted £750 inc the £350 grant (now gone unless renting) but when the installer came out to do the job the price went up by £1,500. This was due the ‘quote’ not having had any kind of survey, or asking any questions about what space existed in his consumer unit. Before committing to anything, ask questions of the installer about what they are actually going to do, and more importantly what they don’t provide (and what assumptions they have made) for the price.

At some point I may well switch to IO and the install is compatible.

 

[FortyTwo]

@AndyJ are you getting the 7.5p/kw when using the PodPoint to set the timing period?

 

[AndyJ]

@AndyJ are you getting the 7.5p/kw when using the PodPoint to set the timing period?

I’m getting 7p per kWh from 11:30pm until 5:30pm. My Podpoint is scheduled to charge between those times. You don’t have to use the app, but the app does give flexibility on the times I believe, I.e. if the app controls the schedule and it charges outside those core hours you still only pay 7p. The problem I experienced was that if I plugged the car in it always started charging immediately and didn’t seem to stop so the app wasn’t controlling it properly. I gave up, and now just manage the charging myself between those times.

 

[MINi4]

The problem I experienced was that if I plugged the car in it always started charging immediately and didn’t seem to stop so the app wasn’t controlling it properly.

Octopus state ‘Why does my car keep charging after I plug it in? We stop the charging and create a charging plan as soon as we know you are plugged in. With some electric vehicles, we only receive the data every 20-30 minutes, so there may be some time before we can stop the charge. To avoid this delay, you can stop the charge manually in your vehicle’s app after plugging it in.’

Every time I plug the charger in, I immediately use the MyBMW app to stop the charging. After a few minutes or so, the mapped charging plan is available in the Octopus app. This works for me every time. If you set the ‘ready by time’ to 04:00, then (with your BMW at for example 40% SOC) I have seen it map my off peak charging from 15:30hrs to 16:30, then 19:30 through to the normal 23:30 off peak rate. (It clearly avoids the national grid peak usage 16:30-19:30). Hopefully this should also work for you.

 

[AndyJ]

Octopus state ‘Why does my car keep charging after I plug it in? We stop the charging and create a charging plan as soon as we know you are plugged in. With some electric vehicles, we only receive the data every 20-30 minutes, so there may be some time before we can stop the charge. To avoid this delay, you can stop the charge manually in your vehicle’s app after plugging it in.’

Every time I plug the charger in, I immediately use the MyBMW app to stop the charging. After a few minutes or so, the mapped charging plan is available in the Octopus app. This works for me every time. If you set the ‘ready by time’ to 04:00, then (with your BMW at for example 40% SOC) I have seen it map my off peak charging from 15:30hrs to 16:30, then 19:30 through to the normal 23:30 off peak rate. (It clearly avoids the national grid peak usage 16:30-19:30). Hopefully this should also work for you.

That is very interesting, and useful. I hadn’t come across that and it wasn’t mentioned by Octopus during any contact with them. If I understand what you are saying, then having the car charge at, say, the times you mentioned you only get charged 7p? Does the full 11:30pm to 5:30am period apply in those situations?
My (our) situation is quite simple as we are retired. We have no “ready by” requirement and the majority of our journey’s are short. Longer journey’s are planned for. As yet, we’ve had no “emergency“ journey requirement.

 

[MINi4]

That is very interesting, and useful. I hadn’t come across that and it wasn’t mentioned by Octopus during any contact with them. If I understand what you are saying, then having the car charge at, say, the times you mentioned you only get charged 7p? Does the full 11:30pm to 5:30am period apply in those situations?
My (our) situation is quite simple as we are retired. We have no “ready by” requirement and the majority of our journey’s are short. Longer journey’s are planned for. As yet, we’ve had no “emergency“ journey requirement.

