Home Charging- using location

Faults and Technical chat for the Volkswagen ID.3
mc1611
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Joined: Sun Mar 14, 2021 5:03 pm

Post by mc1611 »

I just finished a 45 min Zoom with the dealer. They called VW before my call to get updates and basically the software is not ready, there is no indication when it will be ready!
- charging control via the app not ready
- locate your vehicle not ready or not active for UK (for unknown reasons, VW was trying to claim it has to do with UK law not allowing it hahaha, all other cars have it)
- my app was slight different from the dealer app we could not figure out why
- the online manual you can access in the car gives different indications from what is actually on the car menu screens (trying to set the low beam , just a gimmick but we could not follow the manuals guidance as menu in the car are different). Are there any other discrepancies between the car and the manual?
Looks like VW rushed to get the car on the market. If I buy a Golf from 10 years ago I know what to expect, but we paid for all these toys and none is available. Will it be ready by the time my lease expires?
This is my first VW and very likely the last.

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kaiz
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Post by kaiz »

digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:54 pm A simple question: why is the charge point's location relevant?
They think, you have many homes, where to charge. ;)
At first I couldn't find out, how and where to set the departure time.
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Ph66
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Post by Ph66 »

digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:54 pm A simple question: why is the charge point's location relevant?
With the last software update 783 , it gave us the ability to set up delayed charging using Location setting ..... (Under vechicle Menu ) And cheap electricity during the night.

No one said it's not available in the UK.

Re the Wecharge app - you can only seem to charge immediately.
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digital
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Post by digital »

Ph66 wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 5:12 pm
digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:54 pm A simple question: why is the charge point's location relevant?
With the last software update 783 , it gave us the ability to set up delayed charging using Location setting ..... (Under vechicle Menu ) And cheap electricity during the night.

No one said it's not available in the UK.

Re the Wecharge app - you can only seem to charge immediately.
You seem to have misunderstood my question. It was a very basic 'why does the car need to know its location for charging purposes?'.
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Post by G43FAN »

digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 8:27 pm
Ph66 wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 5:12 pm
digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:54 pm A simple question: why is the charge point's location relevant?
With the last software update 783 , it gave us the ability to set up delayed charging using Location setting ..... (Under vechicle Menu ) And cheap electricity during the night.

No one said it's not available in the UK.

Re the Wecharge app - you can only seem to charge immediately.
You seem to have misunderstood my question. It was a very basic 'why does the car need to know its location for charging purposes?'.
I assume that if you were to have the same commute on a number of days and were lucky enough to have access to a charger at both ends you would set up a charging profile at each so you could have the car charged ready for your home journey.
Ph66
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Post by Ph66 »

digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 8:27 pm
Ph66 wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 5:12 pm
digital wrote: Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:54 pm A simple question: why is the charge point's location relevant?
With the last software update 783 , it gave us the ability to set up delayed charging using Location setting ..... (Under vechicle Menu ) And cheap electricity during the night.

No one said it's not available in the UK.

Re the Wecharge app - you can only seem to charge immediately.
You seem to have misunderstood my question. It was a very basic 'why does the car need to know its location for charging purposes?'.
I understand your comment now - I think someone has already mentioned earlier on, it might work using multiple locations say home & work , or Home 1 and home 2 or home 3.
Otherwise it is a little bit over complicated .
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Ph66
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Post by Ph66 »

Hi

Tried again to charge the car last night using delayed timing by location. All good for to start with - flashing green light on the car charging flap, expected it to come on at 5 past midnight . At 22:30 I noticed the smart meter was showing red - the car had decided to start charging !!! I let it carry on and it stopped at 81%.

I did everything the same as last time - departure time set, preferred charging time 0:05 to 04:30 and 80% .

Pod point say its the car software that says when to charge - is this another fault with the software ?? Or is it that it does not recognise the HOME location , but why flash green - when starting the process.

Anyone else solved this problem ?

The on-line manual is not very useful .

I don't fancy having to manually switch charging on at midnight every time .

783 software .
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Deleted User 192

Post by Deleted User 192 »

Ph66 wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:01 am
I don't fancy having to manually switch charging on at midnight every time .

This is why I’ve switched my tariff to have off-peak starting at 20:30, just plug in at that time and leave it...

