anyone have an issue with scheduled charging on BZX4?

[BZ4XGrr]

And PodPoint chargers? And EVC+ chargers? And Zappi chargers? And eON chargers? My car works with none of the above.

I literally cannot charge my car at home or work. If Toyota know that their car is incompatible with certain different chargers, do you not think it makes sense to advise prospective customers of this? Given the number of Octopus customers on here and other forums complaining that their BZ4X won't charge, it suggests it's not a very well known issue - even the garage weren't aware of it and it has taken 5 trips for the car to the garage (across 20 or so days) before Toyota HQ advised the dealer what the issue was.

We will update others of progress as and when it is made.

[Andy BZ4x]

I have been using a Pod point charger with my BZ4X using scheduled charging for over a year now & never had a problem, I have also used a range of public chargers without any issues. 

[JonathanP]

My Zappi charger with Octopus Energy has been working fine.
Charges during the day from solar with Smart Scheduling turned off in the Octopus app, and if I need to charge in an evening I turn the smart schedule back on.
I admit I had to read the instructions for the Zappi to get the settings correct and when it has failed to charge it's been my fault for having the settings wrong

[BZ4XGrr]

Interesting. Octopus Energy's own website states the BZ4X isn't compatible with Intelligent Octopus Go, which is something that Toyota Technical Case advised to me yesterday:

Unfortunately we can't support your car or charger just yet, but we're adding more models regularly

The issue here is that there are so many variables, it's proving impossible for dealers to diagnose issues. Our dealer won't take the car back because they can't find a fault, but if they're not testing on the same charging points, in the same scenarios, it's hard to see how they will. We're caught between a rock and hard place, paying £515 a month for a car that fails to charge 25% of the time, multiple locations, different cables, different charging points, different users.

If we knew WHY it failed, we'd be able to work around it, but Toyota don't know and their default response to us is that the car is incompatible with any charger where the car is required to pass data back to the charging point. 

I appreciate there may be many BZ4X advocates here, but it's clear that others are also experiencing charging issues too (not just those on this forum). We keep getting told we're the only case that Toyota are aware of.

Where would you go with this? We've now been stranded 4 times in 4 months of ownership because we've come back to find the car hasn't charged (overnight) and we don't have enough energy for the trip we planned to make the following day. We just don't know where to turn...

 

[philip42h]

11 minutes ago, BZ4XGrr said:

Interesting. Octopus Energy's own website states the BZ4X isn't compatible with Intelligent Octopus Go

But it is - provided that you specify a correct charger:

returns:

It would appear that the choice of smart charger is the issue rather than the model of the car.

But you still have my sympathy - it all seems rather over-complicated with 'unnecessary pitfalls'.

 

[BZ4XGrr]

I hear what you're saying @philip42h, but just to confirm, Toyota are telling us the direct opposite! I promise you I am not making this up to be difficult!

The response from Toyota HQ as part of our technical case - the contents of which I have now read in detail - specifically states that the BZ4X (and other vehicles) are not compatible with smart scheduling offered by other suppliers, of which Octopus, eON and OVO are named - and that this is a deliberate design feature from Toyota in response to GDPR concerns: data from MyToyota or the vehicle being passed back to the charging point in order to enable smart charging to work.

You can presumably see why I'm confused: you're saying that Intelligent Octopus Go, PodPoint etc are perfectly fine, but Toyota themselves are telling me that the car will experience charging issues with any charger where "you give the charger the control of whether to charge or not" (my paraphrasing).

What I don't get - and this is why I'm really struggling to work out what is truth and what is nonsense in all of this - are three things:

1) Our wall charger and tariff are not 'smart scheduled'. Intelligent Octopus Go charges your car whenever the rate is cheapest, but you don't need to specify when: the charger does it automatically. In other words, it's a dynamic schedule. Ours is just set for whenever you want to charge it, it goes on, but whenever you want it to stop, it will stop.

2) Surely ALL public paid charging points put the charging point in control? E.g. you plug it in, but unless you've paid on an app, the charging cable is fundamentally dead: it's the charging point that determines whether it is charging or not. 

3) Our car hasn't worked even in situations where there are no schedules set anywhere - it's failed to charge twice at work where you plug it in, go into an app and then approve the charge (for free - my work pays).

