After eight months and 5,000 miles of driving an electric vehicle , I thought it was about time I did a review of the experience. It takes three elements to charge the car at home, as follows:
Firstly there’s the electricity supplier. I’m a customer of Octopus energy and they seem to be a very “switched on” (no apologies for the pun) company. It has been said they’re more of a software company than an energy company. They have developed customer software which they now license to other electricity companies and they aim to be innovative with their pricing structure (advert over). I use an App to monitor usage, bills, etc. They recommended the home car charger from Ohme. It isn’t the most popular but it works with Octopus to make a seamless connection.
Then there’s the Ohme charger. Seems simple enough. It’s best to manage this from the Ohme app which leaves a lot to be desired.
It certainly isn’t intuitive and might baffle some people who are not tech savvy. I do need to use it because whenever I plug the car in, for security reasons, the App requires my approval before it will make the connection.
And finally there’s the car. I can run the charging process from the car or use the Kia Connect App. Currently (another pun) I’m having a running battle with Kia because the App sometimes gives me an error saying I’ve accessed the car system too often. They don’t tell me how often is too often and I’m sure that shouldn’t be when it’s 7 am and it’s my first access of the day.
Kia tell me I need to delete all Apps that might be accessing the car other than their own. I’m assuming this is the Ohme charger but I need the Ohme App to approve the charging process. All of this is a long way from ideal and I suspect these different companies look at the problem from their point of view and not that of a customer. This whole process is a lot more complex than driving onto a petrol station forecourt, taking the petrol hose, sticking it in the car and pulling a lever for less than two minutes.
Bottom line – I really like the Kia as a car… it’s the charging process that needs to be worked on. And don’t get me started on charging when travelling. Every single charging service is different… different interface, different pricing and different reliability. I’ll do another review in January after it’s first service.