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stu-evs
Posts: 71
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Post by stu-evs »

Ph66 wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:01 am Hi

Tried again to charge the car last night using delayed timing by location. All good for to start with - flashing green light on the car charging flap, expected it to come on at 5 past midnight . At 22:30 I noticed the smart meter was showing red - the car had decided to start charging !!! I let it carry on and it stopped at 81%.

I did everything the same as last time - departure time set, preferred charging time 0:05 to 04:30 and 80% .

Pod point say its the car software that says when to charge - is this another fault with the software ?? Or is it that it does not recognise the HOME location , but why flash green - when starting the process.

Anyone else solved this problem ?

The on-line manual is not very useful .

I don't fancy having to manually switch charging on at midnight every time .

783 software .
I think the issue here is in understanding what each ‘feature’ is doing.....

You’ve set a departure time with a given percentage - which tells the car that you need 80% by that time.

You’ve then set PREFERRED charging times. Note that it’s preferred, not scheduled.

So the car is effectively then doing a calculation based on current charge as to whether it thinks it can get to 80% by your departure time, taking into account your PREFERRED charging time. If it thinks that it won’t get to 80% by then, then it will start charging earlier (I’ve no idea what charge rates etc. It’s using for that calculation). It will use the preferred charging times as a ‘prioritisation’ but isn’t tied to them. Imagine how people would complain if it worked the other way around.....I.e. “I set the car at x% for departure because I had a long journey to do, woke up and it was only at half that as it had only charged during the preferred times......couldn’t get to where I wanted to go” etc..... ;-)

To set a SCHEDULED charge I’m using the scheduler on my charger. It switches on and off whenever I’ve programmed the charge for (in line with agile pricing) and charges the car. I have 80% set as max charge on the car (permanently, not linked to a location) - and so between them they get it right. If I want the car pre-heated before departure, then I set a departure time on the car & ensure a schedule slot is set on the charger for the 30mins or so leading up to departure - again, they work together then to ensure the car is warm and kept to 80% max charge. The only downside of this route is I may not actually get to 80% charge (depends how many slots I’ve scheduled and what starting soc is) - so I wouldn’t use this if I had a long journey to do - but it’s great for topping the car up for shorter commutes my wife does etc. on cheap electric.

So really depends on individual use case - and different functions would be used/combination of functions depending on the desired outcome.

Hope this helps?
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Deleted User 192

Post by Deleted User 192 »

Shame it doesn’t work.

I had no preferred times configured, but did set a departure time and %, the car got nowhere near to the % I set. If I had not set a departure time at all it would have naturally reached the set % with 50 minutes to spare. So it was technically possible to reach the %, but the car only trickle charged at the same rate from when I plugged it in through to the departure time.

My charge point doesn’t support it’s own native timed charging yet.

So now I have switched my tariff, I can just plug in at the start of the off-peak rate and it will hit 80% naturally before the end of my off-peak period.
stu-evs
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Post by stu-evs »

scott28tt wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 2:57 pm Shame it doesn’t work.

I had no preferred times configured, but did set a departure time and %, the car got nowhere near to the % I set. If I had not set a departure time at all it would have naturally reached the set % with 50 minutes to spare. So it was technically possible to reach the %, but the car only trickle charged at the same rate from when I plugged it in through to the departure time.

My charge point doesn’t support it’s own native timed charging yet.

So now I have switched my tariff, I can just plug in at the start of the off-peak rate and it will hit 80% naturally before the end of my off-peak period.
Oh, that's weird! I've used departure time on it's own for the past 2 or 3 months mainly until we switched to Agile. The behaviour I see with just departure time & 80% set is that it just pulls 7kw flat until it hits 80% (assuming there's enough time between plug in and departure time). Then ahead of departure time it starts pre-warming - and, assuming the charge had switched off at some point prior to then (which it normally has for us as we'd have plugged in the night before), then it will re-start pulling a charge from the charger to ensure that the battery stays at 80%.
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RobGDee
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Post by RobGDee »

I've got a ticket open with both VW and the ID App help desk RE timed charging. I've tried it every which way and although it sticks to the preferred times and also uses the plug for preheating etc reliably. There's one major flaw in that with location-based timed charging enabled with or without a departure time set it never charges at more than 2KW. As soon as I delete the location, bang! it charges at 7.4KW every time. I'm really hoping it's an OTA fix and not another dealer visit. I switch to Octopus this friday. BTW, 2.1 has fixed all other teething issues and I'm loving the car :)
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kaiz
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Post by kaiz »