I'm really not meaning to be difficult, but the information I'm getting all round - not least from Toyota - is completely conflicted and contradictory. I'm also not sure if it's even relevant to our situation. The nub of it seems to be that Toyota Engineering are saying that the BZ4X doesn't work with chargers where data is passed from the car to the charger. There are plenty of examples - yours included - where it does. 

How do I possibly begin to plan a long road journey when I have absolutely no idea as to which chargers request data back from the car in order to charge?

 

 

[porbeagle]

I have a 21 Rav4 4 PHEV and an account with Octopus. They supplied and fitted an Ohme charger. 

For the first week it wouldn't charge. Then, suddenly, it would 99% of the time. Now it is down to about 50% certain it will charge. 

Here is the thing:-

1. There is no developed interface between Ohme and Toyota vehicles. 

2. The interface between Octopus and Ohme isn't fully developed.

3. Any mistake/glitch/mismatch of systems means the charge doesn't happen.

4. Complaints about any of this are batted between Ohme and Octopus with little (no) desire to actually address the problem. 

 

As a result of my experience I formally rejected the Ohme charger as unfit for purpose. In fairness, that coincided with the start of the period when it was actually charging so I didn't push the issue. Octopus simple ignored the rejection. 

Essentially, it seems to me, you have to just bodge it.

> Remove ALL schedules from the car. 

> Set the car to receive a charge when it is offered.

> Set the charger to only charge when the overnight rate is active.

> Cross your fingers and hope.

I agree with other comments that this is an early adoption issue. However, there seems to be no will to fix it and Octopuses claim to of Award Winning Customer Service looks flaky at best. 

I suggested to them that these problems could be addressed quickly, and at moderate cost by producing vehicle specific instructions of how to regularly achieve a charge. I'm still waiting. 

[dooby]

On 5/17/2024 at 2:40 PM, BZ4XGrr said:

And PodPoint chargers? And EVC+ chargers? And Zappi chargers? And eON chargers? My car works with none of the above.

I literally cannot charge my car at home or work. If Toyota know that their car is incompatible with certain different chargers, do you not think it makes sense to advise prospective customers of this? Given the number of Octopus customers on here and other forums complaining that their BZ4X won't charge, it suggests it's not a very well known issue - even the garage weren't aware of it and it has taken 5 trips for the car to the garage (across 20 or so days) before Toyota HQ advised the dealer what the issue was.

We will update others of progress as and when it is made.

Are you saying you can't charge on *public* chargers?  I haven't had any issue with PodPoint, EVCharge (Rolec), BP, Fastned, Ionity or Gridserve (all the ones I have used so far) -  the ONLY time I had an issue is when I forgot I had left a schedule set up in the car (the charge port light flashes green when you plug it in rather than going solid)

To clarify the Octopus Inteligent Go issue, my understanding is you need EITHER a compatible car (which the BZ4X is NOT) OR a compatible charger (which the Ohme and Zappi are )

If you have a compatible charger, the car isn't part of the compatibility, Octopus communicate with the charger and the charger alone - all the car needs to be able to do is take the charge when the charger provides it (i.e. not have ANY schedules set up).

 

[AJones]

On 5/15/2024 at 10:42 PM, Cyker said:

It annoys me this is still so complicated! They really need to pull their socks up and make these systems work well enough that normal people can use them successfully if they want EV adoption to go anywhere...!

To be fair it can be very simple and reliable, you pick an electricity tariff with a fixed set of off-peak hours every night, like Economy 7 or one of the simple EV tariffs, you switch off any smart controls at the charge-point and set it to be ON 24/7, then you configure a charging schedule (timer) in the vehicle which matches your tariff's off-peak times. The vehicle wakes up at the set time, charges, goes back to sleep. There's very little to go wrong. I've used this approach with the PHEV for several years and never had any problems charging at home.

By comparison, the operation of the smart dynamic EV charging tariffs is far more complex with a lot more potential for things to go wrong, because it is reliant on comms between the supplier, to the charge-point provider and onto to the charge-point, or via the vehicle manufacturer onto the vehicle, with the added possibility of clashes between the timing/settings in the vehicle vs charge-point. So a lot more potential for problems in the chain of communications, or problems with the interaction between the vehicle and the charge-point.

