Scheduled charging - what am I doing wrong.

[kevinji]

I set up scheduled charging mainly using the iSMART app but you must remember to tap save and wait to see the response as it says “success” or fail. Sometimes it asks for my PIN code. But I have found that I also need to set my podpoint to scheduled charging as well. Once set up on the podpoint app it defaults to scheduled charging with my octopus go tariff details entered ie charge between. 00:30 at 4:30 am. It works fine. Actually at 00:30 it may not start immediately, there has to be communication between the charger first and the charge starts low but rapidly build to 6.5 plus. It’s always worked for me when both the car and podpoint app are set to scheduled charging. I have noticed that my podpoint solo charger often reports weak WiFi signal even though it is very close to my WiFi router but the insulation and thickness of a modern external wall may be affecting the WiFi signal.

 

[Derek O]

Nothing definitive to report at the moment, still trying to eliminate various factors. I will update again in a few more days.

 

[DaveFord]

I have had problems with scheduled charging as well with my BG Sync wall box. I found that the EV app in Smart mode was clashing with the iSmart App possibly due to slight time difference. So the way around this is to disable the Smart mode on the EV app and just let the iSmart app do it's thing. This seems to work correctly now.

 

[Joules]

Hello Derek O, I have a MG4 Trophy, Long Range and use a dumb charger that was fitted yonks ago. I have had the same issues as all mentioned above. Last night I plugged in to start charging at 00.30hrs until 04.30 hrs. with OctopusGo tariff. Before I walk away from the car, I give it a minute or two for everything to click and clunk and watch the dashboard, it says 'scheduled charging' until it goes to sleep, LED's showing blue, all OK...nope as soon as I stepped away from the car it started charging! LED's turned to green. I unlocked the car using the remote and then locked it again and that seemed to reset the schedule charging as the LED's turned back to blue and this morning it had charged to expected 70 odd %. I've seen me set the time in the car only to find that the next time it has defaulted to 22.00 and 06.00 hrs. I also observed if you switch off schedule charging to charge away from base, either by the app or on the infotainment screen, that it defaults to the above and you have to reset your times. I used to have a Kona EV and you could switch off/on schedule charging and the times stayed set...although on occasions it would go rogue and start charging on its own!

 

[moonraker44]

MG4 Trophy and finally an electric car tariff from British gas. We have a generic tethered "charger" that simply provides power but the car frequently does not start charging on schedule so am I doing something wrong? I use the schedule settings on the car not the app as being an old fogie I can't get on with smart phones (sad !)

EG yesterday we arrived home with about 50% battery left. I checked the settings for schedule charge - Schedule "on" start time 00.15 and finish 06.00. Then I plugged in the cable and locked the car. The "charger" has a green LED (power available) when not plugged in to talk to the car and that changes to blue when plugged in; presumably that indicates that the handshake is complete.

About 00.30 I checked the smart meter power display indoors - not charging, just a couple of hundred watts being used. I went to the car, unlocked to release the plug lock I but didn't get in. Pulled the charge plug out & the "charger" led turned green. I re-plugged and re-locked the car., "charger" led turned blue as were the indicator bars at the car charge port. Back inside the house the power monitor is showing 7 kw so it's now charging.

Any thoughts, I don't want to stay up past midnight every time I need to charge !

I have had my MG Trophy for about a year now and have found scheduled charging to be problematic.
The following procedure works reliably.
1 The scheduled charging times on the App and the car are the same, in my case 10.00pm till 6.00am
2 With the car switched on I set the scheduled charging come on using the APP. You should get a notification of 'success' when the two controls have talked to each other.
3 Now switch the power off on the car
4 Get out and plug the charging cable into the socket and the power supply (in my case it is a Granny Charger)
5 Switch on the power and the charger communicates with the car but normally it does not start actual charging
5 Lock the car


Hopefully you will find that this works for you

 

[gazza487]

Is this a known problem? I’m also having difficulty with my MG4 charging reliably with a schedule set and we’re working through it with our electrician and the charger company at the moment. We have Google nests that extend our wifi signal, though we’d checked with the electrician before installation that it shouldn’t cause an issue.

Not well documented with the 4 specifically that I know of but there is a post from mg motor when people were affected with ZSs and 5s. I personally suffered with it on my 1st gen SE SR 4. There is a post on isp review if you google “mg powerline networking issues”.

