Toyota Home Charge

[SpenToy]

BG engineer came this morning at 8 am and was finished by 1 pm.

No issues with cabling in and setting up the Toyota Home Charge.

He did give me 2 RFID tags and said "not sure how they work. The one with Toyota symbol on is sync'd to the home charge. The other one is not. They just tell us to give to the customer and don't give us any other information about it."

[SpenToy]

So used the Toyota Home Charge.  Easy to use via app or wave the RFID over it to start the charging.

The app works fine with the Home Charge also, no issues.

Easy to use.  Not sure I'm down with the bright orange charging cable but not about to change it either 🙂

I get a night rate of 7.9p per Kwh, so all good. 

A full petrol tank is 500 miles at about £60

500 miles of electric around town is about £6.30

Almost forgetting what the petrol station is.....memory will kick back in hard when I drop my son back up to Durham at the end of the month.

[DavidinDerbyshire]

Had to look up RFID tags since my Ohme charger doesn’t have such a thing but appears to work well with Octopus and the Toyota app..HOWEVER…..one thing I have discovered that if you return to the car because you forgot something, after previously plugging in and locking the car,  you need to reset the charge by unplugging and starting agin or, as it has done twice with me, it doesn’t get charged. Learned the hard way. 

[cviclark]

I have a B4zx. Wall charger fitted by BG very neat installation.My supplier is EOn who want me to use their EV tarrif for overnight low cost rate. I have solar panels and has the daytime rate is higher than fixed tarrifs not sure this is a good deal.

Eon can not tell me if their App is compatible with the Toyota charger or if My Toyota app works with Eon.

The box works OK via the My Toyota app but cannot get it to work via the linked Rfd tag. It just waits for authorisation and will not lock. In the cold and rain the delay while the box checks the supply is painful. Leaving the heavy cable unlocked is not a good idea.

The BG engineer was good as he has fitted a few Toyota kits but did say it wasn't perfect yet.

[cviclark]

Now working without mobile ok using the RFID tags. The sequence of connection  and locking  is important. It is easy to be misled thinking it is charging when it's not. The problem is the delay while the home charger checks the supply capacity is available with area supply.

Eon have a low cost EV rate but daytime rates are higher. Nobody can tell me the break even point, milage ,charge time whatever or if timed charging via My Toyota app will work from the ABB Toyota charger on Eon supply.

The expertise, experience, database of what works is just not there yet. Not at dealer level, Toyota, Eon even the ev support team only know about the Eon app and eon charger and say it should work.

The cable provided by Toyota is all purpose but way overspecified for the 7.4Kwh home charger. I have an alternative on order specified for 7.4 which I expect to be lighter and easier to use. I will leave the heavy one in the boot.

[DavidinDerbyshire]

12 hours ago, cviclark said:

Nobody can tell me the break even point,

That will surely depend on your usage?   Anyone charging as little as, say once a week, will get less benefit that someone charging every day and doing maximum EV mileage.  Although our Octopus daytime rates and standing charge have increased,  the extra cost is certainly outweighed by the benefit of about 150 to 200 miles a week of EV at circa 7 pence a KwH.  (Our normal domestic consumption is that of a small 3 bed house, two occupants, dishwasher, dryer, washing machine etc with gas CH) Whether that made the huge cost of purchase etc worthwhile is another matter.   My experience with Octopus and the Ohme charger  raises no issues, technical or financial. My monthly bill shows quite clearly the cheap rate consumption alongside the domestic consumption and between them the Ohme app and Toyota app clarify both planned and used charges.  With the Octopus Intelligent Go tariff  I have even had charges during the afternoon period at cheap rate when Octopus have been dishing out excess capacity although to get this you have to be plugged in and awaiting a charge in normal off peak hours. These show up on the Ohme app.   Just as an illustration of what you could expect, the following is a copy of our bill for an 18 day period last month. In that same period I used no petrol. 

6.67p/kWh 138.0 kWh £9.202
23.84p/kWh 125.5 kWh £29.914
Total consumption 263.5kWh @ 14.85p/kWh † £39.12
Standing Charge 18 days @ 52.24p/day £9.40

I hope tat helps you see a fuller picture. 

[philip42h]

14 hours ago, cviclark said:

The cable provided by Toyota is all purpose but way overspecified for the 7.4Kwh home charger. I have an alternative on order specified for 7.4 which I expect to be lighter and easier to use. I will leave the heavy one in the boot.

Bearing in mind that this is the RAV4 forum, and we have proper EVs ( 😉 ) ... The bZ4X has a 11 kW OBC and thus can accept charge from a three-phase charger - so the Type 2 lead supplied includes all three live cables.

Like you I will, in due course, buy an appropriate length single-phase cable to use and leave with the home charger (if I ever manage to get one installed) and carry the three-phase lead in the car.

The RAV4 PHEV has a 6.6 kW OBC and may well be supplied with a single-phase cable so that PHEV owners may not be familiar with the 'issue'.

[philip42h]

14 hours ago, cviclark said:

Eon have a low cost EV rate but daytime rates are higher. Nobody can tell me the break even point, milage ,charge time whatever or if timed charging via My Toyota app will work from the ABB Toyota charger on Eon supply.

The expertise, experience, database of what works is just not there yet. Not at dealer level, Toyota, Eon even the ev support team only know about the Eon app and eon charger and say it should work.