[BZ4XGrr]

21 hours ago, porbeagle said:

Essentially, it seems to me, you have to just bodge it.

> Remove ALL schedules from the car. 

> Set the car to receive a charge when it is offered.

> Set the charger to only charge when the overnight rate is active.

> Cross your fingers and hope.

That is exactly what I have done and it still doesn't work 😞

[BZ4XGrr]

14 hours ago, dooby said:

Are you saying you can't charge on *public* chargers?  I haven't had any issue with PodPoint, EVCharge (Rolec), BP, Fastned, Ionity or Gridserve (all the ones I have used so far) -  the ONLY time I had an issue is when I forgot I had left a schedule set up in the car (the charge port light flashes green when you plug it in rather than going solid)

To clarify the Octopus Inteligent Go issue, my understanding is you need EITHER a compatible car (which the BZ4X is NOT) OR a compatible charger (which the Ohme and Zappi are )

If you have a compatible charger, the car isn't part of the compatibility, Octopus communicate with the charger and the charger alone - all the car needs to be able to do is take the charge when the charger provides it (i.e. not have ANY schedules set up).

 

Correct. I am having issues with the only three chargers I have tried so far - all of which combined represent 99% of the places I am ever going to charge the car. 1 of them is private (home), 1 of them is partially-public (work) and the other is fully public (gym).

There is no charging schedule set-up in the car - it still doesn't work.

At home, we have an eON Vestel charger which fails 25% of the time on a scheduled charge (where the schedule is set in the eON app). If it fails, it fails permanently: trying to override the schedule with a 'boost' still doesn't work. This has always made me think it was a physical connection issue.

At work, I get free charging via PodPoint - this fails 50% of the time. I plug it in and you get 15 minutes free, during which time I need to 'confirm the charge' using my account to continue to receive free charging. Again, no schedule set on the car.

At the gym, there is an EVC+ chargepoint, which fails in a different way. I plug the car in and the charging point detects the car is connected. I go into the app and get charged a £20 'holding charge' on first use, then a 50p charge to initiate the session. At this point, the car fails to begin charging. So, I need to unplug it, repeat the process 3 or 4 times before it does finally start to charge, during which time I've incurred 3 or 4 x 50p initiation costs.

Hopefully my attachments will work, but as you can see the logs from each of these sessions show that the charging session lasted multiple hours, but that 0 KWH were drawn.

I have always felt that this was an issue with the car. THe vehicle has been into Toyota 5 times in total for around 20 days overall, during which time they've plugged the cable in/out to try and test it. But the issue is that they are testing it in totally different circumstances: their charging point is a Toyota branded 'always on' point that doesn't have scheduling capability. And every time, it comes back saying 'we can't find a fault'. But they have so little experience of diagnosing EV issues (I believe this is the first EV they've sold from that dealer that's come back into them with issues) that they haven't been very helpful and instead have been totally dependent on whoever it is at Toyota at the end of our 'technical case'.

Toyota have come back with their response as above, to say that the car is incompatible with eON scheduling chargers and that we should install a British Gas charger instead, but it doesn't address the issue of why it's not charging at work or at home. We have lost all confidence with the car and wouldn't enterain risking longer trips where we might find it won't charge at a services.

So the issue I've got is that I'm paying £580 a month for a car that fails to charge 25% of the time, leaving me and my family stranded, which won't charge reliably at home, or at work, or 99% of the locations where I would be charging it...and I'm dependent on the dealer to find a fault when they clearly lack the experience and capabilities to do so, but where without a 'fault' being found, the dealer won't accept the car back. Toyota HO then chip in and say it's not a fault, it's a feature...but it seems like a pretty fundamental feature to me if I can't actually use the car as intended!

When we bought the car, we told the dealer we would be installing an eON charger and they did not raise any issues - in fact, they've known it was an eON charger as part of their support case since February when we first took the car in and no-one ever told us that eON vestel chargers were incompatible. There is nothing on their website, or in any of the marketing materials, that suggests these charging points are incompatible with the car, so for their Head Office / technical support team to now turn around and announce that the BZ4X doesn't work with any charger where the car is required to pass data back to the charging point seems rather unfair at best, but outright bizarre at worst: as if their dealerships haven't got any idea about which chargers the car does or doesn't work with.

