Aspman

Are all new cars cheap cr.p at the moment? We have out ID3 and it's perfectly functional but I would suggest the internal quality compaired to cars of 5-10yr ago down the toilet and round the U bend. I was considering the scratchy plastics and thin seats etc and realised it reminded me of a Renault Clio I had in the early 2000, tbh the Clio had much superior seats. Looking around at new cars I have seen it's all flat panels, thin shiny plastics and even thinner shinier leather etc. Even on 'premium' models. My Subaru feels like a luxury tank compared to the ID3 and Sub is hardly a byword for luxury.

No absolutely not. Don't get caught up in the 'don't you want a new one' mentality many people have. Commerce relies on this for so many things, think about the people who change their phone every year or every contract. If it works for you then stick with it. At some point the attitude flips and it becomes a classic.

Test charge (max) worked, just did it for a few minutes. Ohme app has the car and schedule all in the right placed. Funnily enough no, I'm to leave it to the Ohme app. The Octopus app only has the charger not the car and Octopus themselves recommend using the Ohme app not their app except as a backup option.

Sooo, 10min on hold and then 30min on a call with, actually a vey helpful, Octopus EV support chap. Basically, it's all Octopus fault. They pushed out a policy change and it's been screwing up lots of linking processes. Support pushed out the previous policy and the app was then able to continue. All the apps have terrible user experience choices which made the whole process a lot harder than it needs to be. And the VW app is apparently notorious for scewing things up as well in it's own special way. The ideal is that you leave the car plugged in when you are not using it, then Octopus can push energy to it whenever there is surplus which they will supply at the EV rate (7p). So although the EV rate is 23:30 - 5:30 if Octopus have surplus they can supply charge to you at 7p at any time. This is buggered up by VW software which doesn't cope with this and will put the car to sleep and not accept the power. So advised to not plug in when not in use but closer to normal schedule time.

Good point, now wasting my life on hold to support 😭

Seems to be a permissions issue between VW and Octopus. When I'm adding (or trying to) the Ohmo to the Octopus app it has to start with the car brand, then Charger. Then it asks for the VW app type and login. This is where it failed before and now won't even get to this step.

It's a VW ID3. the car drives fine, the entertainment system works fine. But the charging apps etc are a guddle. There is no timer on the car as far as I can tell only a charge level limiter (battery health thing). Tbh for me right now, it's now ok. I've swiched off alerts from the VW app so it's confusion with charging is now silenced. the Octopus device thing isn't working at all but the charger Ohme app is working fine. So the Ohme is set to charge at the cheap rate and t's behaving so tbh that'll do. I've no time to spend hours farting around trying to make thing work or on support calls. Although this morning the charging cable refused to unlock for SWMBO until she'd logged into the car and opened the VW app on her phone. Which is different to yesterday when all you had to do was unlock the car.

remoed the car from the Octopus app. Went to reconnect and now - "cannot connect to your device". Then a rather old school 401 error, which implies wrong password on my part except I'm using a password manager so it's not.

Except "Intelligent Octopus Go" isn't listed as a tariff in the Ohme app. "Octopus Go" is but that's a different rate. I have to set the tariff manually It does seem to talk to the car though.

Yep Octopus Intelligent Go Ohme 7kW charger (supplied by Octopus) VW ID3 I was wondering if I should just remove the car from the Octopus app and let the Ohme carger deal with it.

Parking the whole EV Vs ICE thing. Why are the apps with the cars so bad? I had to install of update three apps to get the car to charge at home. All I want to do is plug it in and have it charge during the cheap rate at night. The car app, which only sets a % limit not a time. The charger app which sets a % and a schedued chargin window but then changes the times and does wierd scheduling due to 'network demand'. The power company app which also can set % and and end time but not a start. What I'm getting is the car app constantly alerting through the night because it's not happy with what the charger app is doing. The charger app set to go to 80% but only got to 77% today but won't say why The power company app moans that it can't talk to the car, and flags an error that 'something isn't quite right' but only 5hr after the car was unplugged. why do they make it so hard to just plug the damn thing in and charge between 23:30 and 5:30? This is after the car was supplied with QR codes for software which all had broken links, the setup which failed each and every time and needed to be repeated 2-3x for each driver. Not to meantion each driver needing an account to make the car work properly which itself involved an unholy (and I'm sure quite unlawful) personal data grab. Plug in charge on timer. Get in turn key drive off. Why so awful why.

