IO uses an API to control the cars charging but power consumed in the cheap period is measured by the smart meter using half hourly meter readings.
If you are checking the smart meter displays, they will be wrong when calculating the cost. They simply can’t handle calculating costs when the price is changing at half hour intervals like it can with IO. You’d need to check your account in the website.
You don’t have to use the intelligent charging every day, just once a month to stay on the tariff. All power consumed in the standard cheap window is 7.5p. If IO decides to charge your car outside of this window, all power consumed in that window is also at 7.5p. You’ll notice they are all in half hour blocks to fit in with smart meter readings.
When using intelligent charging you shouldn’t set a schedule on your charger but as I said above you don’t need to use the system daily and you can just rely on the cheap period most of the time.
The Ovo version of the tariff is very different, that measures the power delivered by the charger or via the cars API and effectively gives you a rebate for that power only (down to 10p). The power the rest of your house consumes is still at the standard rate. The fact they only count the power delivered to the car at 10p is why they can have lower headline day rate but it can work out more expensive depending on your consumption profile.
. They are tiny cars. Any power train will do well…