[BZ4XGrr]

11 hours ago, AJones said:

To be fair it can be very simple and reliable, you pick an electricity tariff with a fixed set of off-peak hours every night, like Economy 7 or one of the simple EV tariffs, you switch off any smart controls at the charge-point and set it to be ON 24/7, then you configure a charging schedule (timer) in the vehicle which matches your tariff's off-peak times. The vehicle wakes up at the set time, charges, goes back to sleep. There's very little to go wrong. I've used this approach with the PHEV for several years and never had any problems charging at home.

By comparison, the operation of the smart dynamic EV charging tariffs is far more complex with a lot more potential for things to go wrong, because it is reliant on comms between the supplier, to the charge-point provider and onto to the charge-point, or via the vehicle manufacturer onto the vehicle, with the added possibility of clashes between the timing/settings in the vehicle vs charge-point. So a lot more potential for problems in the chain of communications, or problems with the interaction between the vehicle and the charge-point.

This is what we have tried. It STILL doesn't work. 

[philip42h]

11 hours ago, AJones said:

To be fair it can be very simple and reliable, you pick an electricity tariff ...

Or even simpler, stick with a standard variable tariff, plug the car in when you get home and forget about schedules all together. I know, that won't give you the best rate by any means but at ~25p per kWh and around 3 miles per kWh that's less than 9p a mile - which is far cheaper than I can manage with a hybrid, and, if we can't afford that in this day and age, we should consider giving up motoring altogether ... 😉

[Cyker]

I'm on about 10p/mile with my Yaris at the moment, but it's still a lot if you compare to what I was on with my Mk1 Yaris D4D back when fuel prices were sub-£1! I think I was on 5-6p/mile when I first got it!

[philip42h]

1 hour ago, BZ4XGrr said:

At home, we have an eON Vestel charger which fails 25% of the time on a scheduled charge (where the schedule is set in the eON app).

How is your Vestel charger connected to the Internet? And is that connection reliable?

A potential issue with smart chargers is that they need to "'phone home" and will be likely to 'fail' if they lose connectivity. It's one of the things that bothers me about taking the leap to an EV - I'd struggle to get Internet connectivity to the charge point ...

[BZ4XGrr]

6 minutes ago, philip42h said:

How is your Vestel charger connected to the Internet? And is that connection reliable?

A potential issue with smart chargers is that they need to "'phone home" and will be likely to 'fail' if they lose connectivity. It's one of the things that bothers me about taking the leap to an EV - I'd struggle to get Internet connectivity to the charge point ...

This was one of the first things we tested. eON ruled that out as an issue (our internet isn't super fast, but it's stable) - and if it was a problem then we would expect to see a number of the charging sessions fail mid-charge, which hasn't happened.

The pattern is always the same: plug the car in around 10 or 11pm and the eON app shows 'plugged in but not charging'. At 00:15 (when it's scheduled the start charging) the eON app says 'plugged in and charging' but the car isn't actually charging. At 06:45, the scheduling charging stops.

During that time, our Ring doorbell captures the charging unit flashing in the pattern that depicts 'waiting for the car to accept the charge'.

The eON app will show 6:30hrs charging session, 0 KWH drawn.

When we wake up and discover it hasn't worked, without touching anything, if we then boost the charge (e.g. override the schedule) the car still won't charge. It requires physical unplugging of the leads and replugging them back in, before trying again, before you can get it to work - which is why I've always felt it was a physical connection issue.

[JonathanP]

I'm sure you have already ruled out having unlocked the car after plugging it in.
I've noticed mainly on home chargers that when the car is unlocked it automatically unlocks the charging cable and stops the charge.
If you unlock the car to get something out and relock it again without touching the cable the car won't accept the charge as it has already unlocked the charging cable.

[porbeagle]

That makes a lot of sense and I was slowly drawing towards that conclusion. I'll give it a try over the next few nights but I have a strong suspicion that it will work. 

Frustrating isn't it that the suppliers of the equipment, and I include the car in this, don't work together to sort this out.