Now for you specific scenario - I believe Google nest is a mesh network all via wireless and NOT powerline networking which is which caused the issues. From my experience it is when the powerline adapters send data down the Earth pin which causes the issue, as all houses and wiring are slightly different - it will cause the adapters to behave differently hence some get a problem, some don’t. I was one of the unlucky ones and had to spend the money to “properly” wire the data rather than rely on the powerline adapters which caused issue.

 

[Lovemyev]

Hello Derek O, I have a MG4 Trophy, Long Range and use a dumb charger that was fitted yonks ago. I have had the same issues as all mentioned above. Last night I plugged in to start charging at 00.30hrs until 04.30 hrs. with OctopusGo tariff. Before I walk away from the car, I give it a minute or two for everything to click and clunk and watch the dashboard, it says 'scheduled charging' until it goes to sleep, LED's showing blue, all OK...nope as soon as I stepped away from the car it started charging! LED's turned to green. I unlocked the car using the remote and then locked it again and that seemed to reset the schedule charging as the LED's turned back to blue and this morning it had charged to expected 70 odd %. I've seen me set the time in the car only to find that the next time it has defaulted to 22.00 and 06.00 hrs. I also observed if you switch off schedule charging to charge away from base, either by the app or on the infotainment screen, that it defaults to the above and you have to reset your times. I used to have a Kona EV and you could switch off/on schedule charging and the times stayed set...although on occasions it would go rogue and start charging on its own!

Similar here, we have a ZS EV LR Gen2 and charge from an older type dumb wall box almost exclusively.
I have the head unit in the car set to match our off peak rates.
Before plugging in the car, the wall box displays a green standby light on the front cover.
Open the car with the fob and insert the type2 cable, then lock the car with the fob.
As soon as this happens, the wall box thuds.
Blue standby light switches from blue to green, suggesting that the car is pulling a charge.
In fact it is just conducting a hand shake with the car.
After a very short time, it has discovered that a delayed charge has been set.
Therefore the wall box thuds again and it has now returned to its standby state, displaying the blue light on the front cover once again.
Quick check through the drivers window and the info unit displays a graphic showing a charging cable is attached and states a delayed charge has been requested.
At the preset times I have set in the car, it will trigger the wall box to commence charging, when the requested start time has been reached.
I have also noticed the strange situation, that if you turn off scheduled charging in the head unit, when turned back on, it reverts to a factory default time and NOT my personally chosen delayed charging times.
I did get caught out by this once, I was playing around in the settings and turned off the delayed charging feature in error.
I then turned it back on, but failed to notice that it had reset back to the factory default times as a result.
By pure luck, I was passing my home energy meter at about 23.15 and noticed that the consumption light was RED !.
Indicating there was a large demand being consumed.
When I checked the wall box, it was charging the car - WHY ???.
My day rate is about four times more expensive than my off peak rate, so no charging gets done in this expensive time frame.
A quick check in the settings in the car the following morning, revealed the problem.
It’s an odd one aright and you do have to be aware of this issue, if you are regularly turning off he delayed charge function, as the default times may not match your personal off peak tariffs.
Also I have spotted a slide control in the head unit, that if selected, allows the car to continue charging IF the required SOC level has NOT been reached when the end delayed time has been reached.
I never use this function due to the higher cost implications.

 

[acl]

I think scheduled charging and/or the app are broken. Sometimes I have it scheduled and it starts immediately, sometimes scheduling doesn't start. Other times I find the car charged to 100% when my limit was 80%. I mitigate by checking what's going on. I think the app is garbage from a UX point of view as well - needs a complete overhaul.

 

[acl]

It's funny that a day or so after posting how crap the UX was, the app gets a complete overhaul. I suspect the 80% / 100% thing isn't fixed though because I changed it through the UI, went back in and it had ignored what I had set it to so I had to change it again.

 

[Derek O]

Update observation :
With the battery at about 50% I checked the settings for schedule charging (in the car not by app). The start 00.10 and finish times 05.00 were as before when it didn't charge. So what else to try ? The only thing left was to activate "permit charging to continue past the finish time" so I tried that and it immediately reverted to 22.00 as start time !! I reset that to 00.10 for the off peak rate, plugged in and locked the car. Power monitor check at 00.15 - yes it's charging.

I will double check this after the next run but if the car will only schedule charge if the "allow to continue after end" is set on that's not acceptable as it forces it to complete the charge at day rate electricity. It should be OK to bring a low charge up to 80 % (or 100 %) over 2 nights if that suits our usage pattern.
I will keep on fiddling and report back.