21st even

Charger now connected. Car scheduled for 12st

It's not the stuff that smells really odd and not nice is it?

I've no issues with a fair retest at any age. TBH why not retest every 10yr, doesn't need to be the full thing just a brief drive around with a qualified person to check you're safe and a few questions to cehck you're not mental. Drink drive limit can never be 0 because naturally your body produces a little bit, some food contain a tiny amount (apples for example) and testing below a certain level is unreliable. TBH the current levels are ok I think. People who are a danger are way over that or drug driving which is likely a bigger problem these days

It's all Octopus other than the DNO who is SSEN. But since everything was clearly labelled on the fusebox which they asked for a picture of in the first place they could have raised the issue right at the start to get DNO signoff rather than at the point of connecting up the cables after he's drilled through my walls. So yes car back on assuming the order wan't cancelled. I've not heard anything tbh. Next week's chase.

Annnnnnd after submitting some more pictures and a video, incidentally exactly the same pictures and video I was asked to supply at the start of the process, apparently this time it's ok. No load test, nothing done on site just two months of delays to review the same information again before the same fitter comes back to finish the job he started in August. No one does bureaucracy like Britain!

My dashcam is getting old, still works but the software doesn't work on my new phones etc so checking footaes always requires the card out and linked to a laptop. I was thinking things must have moved on in the last 5yr. What is decent thse days?

SSEN got in touch. "we have reviewed we need more information. We'll be in touch" Pretty much sums it up. Email from Octopus, "how did we do 🙂😐🙁 please give us feedback". [cracks knuckles] Well let me tell you........ Shame it was just a smiley and a one liner

Apparently it's all with the DNO and on their timescales now which are unknown. Octo EV told I will wait until charges/penalties are about to kick in then cancel the order if the charger isn't approved, unless Octopus agree to wave all fees and penalties in the event of the charger being rejected.

Heatpump runs 24/7 pretty much but it's only doing full load for hot water and that would be early morning same as car charging but pretty much nothing else. I've pushed for an answer but no answer so far today. I can can car for free at the moment as I have no fixed delivery date. I've told them no answer by Friday and I'll push to delay, no delay and I'll cancel the order until the charging situation is resolved one way or another.

they might refuse to install at all, but the main issue is no answer until it's too late and either it all works out or I've a car that's no use/rejection fee to look forward to.

And Octopus seem to think I'd be keen to pay to put in 3 phase. Knowing where the nearest supply is I think it'd only cost me about £250,000. Suggested alternative being to use the local gstation, 1 mile away, no pavements and 47p kWh 4hr minimum. So drive down and pick the car up every 4hr. Or a 3pin plug which isn't recommended.

Going off topic but UK govs like to talk market then shaft us when the station builders then demand (and get) guaranteed pricing per kWh. "The market" shouldn't only apply to consumers

It's octopus all the way. They supply the car, the charger and the leccy. Fitter turned up in an Octopus van. We have heat pump which might be why we have the 100A. We've actuall got 3 electric showers. We have one in the garage, as said stupid number of bathrooms but we'd have got nothing back by removing one. I agree that the price of leccy is the big blocker to green energy adoption. It's stupid if not immoral to try to push people onto energy that is 4x as expensive as what they aready have and arguably less suited to the changeable british climate. However..all going ahead I will get an EV charging rate of 6.5p kWh for 5hr a night. At that point it starts to make sense. If the UK woud invest in infrastructure and not allow the energy shareholders to milk us dry, if we could supply leccy at gas prices then suddenly heat pumps etc will start to make sense and you'll get universal adoption, zero carbon in sight immediately. But the chance of that is 0%.