[BZ4XGrr]

2 hours ago, JonathanP said:

I'm sure you have already ruled out having unlocked the car after plugging it in.
I've noticed mainly on home chargers that when the car is unlocked it automatically unlocks the charging cable and stops the charge.
If you unlock the car to get something out and relock it again without touching the cable the car won't accept the charge as it has already unlocked the charging cable.

This wouldn't apply in our situation as locking the car is the last act as part of plugging the cable in, but it does make you question the design of the user experience here: if you want to get something out of the boot of a car that is plugged in, you have the unplug the cable and plug it back in again?

Is this common to other electric vehicles?

[AJones]

10 hours ago, BZ4XGrr said:

This is what we have tried. It STILL doesn't work. 

And does the same thing happen, with the vehicle schedule set, if you use a 3-pin/granny charging cable? 

What happens when you set the car to charge immediately, does it start charging every time?

10 hours ago, philip42h said:

Or even simpler, stick with a standard variable tariff, plug the car in when you get home and forget about schedules all together. I know, that won't give you the best rate by any means but at ~25p per kWh and around 3 miles per kWh that's less than 9p a mile - which is far cheaper than I can manage with a hybrid, and, if we can't afford that in this day and age, we should consider giving up motoring altogether ... 😉

 

That's fine occasionally, but if everyone does this then it creates a big problem because of the huge increase in power demand from millions of EVs and PHEVs all plugging-in and starting charging at around the same time, adding to the existing peak demand. One EV charging at 7kW is using the same power, on average, as several houses. 

Whereas over-night, off-peak there's lot of spare capacity for charging EVs and PHEVs and the generation is generally cleaner with lower emissions. That's why there's such a push to get people charging over-night, it's better all round.

[mds33]

These charging issues don’t fill me with confidence in changing to an EV.

Filling with petrol / diesel still seems so much easier if not environmental friendly.

[Cyker]

Yeah, it's amazing how they've managed to take something we've mastered reliably for over a century - Plugging in electrical devices to make them work - and make it *not work* 

[philip42h]

32 minutes ago, mds33 said:

These charging issues don’t fill me with confidence in changing to an EV.

Filling with petrol / diesel still seems so much easier if not environmentally friendly.

1 hour ago, AJones said:

That's fine occasionally, but if everyone does this then it creates a big problem because of the huge increase in power demand from millions of EVs and PHEVs all plugging-in and starting charging at around the same time, adding to the existing peak demand. One EV charging at 7kW is using the same power, on average, as several houses. 

Whereas over-night, off-peak there's lot of spare capacity ...

A hundred years ago, there was no infrastructure for filling with petrol or diesel. It's all a relatively recent development - that will disappear again over a similar timescale.

When there are millions of EVs plugging in to charge there won't be any spare capacity overnight - instead overnight will likely become peak time for demand.

I'm sure that we will need some clever scheduling algorithms to balance demand for home charging, but I can't see the current baroque pricing structure helping much.

[wivenhoe]

BZ4XGrr - are all the chargers you have tried AC - have you tried an Ultra DC charger. Do you know what charger they have at the dealers ?  
I ask, as my RZ (similar EV system) AC charging module failed and had to be replaced. In my case, the car just refused to charge on any AC charger but was ok on DC chargers. Just a thought, that there could be an fault with the module and if the dealer has a DC charger then it is using a different module - unlikely though that the dealer does have a DC charger, they are normally 7kw AC chargers. 

[BZ4XGrr]

1 hour ago, AJones said:

And does the same thing happen, with the vehicle schedule set, if you use a 3-pin/granny charging cable? 

What happens when you set the car to charge immediately, does it start charging every time?

 

That's fine occasionally, but if everyone does this then it creates a big problem because of the huge increase in power demand from millions of EVs and PHEVs all plugging-in and starting charging at around the same time, adding to the existing peak demand. One EV charging at 7kW is using the same power, on average, as several houses. 

Whereas over-night, off-peak there's lot of spare capacity for charging EVs and PHEVs and the generation is generally cleaner with lower emissions. That's why there's such a push to get people charging over-night, it's better all round.

We haven't tested it with the three-pin granny plug, to be honest. I believe that the garage has.

When we set the car to charge immediately, we experience the same issues (public charging points, work) - again, not always, but around 25% - 50% of the time.