Ohme

The App until the last update was basic and didn’t cause any issues. However, since the latest update both our electric cars are now having problems working with this app and charging at the correct times. The customer service team say it is the cars software. Of course they would say that. Both cars were working fine until your update. So please explain that! Essentially after the update the charger is trying to take over when the car starts to charge and it is getting this wrong. Both my wife and I charge our car on cheap rate overnight tariffs which is a third of the price during peak hours. We set up both of our cars to charge on customised charging times for these off peak charges. As I am sure many people do. But after the update the cars charge intermittently before these cheap rate tariffs and continue after they have finished despite the fact that both the app and the cars are still set for the cheap rate tariffs. Having contacted the customer support team nearly three weeks ago. They have yet to resolve this or even call me to resolve. Very poor and I would not recommend this product

I have been using this app for a year, with an Ohme charger and the Intelligent Octopus tariff. Setting things up is the first challenge - plug and play it isn’t. There’s a very good Facebook group that offers support, and Ohme has now published a detailed how-to guide, but this isn’t for people who aren’t comfortable with technology. The second challenge is reliability. Set up to access car data from the manufacturer, the system is prone to failure. Admittedly, these failures may be down to the car or carmaker, but I have had charging issues when other apps using this data work and the Enode website shows no downtime for the car data source. There is a way to charge the car without this connection, but the Ohme charger apparently can’t get data from the car on the initial state of charge. I get that this is a beta version but Ohme chargers are sold to the general public, not a group of testers, so I feel that a more practical version of the less sophisticated (less integrated) version should be built in as standard. Until then, this is a classic case of the perfect (fully integrated dream) being the enemy of the good (something that actually works reliably).

Having just listened to a podcast which talked about this app and it’s use to control EV charging from your home supply in conjunction with a very special control cable. The problem I have with this and any app that from day one has no support option in place to enable any constructive comments to be made directly to the developers. The item of comment for this is you have to create a live account to just access past page one and second without providing it with details regarding the special cable it is not possible to see the content of the details screens this is regarding the times and details of the EV to be charged. My suggestion is to have a visual demo on the front screen to enable the user to have a visual of the details required at the time of setup of all screens. DFG a new potential customer for duel fuel account but not before I see how it all works to save me money.