Hi,

I'm a new Skoda owner -- bought a used Skoda Superb iv PHEV (21 plate) in August -- which is almost my first plug-in PHEV.

I'm trying to use the preconditioning feature so that the car warms up -- powered from my EV charger -- by the time I leave for work. However, it only works some of the time, despite me not changing any settings!

 

My set up is:

* Ohme epod charger.

* Intelligent Octopus Go tariff.

* Ohme app is set to use smart charging, but also with the "cabin preconditioning" option set to yes (and it warns that this will mean it may deliver power during peak times).

* My departure time in the Ohme app is set to 7am, and precondition is set to run for 60 minutes.

* In the car itself, in emanager I have set it to a departure time of 7am, with "off-peak charging" unchecked (so the charger decides when to charge); but with the "conditioning" selected and set to 22 deg.

* The option "Preconditioning with battery power" is disabled -- I want it to use the mains to precondition.

 

I have not connected the Ohme app to the MySkoda app, because I haven't subscribed to any Skoda services (£36/year to be able to set or view the charging status? No.)

 

I don't know if the issue is with the charger, the car, or somewhere between them and on most days it works fine. On others -- like today when it's -3C outside -- it doesn't.

 

Has anyone else experienced this or can give me any pointers?

Never heard of ohme, so I googled ohme Skoda and saw this

 

Not exactly your issue I don’t think but scrolling through quickly I saw some others with ohme and octopus

 

might help might not 😁

So the issue is likely that the car departure time is fighting with the ohme departure time. The precondition setting will not do anything with the car if it's set on the power point (ohme). You need to have some sort of signal to the car to tell it to warm up. It's the car that does the warming after all. Either have the octopus app talk to the car (you can't do this due to not having a subscription) or program the car and have that do all the work. That's the only way I got it to work. Otherwise different systems are fighting for control. Sometimes it might work but usually not.

I have turned off automatic control in the octopus app. It means I don't get any additional cheap slots but the preconditioning is more important to me. Now and then I turn it back on to show the octopus servers I'm still alive.

18 minutes ago, MarkyG82 said:

So the issue is likely that the car departure time is fighting with the ohme departure time. The precondition setting will not do anything with the car if it's set on the power point (ohme). You need to have some sort of signal to the car to tell it to warm up. It's the car that does the warming after all. Either have the octopus app talk to the car (you can't do this due to not having a subscription) or program the car and have that do all the work. That's the only way I got it to work. Otherwise different systems are fighting for control. Sometimes it might work but usually not.

I have turned off automatic control in the octopus app. It means I don't get any additional cheap slots but the preconditioning is more important to me. Now and then I turn it back on to show the octopus servers I'm still alive.

Thanks - I wondered if it could be something like this. The way I assumed it would work is that the Ohme app will allow the car to draw power from 6am onwards (the Ohme app allows up to an hour for preconditioning), but the car itself would decide when to actually pull the power.

Reading between the lines of this then, I wonder if the issue is that the car, today, decided it needed longer than an hour, tried to turn on before the charger would let it, found that there was no power and so gave up -- and didn't try again when the charger "turned on".

I guess the other thing to try apart from your suggestion (which sounds sensible) is to try allowing preconditioning on battery -- so it can start when it wants and presumably when the charger allows power, it will also recharge the battery. Maybe.... I'll try it and see!

 

 

The issue with battery power is it might not backfill the lost charge. Especially this time of year. I reckon I'd lose about 5 miles range doing that. Mine being the previous gen so smaller battery I have a small enough range as it is. This morning after a few days of cold I had 22 miles on the gom. In the summer I get between 26 and 28 depending how I drive. That's with AC on.  I had 7 miles left after 11 miles commute this morning due to the cold. It really hammers it. There's some mods you can do like insulation on the inside of the underpanels. Apparently it can help by 10% give or take. If we keep getting colder winters I might think about it. Should help with excess heat from tarmac in the summer too.