Kia EV3 direct to vehicle- Any current problems with using Charge Anytime?

Morning ​@bishopbn and a warm welcome to the OVO Forum 😁.

I’ve added an EV badge to your profile so that other Forum members can recognise you. 

Apologies for the difficulties you’re experiencing since going through the vehicle for Charge Anytime. It seems that Kia EV’s can prove difficult, and we have seen other Forum members saying similar. 

if you search ‘Kia’ in the OVO Forum search bar you’ll see there are also other posts that might be worth a look.

I hope this helps.

Hi,

Thanks for the link - sounds like there are issues with Kia in general.

I was originally advised to buy Ohme as it was compatible with Charge Anytime, and frankly caused no issues. My customer experience has now nose dived due to a less than perfect solution via Kia.

I’m in the same boat as everyone else and have a Kia Niro EV. It used to charge perfectly via Ohme, but Ovo have pulled the rug on that one! The problem, as I see it, is this:

You have to make sure that your charger will always charge at 100% regardless of time or tariff.

Charging is then controlled via the app and the car itself.

The issue is that the app and the car only seem to communicate randomly from 30 minutes to several hours. As soon as the car is plugged in it begins to charge and control of that charging only happens when the car and the app talk, which is somewhat random.

My first charge went OK and the app eventually picked it up. My car was, however, charged to 100% instead of the 90% that I had set. The next day I plugged the car in again and it charged from about 95% to 100% without that app ever seeing it.

This is not a great solution and having shelled out for an Ohme charger feel a bit let down. I installed the Ohme 2 years ago as a second charger as my Zappi wasn’t compatible either.

Any chance that Ovo will support the Zappi charger?

Hi Kia EV drivers….Kia have had a new app out for a while now and I’m wondering if things are getting better at all for direct to car charging for Kia EV owners? Any comments most welcome.

The new app is a bit slicker than the old one, however, the response is about the same. Connecting to the car from the app has never really been a problem.

The biggest issue is that the Charge Anytime app fails for several reasons:

1. It can take from minutes to a couple of hours to update the car’s status.
2. It doesn’t control charging and the car always charges to 100%
3. It fails to report all the smart charging, probably a function of 1. above.

Here are some suggestions to make smart charging partially work,

1. Set the maximum AC charge in the app and then do the same in the Kia app e.g set both to 90%
2. Plug the car into the charger, set the charger to maximum charge and then PAUSE charging. The car will be connected but not charging.
3. Check the Charge Anytime App from time to until it has seen that the car is plugged in and connected.
4. Un-pause the charger and let the car charge.
5. After charging check that your credit matches the power used by the charger.

Hope this helps someone.

Hey ​@WileyC 

​@bishopbn has left some really helpful feedback about the Kia app, I hope you were able to find that useful!

Thanks bishopbn for that reply, I’m sure that’ll be very helpful to other users on the Forum.😊

Hi Forum,

Has there been any progress on direct to vehicle charging with Kia EVs?

The real question is when Kia are going to fix BlueLink… Which is likely never.

That’s your answer I’m afraid - there’s nothing OVO can do until then.

I assume bluelink is the server based link between Kia vehicle and OVO? 
Can anyone from OVO comment on how testing is progressing with Kia? Is there no specific testing programme ongoing? If it really doesn’t work and nobody from OVO is working with Kia on it I’m not sure why the vehicle is listed as being in beta.