I can’t remember which Octopus webpage I got that from, but I copied the text for myself at the time. Yes, any Octopus mapped charging times outside the normal window cost 7.5p/kWh (so get the washing machine, tumble dryer! etc, on! 😃). The normal 11:30pm to 5:30am period always applies regardless if not charging that day or there are additional mapped charging times. I don’t need my car either for 04:00, but that doesn’t stop the request for that time. Putting an earlier ‘ready by’, shifts any mapped off peak charging earlier into the evening. An example of a mapped charging time:

 

[Iridium]

What ‘access’ to your i4 do Octopus need?

I’ve seen various comments on line (not here) so thought that I’d ask those actually using IO with their i4s.

 

[AndyJ]

I can’t remember which Octopus webpage I got that from, but I copied the text for myself at the time. Yes, any Octopus mapped charging times outside the normal window cost 7.5p/kWh (so get the washing machine, tumble dryer! etc, on! 😃). The normal 11:30pm to 5:30am period always applies regardless if not charging that day or there are additional mapped charging times. I don’t need my car either for 04:00, but that doesn’t stop the request for that time. Putting an earlier ‘ready by’, shifts any mapped off peak charging earlier into the evening. An example of a mapped charging time:
View attachment 35655

Great info, thanks. The washing machine and dishwasher all go on overnight now. I’m working on my wife to set an alarm to do the ironing - that’s not going so well.

 

[MINi4]

What ‘access’ to your i4 do Octopus need?

I’ve seen various comments on line (not here) so thought that I’d ask those actually using IO with their i4s.

Octopus need access to login via BMWConnectedDrive to your car so that they can determine location (that it’s at your home), SOC (to work out how much time is required to reach the target charge) and of course to enable Octopus to start/pause and stop charging at the mapped times.

 

[Iridium]

Thanks for confirming.

Hmmm….not sure that I want anyone other than my family (or BMW) knowing where my car is at all times.

I did pose a question to them about what data they need, why, and how they safeguard it and where that data is being stored and managed (as in within the UK, or overseas) - or processed in legal parlance. I didn’t get an answer! That doesn’t inspire confidence.

 

[MINi4]

Hmmm….not sure that I want anyone other than my family (or BMW) knowing where my car is at all times.

If your vehicle tracking is on to enable many of the MyBMW app features, BMW in theory knows where your car is at all times? But with so much of this data from millions of cars going to BMW, it’s pretty much anonymised (unless a specific search is done). Plus it’s not really an issue unless you’re getting up to dubious, nefarious deeds? 😉😆

 

[Iridium]

Nothing dubious or nefarious ( ), but any data processor has to be able to justify the necessity and proportionality of collecting, managing and processing data, including how it is safeguarded. When a company decides to ignore the questions, that raises a red flag. If they chose to answer then I would have what I needed to make an ‘informed’ decision about IO.

 

[StuMac]

My car finally arrived on Friday afternoon, pretty much spent the weekend playing with Sport Boost - I know but new toys. I have Octopus Inteli Go and have the free BMW Pod point but took the tethered upgrade. The initial test charge worked as it should and so far the OI scheduled charges have also worked fine, going to look into 'Mini4's suggestion for the 4am ready for time.

Absolutely love the car, it replaces a 2016 XF S that I also thought was totally brilliant.

 

[AndyJ]

So, I gave this another go. Octopus app set to smart charge and saying it will set a schedule when the car is plugged in. Car was plugged in last night, set to charge immediate. PodPoint put to manual. Car starts charging and I stop it. Octopus app gives me two charging slots overnight. PodPoint says that the battery is full or car has a schedule set. MyBMW tells me charging was interrupted (because I stopped it) and gives me an option to restart it which I ignore obviously; it also tells me that charging is (still) set to immediate. I presume Octopus app will load the schedule when it needs to.

wake up this morning and the car is not charged. I don’t know what, if anything, I’ve done wrong. I need to trust this stuff to work; it’s not a big issue today but it must charge tonight and tomorrow and I just don’t trust this integration to work to try again until it doesn’t matter if it fails. However, I don’t know what to do differently.