EV general discussion

Had my DNO request approved but now the wait begins for the charger to get installed.

Feel like I'm missing out on all of the secret sauce of EV cars without being able to charge up at home. Still have 631 free supercharging miles available to me and about 100 left in the car. They said once it's been booked in it should be about 2 weeks. Fingers crossed!
 
Ewaf said:
Turns out they also exclude all Tesla's. Think I'll go with ALA
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I put a post on yesterday then pulled it so put this here just in case it happens to others.

Basically on Tuesday iGo didn't give us a schedule with our Zappi and when I got up Wednesday morning the EV hadn't charged up.
I couldn't do anything until I got home.
I couldn't do the two button press on the Zappi to reboot it and that's when I posted on here.
Anyway, found another way to do it through the menu : Go to Menu → Other Settings → Advanced → 0000 → System → Bootloader → Run
and that worked.
 
Hi all,

I've had my Porsche Taycan GTS Sport Turismo for a couple of weeks now and have been using the Porsche mobile charger to top it up overnight as well as public chargers to charge the car.

However, I had a Zappi 2.1 wall charger fitted yesterday by Ovo. The engineer set up my Charge Anytime app and the MyEnergi app. Then we noticed that within the CA app, it said it was being discontinued and recommended using the new Ovo Charge app. So we I downloaded that and set it up.

Now, as I said I'm new to EV's and although the engineer went over everything with me yesterday and gave basic instructions on the Zappi, running through the different functions on the little screen on the box itself, fast forward to the next day and I'm struggling to remember everything he said.........DOH!!! :confused:

I may be overthinking a lot of this and that the Charge Anytime system is maybe, actually as simple as it sounds - just plug in - set what time you want the car ready for the next day and let it do its thing? But there's a few other questions I had, which are below.

So for those here who are with Ovo and Charge Anytime, I'm hoping you can assist an idiot with some info!!! Apologies for the long post.

    • When the technician first ran through the operation of the Zappi via the screen on the box, he showed me the different modes (Eco, Fast etc) by pressing one of the buttons. However, now I cant select any of those functions and it displays 'MNGD' with a little clock symbol next to it. I'm assuming this is the Charge Anytime system now 'managing' the charging? So does that mean I cant select any of the modes on the Zappi manually?
    • I can't see anywhere in either the Charge Anytime or Ovo Charge apps where I can set the maximum percentage to charge to? Obviously for most of the time I'd want to limit that to 80% ish, but there isnt anywhere in any of the apps I can see that I can change that? I can see an option to change the percentage in the My Porsche app, but I thought the Ovo system and app would ignore those and override the Porsche app and any setting in it?
    • Engineer said that if I wanted to instantly charge the car, I could press a 'Charge Now' (I think that was the name of it) button on the app, but again - now I'm looking at the app, I can't see a 'Charge Now' button anywhere?
    • Engineer said that if you did use the 'Charge Now' button/function it would charge at your standard electricity rate and not the cheaper Charge Anytime rate, but he did also say you can actually charge instantly by simply changing the timer (or the ready time) but I cannot for the life of me remember what he said and how to do that?
    • Again, on the subject of not being able to find anywhere in the apps to change the charge percentage, sometimes I may wish to charge to 100% rather than 80% - how do I do that?
    • Isn't there anywhere in any of the apps that you can push a button to stop charging? Say I get to 70% charge and decide that is enough, can I not tell the app to stop charging or do I need to physically go outside and unplug the car?


      I've probably asked a number of daft/obvious things there, but coming from the Porsche Mobile charger which all you had to do with was plug in and switch on, I'm finding this a bit more complex!! I may have forgotten some questions and if they pop into my head I will post them.

      Hoping someone who has been using this setup with Ovo can assist.

      Many thanks.

    Pic of the Zappi screen this morning showing the 'MNGD' on the screen:-

    Vyj3pln.jpeg
 
I’m not on anytime but the charger can’t override the charge limit set in the car nor can it see what % charge the car is actually at.

Some systems link to the cars app so it can tell what state of charge it’s at but most don’t. Usually the anytime app you select how much % you want to add and it changes the car until it it’s the limit set in the car and stops.

It should just be a case of Ovo manages the charger, you tell ovo what % you want adding any by what time and it sorts out the rest.

Charge now may also be called ‘bump charge’ or similar.
 