It is far harder to get sensible information than it should be, however ...

I assume that the tariff you are considering is the e.on next Next Drive tariff. As I read it, this is NOT an intelligent tariff but simply requires that you have a smart meter providing half hourly readings so that they can charge your usage at a lower rate between midnight and 7:00 - it is just a dual rate tariff.

The bZ4X itself supports scheduled charging so all we need to do is set-up the charging schedule on the car to charge within the off-peak period. We don't need any help from the ABB Terra charger nor the App (Toyota or e.on) to do this ... 😉 (So, Philip, who knows diddly squat, guarantees that it will work! 😄)

I've yet to discover whether the charger itself provides any support for scheduling, or whether the scheduling support provided by the App sets up schedules on the charger or the car ... Someone who knows may like to advise.

I rather doubt that the e.on App will be of any use at all.

[philip42h]

14 hours ago, cviclark said:

Nobody can tell me the break even point, milage ,charge time whatever

'cos it will be different for every one of us. You need to work it out for yourself. To do this you need to know:

1. You average annual electricity usage in kWh before you added an EV to the mix. This must be available from your recent bills. The additional cost from the higher daytime rate will be this figure multiplied by the increase in price.
2. An estimate of the amount of electricity you are going to use when charging the car at home and running it from there. That will be basically 3 times your daily commute mileage or equivalent - exclude longer trips where you may need to recharge on route. The potential saving is this figure multiplied by the reduced cost of using the off-peak tariff compared with SVT.

If your baseline electricity usage is low and your commute mileage high, it will pay to switch to an EV tariff. If your baseline electricity usage is high and your commute mileage low, you'd be better off on a standard fixed rate tariff.

It gets more complicated (and better from a savings standpoint) if you can switch normal usage from the baseline to the overnight off-peak period but that may or may not be practical. Personally, I would consider this as a bonus if I decided that an EV tariff was worthwhile for the EV alone.

I don't believe that most EV tariffs will work for me - too high an electricity usage; too low a daily commute mileage - but I am considering EDF's EVolve tariff. This charges SVT rates during the day, and SVT - 10p between midnight and 5:00. In this case there is no real downside in terms of daytime usage - just a modest saving for switching usage to the off-peak period.

[philip42h]

14 hours ago, cviclark said:

The sequence of connection  and locking  is important. It is easy to be misled thinking it is charging when it's not. The problem is the delay while the home charger checks the supply capacity is available with area supply.

The first part is true; the second less so ...

Like all modern chargers, the ABB Terra is required to insert a random delay of up to 10 minutes before proving a charge. It isn't checking anything - it's dumb and a fairly dumb way to ensure that we don't have every EV owner in the country switching on at midnight precisely.

I too have been coming to grips with the 'locking' challenge and believe that it is simply a 'feature' of the bZ4X. The car will lock the cable in place once it is connected and live. If we connect the cable, it will not lock until it becomes live. So:

• Connecting the cable does not cause it to lock.
• The cable locks in place once power is provided to enable a charging session.
• If power is removed, the cable does NOT unlock - it remains locked in place.
• If power is restored, charging will resume.
• The cable will unlock and the charging session end when the car is unlocked.

I've yet to bother with charging schedules and have simulated the behaviour of the ABB Terra charger using the granny charger and an on/off switch ... 😉

[cviclark]

The charger is SMART with a a SIM to link with cells and networks, according to the BG installer. My Toyota App has a charge now button which starts the charge most times.  Using the RFID tags  I have had all green lights on the charger and still no charging. As you say it doesn't start until  locked and doesn't lock without power.  Eon EV expert stated that the schedule was set up in the car and the tariff  would switch automatically.  If no power is applied to the cable not sure it will lock. He suggested it should be set up at 23.00 to start at 24.00. The point is waiting outside in the rain to check it starts at anytime is a pain.  The granny charger is great, simple, up to 80 % adequate.

As I am retired, home all day, with Gas heating and solar I have gone for the fixed rate. I do not understand why the Gas and electricity rate should be higher on a EV tariff.

7.4 Kwh cable arrived today. Much easier to use, lighter and more flexible.

[SpenToy]

I have my ABB charger set so that it only sends power within the window of my cheaper tariff overnight.

Could also do from car schedule as well.

When you start a charge from the rfid tag or app, there is a random x minutes delay until actual starts. You can override this so you charge immediately.

[SpenToy]

24 minutes ago, cviclark said:

 

7.4 Kwh cable arrived today. Much easier to use, lighter and more flexible.

Did you get a particular brand cable or just "a 7.4Kwh cable" ?

[cviclark]

Ordered on line Ev cables Wottz cable  2 year warranty. Originally I thought a 3.5 m would suffice if reversed close, and they had the length. When I phoned to check weights the difference in weight of 5m and 3.5m was negligible so I went for 5m in yellow. When I get time I will add side by side pics. There were cheaper but this site checked make model and reg for suitability.

[cviclark]

[cviclark]

Pics of 7.4 Kwh cable. Much easier to use, but only for home charger use.

[SpenToy]

Thanks for pictures. 

That is really useful.

Had a look on the website and probably order this week. 

The orange cable, car comes with is rather heavy. 

 

[Nick72]

4 hours ago, cviclark said:

Charger unit looks great. Discreet co pated to the others. Ours looks like a phone box from an 80s sci fi movie. Wife hates the look of it.