 

[finbar]

Update observation :
With the battery at about 50% I checked the settings for schedule charging (in the car not by app). The start 00.10 and finish times 05.00 were as before when it didn't charge. So what else to try ? The only thing left was to activate "permit charging to continue past the finish time" so I tried that and it immediately reverted to 22.00 as start time !! I reset that to 00.10 for the off peak rate, plugged in and locked the car. Power monitor check at 00.15 - yes it's charging.

I will double check this after the next run but if the car will only schedule charge if the "allow to continue after end" is set on that's not acceptable as it forces it to complete the charge at day rate electricity. It should be OK to bring a low charge up to 80 % (or 100 %) over 2 nights if that suits our usage pattern.
I will keep on fiddling and report back.

It's sh1te. My experience is scheduled charging mostly works, but not reliable for something that should be so simple.

I have a very basic setup, dumb wall box, so manage the schedule via the car. Of experienced the same issue other people have in that the times will reset to default but apart from that when I start to use schedule charging I'd say about 75% of the time it works and 25% of the time it doesn't start. And there's a proportion of the times it does start at the right time when it doesn't stop at the end time despite having the toggle set to disallow charging past the schedule end time.

Really annoying and very frustrating. I'm trying to understand if there is a pattern to do with the order of plugging cables in and locking the car. But even when the car shows the image that says there's a scheduled charge coming, I've had it where it doesn't start. And likewise sometimes even when it's scheduled, as soon as I plug in the power it will start charging and continue to charge until I disconnect.

 

[Lovemyev]

Don’t bother with the App, just set your charging time requirement’s in the head unit of the car and it works just fine.
Setting your requirement’s in the App has very mixed results TBH I find.
We have a 2022 Gen2 Trophy ? LR and charge from home100% of the time.
We charge using a dumb wall box unit that was first installed way back in 2017.
It has found no problem obeying the off peak charging schedule that has been set via the head unit.
It has never failed to successfully by using the delay charging times set via the head unit.
These manually set charging times are aligned with the our off peak window set by our energy provider.
I have tried using the App to adjust the time lines and does return a successful command reply to this change.
However, the following day it has not returned the desired effect !.
Honestly, I don’t trust the App myself.

 

[finbar]

Don’t bother with the App, just set your charging time requirement’s in the head unit of the car and it works just fine.
Setting your requirement’s in the App has very mixed results TBH I find.
We have a 2022 Gen2 Trophy ? LR and charge from home100% of the time.
We charge using a dumb wall box unit that was first installed way back in 2017.
It has found no problem obeying the off peak charging schedule that has been set via the head unit.
It has never failed to successfully by using the delay charging times set via the head unit.
These manually set charging times are aligned with the our off peak window set by our energy provider.
I have tried using the App to adjust the time lines and does return a successful command reply to this change.
However, the following day it has not returned the desired effect !.
Honestly, I don’t trust the App myself.

I've never used the app for this and have always set the schedule in the car, so it's definitely not app related

 

[fnegroni]

I find the opposite to be the case: if I set the schedule in the car, the app will normally show what was set. But occasionally I have seen the app overriding the car’s settings. Therefore I now always only use the app to set the schedule.

In fact on my SE SR there’s a bug on infotainment display whereby it will still show a previous setting (say 4 am till 11am) when the app instead shows the actual schedule (10pm to 6am) and only when I try and change the schedule in the car itself, the actual setting will appear in the adjustment overlay. Therefore I don’t trust the values I see in the infotainment display.

 

[Ian 2455]

MG4 Trophy and finally an electric car tariff from British gas. We have a generic tethered "charger" that simply provides power but the car frequently does not start charging on schedule so am I doing something wrong? I use the schedule settings on the car not the app as being an old fogie I can't get on with smart phones (sad !)

EG yesterday we arrived home with about 50% battery left. I checked the settings for schedule charge - Schedule "on" start time 00.15 and finish 06.00. Then I plugged in the cable and locked the car. The "charger" has a green LED (power available) when not plugged in to talk to the car and that changes to blue when plugged in; presumably that indicates that the handshake is complete.

About 00.30 I checked the smart meter power display indoors - not charging, just a couple of hundred watts being used. I went to the car, unlocked to release the plug lock I but didn't get in. Pulled the charge plug out & the "charger" led turned green. I re-plugged and re-locked the car., "charger" led turned blue as were the indicator bars at the car charge port. Back inside the house the power monitor is showing 7 kw so it's now charging.

Any thoughts, I don't want to stay up past midnight every time I need to charge !