RobGDee wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 5:40 pm I've got a ticket open with both VW and the ID App help desk RE timed charging. I've tried it every which way and although it sticks to the preferred times and also uses the plug for preheating etc reliably. There's one major flaw in that with location-based timed charging enabled with or without a departure time set it never charges at more than 2KW. As soon as I delete the location, bang! it charges at 7.4KW every time. I'm really hoping it's an OTA fix and not another dealer visit. I switch to Octopus this friday. BTW, 2.1 has fixed all other teething issues and I'm loving the car :)
How can you do location-based charging without departure time?
I just untick all departure time to switch off location, not deleting it.
My problem is, that when any location-based departure time is checked, I can't switch on charging in app.
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M100
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Post by M100 »

Where do I find the Preferred charging period settings ? I can only see the Location delayed charging system which is idiosyncratic but not bad. Most of the time.
Deleted User 192

Post by Deleted User 192 »

M100 wrote: Thu Aug 26, 2021 2:48 pm Where do I find the Preferred charging period settings ? I can only see the Location delayed charging system which is idiosyncratic but not bad. Most of the time.

They are shown “within” the settings for a location.
M100
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Post by M100 »

Thanks. Found it! Let’s see whether it is more reliable at charging during my Octopus Go cheap period.
sandyr
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Joined: Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:00 am

Post by sandyr »

Hi, I've also been having problems with timed charging, with a continuing process of trial and error over 2 months since buying the early July, in constant correspondence with the WeConnect helpdesk. I have an ID.3 Tour with Podpoint 7kW wallbox and Octopus electricity tariff (cheap power 0030-0430). Conclusions are:
- The car charges perfectly if no timings are set.
- If no timings are set on the car but I set a charge start/stop time on the wallbox, that also works, but of course I lose the car's ability to charge up to a specified level and to switch heating etc on for departure. So I wanted to persist with the car's settings.
- Setting just a departure time, the car does charge but falls short of the targetted level - sometimes by a few %, sometimes more.
- Setting just preferred times, the car does charge during the designated period but very slowly - falls far short of expected 7kW. Then I found that you're not supposed to set it up this way - you're meant to use preferred times and departure times together).
- So I tried that, and it again fell far short - reaching just 63% instead of 80% target, and with quite a lot of the charge falling outside the preferred period.
- At that point I feel like I've tried everything, and I'm now trying to escalate the problem with VW.

BTW the poor quality of instructions is a serious time-waster in fixing this - it took weeks to get the info I needed. The online manual is very superficial - it has blue text where you might think you click through from summary to more detail but no, it's just the summary. And nothing at all on charging - bizarre. The helpdesk several times sent me very poorly worded text about charging, and couldn't grasp that it wasn't totally obvious that you set a departure time as the first priority, then a preferred time - I'm not a daily commuter with a regular schedule so for me it is more obvious just to use the preferred time. And the car itself, once you've found the well-hidden departure time, and even-better-hidden preferred time, gives no clue that you need to set them both. Altogether there's a big sense that no-one thought this through!

Any similar experiences or solutions?!?
Hoppy
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Post by Hoppy »

We use pod point timed charge and manually heat the car in winter by switching all heating on using the app when we get up !
Not perfect and hopefully sorted soon but it works !!
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M100
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Post by M100 »

I have a pod point without a timer. I have now tried departure time at 4.30 and preferred time from 0.30-4.30 and it seems to have worked! Got to 80% fine.
steve
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Post by steve »

Last evening I set the preferred time to be 0030 to 0430 and departure time 0700, stop at 80%. It charged from 0300 to 0430 and again 0615 to 0645 All charging at 7.4kw.

So if it had started a little earlier it could have done it all within the preferred window. I suppose it was seeing that departure time, and if I'd set it to heat the car for 7 it might have made some sense. but I didn't, so its only significance was as a deadline. Anyway, why blast away at full power just to provide heating? Perhaps that warms the battery?

Verdict; pretty good, assuming it was wanting to warm the battery for the departure time
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