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Ohme can see the car SOC if connected. What i find odd is that Ohme uses the gross battery capacity rather than net for the power requirement when forecasting.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I’m not on anytime but the charger can’t override the charge limit set in the car nor can it see what % charge the car is actually at.

Some systems link to the cars app so it can tell what state of charge it’s at but most don’t. Usually the anytime app you select how much % you want to add and it changes the car until it it’s the limit set in the car and stops.

It should just be a case of Ovo manages the charger, you tell ovo what % you want adding any by what time and it sorts out the rest.

Charge now may also be called ‘bump charge’ or similar.
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Thanks, i had no idea that there are generally two ways these things work - either the charger is integrated with the Charge Anytime system/process or the car is integrated with it. Both my car and charger are compatible with CA, but in my case, the engineer has set it up so the charger is integrated with Charge Anytime and the OVO system therefore manages the whole process.

That's why I can only see the charger listed in the OVO Charge app and not the car. In the case of OVO Charge Anytime, this is the most efficient way to connect it all up - I just didn't realise that was how it was set up!

So now I know this, I have set the maximum charge level to 80% through the My Porsche app. If I need to charge to 100% at any point, I can just tap the 'Direct Charge' button in the My Porsche app and it'll bypass the 80% maximum.

So it all makes a bit more sense now.
 
TNA said:
Bloody hell. Tesla doing well in here :p
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When I was trying to pick an EV I initially wanted to avoid a Tesla but they seem like the best bang for your buck, really. Out of the brands I was looking at anyway.

Now if I had lots of extra cash, I probably would've went for something a bit fancier lol
 
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Draeger said:
    • I can't see anywhere in either the Charge Anytime or Ovo Charge apps where I can set the maximum percentage to charge to? Obviously for most of the time I'd want to limit that to 80% ish, but there isnt anywhere in any of the apps I can see that I can change that?
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Mine is setup to talk to the car rather than charger since Ovo fell out with Ohme but on my app, this is changeable in the 'Schedule' tab of the Charge Anytime app - here I have an option to amend the 'Ready By' time and the minimum and maximum charge levels (minimum sets a lower threshold where it will instantly charge at full rate until it reaches that threshold)
 
Junglist said:
When I was trying to pick an EV I initially wanted to avoid a Tesla but they seem like the best bang for your buck, really. Out of the brands I was looking at anyway.

Now if I had lots of extra cash, I probably would've went for something a bit fancier lol
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I may have gone for one. But Elon put me right off. Plus I find the design looks aged. They really need to update it.

I do like the inside and all the tech though :D
 
They are well sorted EVs and for used ones they are a really competitive product compared to what was available a few years ago where the competition was weaker.

Compared to the new stuff coming out though, they are rapidly falling behind the tech curve and I wouldn't buy one new now - and the sales figures are kinda showing that I think.
 
Kenai said:
Mine is setup to talk to the car rather than charger since Ovo fell out with Ohme but on my app, this is changeable in the 'Schedule' tab of the Charge Anytime app - here I have an option to amend the 'Ready By' time and the minimum and maximum charge levels (minimum sets a lower threshold where it will instantly charge at full rate until it reaches that threshold)
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Cheers :)

Since mine is set up for Ovo to talk to the Zappi rather than the car, I've added a charging profile and set my max charge to 80% via the My Porsche app - tested it yesterday and it worked perfectly. If I want to charge to 100% because I know I'll be driving the car immediately or first thing the next morning for a long trip, I can just tap the 'Direct Charging' button in the My Porsche app and the Zappi will charge to 100% and ignore the 80% limit. As an aside - my understaning is that any max charge limit set gets ignored when DC charging from a public fast charger, so don't need to worry about that.

If I want to start charging immediately then I just set the ready time to something completely unachievable such as for it to be ready in an hour or two and the Zappi kicks in and starts charging straight away.

So ultimately, I do actually think I was overthinking everything - the process really is as simple as plug it in and forget it. Can't complain at running a 590bhp Taycan for 7p per kWh either :D, although from what I've read the way Ovo apply the correct cheap rate is charge you at your standard tarrif rate and then credit you back the difference from the 7p per Kwh at the end of the month, which seems a bit of a roundabout way of doing it although I expect there is a benefit to them doing it that way!
 
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