I have an Easee home charger and I use both the scheduling in the car and on the wall unit (via an app, I'm afraid). Once the timings are set (00.00 to 05.00) I just connect the cable, tap the rdf fob on the charger and that's it. I wake up in the morning to a car with more charge than I had last night.

I am not sure what would happen if I just used one or the other...

 

[Lovemyev]

I find the opposite to be the case: if I set the schedule in the car, the app will normally show what was set. But occasionally I have seen the app overriding the car’s settings. Therefore I now always only use the app to set the schedule.

In fact on my SE SR there’s a bug on infotainment display whereby it will still show a previous setting (say 4 am till 11am) when the app instead shows the actual schedule (10pm to 6am) and only when I try and change the schedule in the car itself, the actual setting will appear in the adjustment overlay. Therefore I don’t trust the values I see in the infotainment display.

I have found, that if you turn off your preset schedule charging times via the App, say in order to collect a charge outside of the normal off peak times, ( say middle of the day ).
That when I turn it back ON via the App, it will default back too a default time of charging schedule, that does NOT align with my energy providers time periods !.
It then wants to then commence a start a charge, starting at about 10.30pm which is WAY too early for when my off peak tariff commences currently at around 1.00am.
This must be a standard default time built into the software of the car ?.
This can and has, caught me out in the past.
If you turn OFF scheduled off peak times, you will need to reset the schedule times to then match with the schedule / times set down by your energy provider.
For this reason, I try NOT to turn off my preset charging times as this then screws up my charging requirements, that will align to my energy providers hours.

 

[mg4mc]

I am not sure what would happen if I just used one or the other...

Using both sounds like a bad idea to me. What are the chances they both start at exactly the same time?

 

[Bam Bam]

Our current tariff is one with a peak period from 4pm-7pm so I use the car scheduling to avoid it.

Got the car back from a service and these settings were forgotten, which I didn't realise for a little while during the peak time - the one time I don't want to charge!

Within those remaining 21 hours I rely on the EVSE functionality to organise the charging, which works as I hope most of the time.

 

[richbaseley1]

Update observation :
With the battery at about 50% I checked the settings for schedule charging (in the car not by app). The start 00.10 and finish times 05.00 were as before when it didn't charge. So what else to try ? The only thing left was to activate "permit charging to continue past the finish time" so I tried that and it immediately reverted to 22.00 as start time !! I reset that to 00.10 for the off peak rate, plugged in and locked the car. Power monitor check at 00.15 - yes it's charging.

I will double check this after the next run but if the car will only schedule charge if the "allow to continue after end" is set on that's not acceptable as it forces it to complete the charge at day rate electricity. It should be OK to bring a low charge up to 80 % (or 100 %) over 2 nights if that suits our usage pattern.
I will keep on fiddling and report back.

Did you get this working?

 

[Derek O]

I have learned to live with the charging foibles but is often a pita.

First I do not use the app as I am still in the stone age with smart phone so the settings are done on the car. I am 85 and haven’t done anything since that post due to a series of medical problems more or less since we bought the car. The biggest of those was bladder cancer needing removal and I now wear an outside bag.

So the home charging from a generic 7 kW wall box. Car is set to charge to 80% (100 occasionally)

Normal sequence is –

1, unlock the car to release the flap. The wall box shows green flashing which changes to blue flashing when plugged in and the car lights round the charge plug also change to blue presumably then a hand shake is complete.

2, lock the car and observe the driver’s display through the driver’s side window. Usually it shows the circle with the “electrical flash” and says “connecting”. Goes blank after about 10 seconds. The car does not charge. (checked on the remote power display from the smart meter.)

3, Unlock the car to unplug, wait a few seconds and re plug. I might have to do this 2 or 3 times until the driver’s display changes to includes the “snake” (cable) symbol. Go inside the house and check the power meter and usually – sod it the damn thing is charging despite the settings of start at 00.05 & finish at 05.00.

4 Back outside , unlock car pull out the plug and re-plug. Re-lock , check for the “snake” and go back inside, check the power display and with luck it is not charging. I might have to do this again !!

5 , Luckily I am a night owl so I check the smart meter display around mid night and usually it starts to charge at the set time. But occasionally I have to go back out to the car and do the unlock, unplug, re-plug and re-lock routine again !! Another oddment is that occasionally the car will change the required charge level to 100% without me changing the settings !!

The car has not had any software upgrades yet. I will check the current software reference later – it was purchased May 2023. I understand that there is a new upgrade pending so will probably have that done.

We have done approx 10,k miles with only 2 high power charges away from home & both were fine.

So if anyone has any thought I will be “all ears”