[Newbie14]

Took delivery of my e Niro yesterday and as this is my first e car, I have a couple of questions regarding charging
I got the Ohme charger so I could sync it to my OctopusEnergy tariff. Plugged it in to charge and was expected it to show on the app the percentage of charge of the vehicle so would know when it was fully charged. Does it show anywhere?
Also, is it best to charge it daily and make use of the cheaper nighttime tariff rather than charging it, say, every 10 days when it will probably be down to about 20%?
Many thanks- I'm sure I'll have a few more questions in the coming days!

 

[Hedley Wright]

I’m not sure about the e-Niro but some brands do not make the battery status available to the Ohme. With my Polestar 2 I just look at the battery percentage and calculate from there how many percent I wish to add and set that as a custom charge with the ohme app.

I wouldn’t worrabout whether to charge every night or not, just do what works for you but don’t charge above 80 percent or so regularly if want to maximise long term battery health. Kia do recommend charging to 100% (not using a rapid charger) every couple of weeks.

 

[HandyAndy]

An occasional charge to 100% is recommended to allow the BMS to balance the individual cells & keep them in tip-top nick. But once I've done that, and let the car sit there for an hour maybe to give it time to do it's thing, I'll run the heating with window open on my drive for a couple of hours to knock it down to 80%, where I'm happy to leave it for days during lockdown. Discovered I can't lock my Ioniq from the outside leaving 2nd key inside it (and window open to let heat out, and me in if necc!!!) to keep electrics on while I do this, so I have to block the car in with wife's C1 to stop anyone nicking it!

 

[starquake]

OMHE does work with a Uvo equipped E-niro 4 or 4+ but not the First edition. Just enter your Uvo login credentials when it asks and it will retrieve the current state of charge.

If you havnt' setup Uvo yet, do that first! As you cannot do the OMHE Niro integrtaion without it.

Ref charging -> depends on tariff. As an Agile user with a lot of miles I tend to plugin on Fri/Sat nights as these have usually been the cheapest days of week (Sat night is low industrial use, so is usually teh cheapest of the days of week, in fact this month we've spend a grand total of "nil" on our charging as we've had 2 negative saturdays that have allowed us to fully recharge, and they paid us enough on first on, that the second was also free. I'm expecting it to eb 1p-3p a Kwh tonight as high wind forecast (we find out in 30 mins) ... And again we'll top up from 40% now to 80%. We tend to "only" switch Ohme to 100% the day before we go anywhere a significant distance, ie > 150 mi away, asking for 78%-80% normally and just plugging in...

(If we need a charge any other day, we just plugin, and have it set to never take units at above 8p, which seems to give us a decent charge on any day, but withuot breaking bank).

 

[starquake]

Should add if you are on "Go" not agile, with a Niro, it can take over 2 days of the 5p rates to recharge from a "low" session if you have ran down to say 5%.... So yes, then you woudl want to charge up 2 days in row as it would not be cost effecient to take a 5%-80% on Go in a single night. Agile may be better if you run into this and need a faster charge. Equally if you willing to monitor prices and plugin on cheapest nights chances are you can charge at an average of 1-3p a Kwh (as we have last month) on Agile ie, 20%-50% of the cost of Go. So really charging strategys depend ENTIRELY on your tariff.

 

[tommy_tj]

Like the original poster I'm a few days into my E-Niro / Ohme ownership. I love it but it's making me feel really stupid. I've moved to Octopus but I'm waiting for Smart meters before shifting to the GO tarriff. In the meatime I'm playing with charge schedules but i'm confused.

- if i want the Ohme App to own the scheduled charging, I'm assuming that i don't set up any car schedules? Are there any settings i should make within the car?

- I've set up a very basic schedule of 80% target by 7:00am every morning. No stipulation on cost as for now i have a tarriff that is the same all day long. With this done, do i need to do anything within the dashboard? What is the Start Charge icon? Is this just an option to overide the setting within scheduled charging?

i'm sure this will all be second nature soon but it all feels like a Rubik's cube at the moment.
Thanks for your help.

 

[starquake]

Make sure car is set to 100% on AC charge no schdule. Ohme manages it all

And no, with a same all day tariff you may as well hit the max charge button in the app (thats what it's for when you have an agile tariff to FORCE max charge) if you want it to start immediately. As default it will try to stick to "greener" times for the grid even on a fixed tariff, and will go gentler on your battery if time allows if you select that option (ie ,slower, longer charge to look after the car more). It really is just plug and go though, thats the joy. I plugin at say 5pm , and it'll be fully charged for 8am on my settings, and will pick cheapest half hours.

 

[Chickster]

The communication between the Ohme app and the Kia API is relatively new after an update. The app does not display the current SOC as % but as miles. I said earlier you must set up your UVO account first. Then when signing in to app and setting up for first time you will be asked for your UVO sign in details. This allows the app to talk to your car. Let the app take control of scheduling and set the car's charging limit to 100% in the car itself.
I found after setting up it took a while to show and sometimes needed a restart of the UVO and Ohme apps or the phone itself.
If you let car drop down to e.g. 20% then you won't get enough charge to 80% on Octopus Go in the 4 hour cheap window. I charge only in this cheap window so do this every night as a top up to keep to 80% by each morning.

 

[tommy_tj]

Thanks for your help