Enabling Smart Charging

[Lennox476576]

Hi there, having just bought a Mach E I am wanting to take advantage of Intelligent Octopus that will give me Smart Charging at 7.5p KWH. To do this Octopus need to talk to the car to get its location and State of Charge. Looking on the Facebook forums I’ve seen lots of horror stories with Ford blocking people’s access to Ford Pass as they “don’t allow third party access”. I checked with Ford Customer Services who gave me a standard “we take your data protection seriously and don’t allow Third party access” answer whilst Octopus tell me that IO is “fully supported by Ford” 

I have friends with Tesla, VW and BMW EV’s all using IO without problem and they get great rates not only for charging but for the whole house

If you want to keep people buying EV’s from Ford you need to get into the 2023’s and sort out effective third party API integration to support things like this as it’s going to become more widespread and will be a major factor in my next choice of car ! 

[chris200100]

@Lennox476576 

I’ve had been in touch with Ford’s myself and they said the same thing. 
I have read their t&c’s and the intelligent octopus as far is I can tell does NOT go against the t&c.

it is sad that ford are behaving like this especially as it does go against a ruling that was made in the European court that customers should be able to use aftermarket and third party’s instead of the manufacturers own.

I have asked to speak to the head of ford pass to see what their take on the situation, whether this person does speak to me is yet to be seen.

@lkenna can we have a serious and quick look at this and have a reversal of this decision to block as it will cost customers money and will lead to a loss in sales as there are other cars that are IO compatible and I for sure am serious thinking of changing. 

[Lennox476576]

@chris200100 I will be very interested to see what response you get ! From what I understand the Octopus API needs to get the car ID (VIN or similar) location and State of a charge and be able to turn charging on / off to suit their schedule - none of that interferes with my data or breaches anything that I can see! 
As you say this will be something I will certainly look at in much more detail next time around - I’d assumed as Octopus said the Mach E was a supported vehicle it would be OK - if I’d known I might have been swayed to the Tesla Model Y that was my alternative! 

[chris200100]

@Lennox476576 

The Mach e was compatible with IO and I was using it with great success until lately I had to remove it due to an issue I had and can’t re add it. 

[portlandg]

I too am with Octopus and was thinking of moving to IO. However, as you say, the app has to talk to the car and confirm that it is at HOME. My crappy built in sat nav says that my car is not at home when it is in my garage which is attached to my house. It says I am about 100yds away so IO won't work anyway.

[chris200100]

@portlandg 

It will work if you could add it to IO when you first set up IO it logs that location and as long as that location is the same and I do believe it has an allowance built in it will charge with the IO.

the location is just for it to know that your home and not at a public charger.

lets hope Ford’s get their act sorted and allow us again to use IO

[chris200100]

@Ikenna 

can we have some input from Ford regarding this issue and for them to look at this urgently and get it sorted.

[joymyr]

I got blocked because I was using Tronity, which is used by my insurance company to gather vehicle data. I emailed them and got this reply, almost a year ago

Yes that is true. We are working with Ford on a solution independent from Fordpass.
Please keep the account and your vehicle archived and stay tuned.

Also, on their website they are saying:

Registration soon available again (we a working on a new vehicle integration)

https://help.tronity.io/hc/en-us/articles/360018314060-Supported-Vehicles-and-Characteristics

This sounds like Ford is working on offering an offial API for thirdparties. Is this true @Ikenna ?

[DaveC]

This is now becoming a very hot topic on the various forums. Ford are, in effect, keeping customers from having a free choice and saving money (which we all need to do right now).

As usual there is no reply from Ford!

[Lennox476576]

Looking on a Facebook post this is the third party integration that Octopus use to communicate with the car 

 Apparently they now support OAuth2 - so should I’m told there should be no data security concerns ! Looking at this link they communicate with a wide range of cars to enable things like Smart Charging to work.

Looking in Ford Pass they already allow a couple of third parties access so all that needs to access IO is for Smartcar to be approved 

Surely it can’t be that difficult 😳

https://smartcar.com/product/electric-vehicle-api/

 

[chris200100]

@DaveC 

I’ve had an email back from ford and is not good news.

They really don’t understand the importance of having smart charging and I can’t see them changing their minds in this for a while.

they need to be shown the benefits of using this.

again the Mach is a good car however it’s let down by the ford pass app being not fit for purpose, the charge timer not fit for purpose, and lack of software updates.