Our experience of charging an EV isn't perfect but it's probably typical and that's something we're working hard to improve with new offers such as Intelligent Octopus.
I'm on one of our Go Faster tariffs so I charge the car during the cheap period. However I've also set the car to reach only 80% to keep the battery in condition and I've got a smart charger that takes the Go Faster tariff via our API and decides when to charge.
As a result the car app complains it's not receiving a charge and the smart charger app complains it can't reach full charge or that the charging rate is slow even there's no issue - it's just a clash between each service and a lack of any standard way to communicate between the car, charger and tariff.
Our tariff API was published in 2018, has barely changed in four years and is very stable so in some respects is becoming a defacto standard and relied on by many chargers and other apps and services. Intelligent Octopus takes this a step further by connecting to either the charger or car API (in some cases via an intermediary broker service) to provide more insight and control within the Octopus app.
Public charging has vastly improved in the past couple of years. We still have issues with some of the older networks that haven't invested in improving the experience (three times I've had to call one network) but those that are investing are providing a great service and expanding fast. We've of course signed up to Electric Juice which makes the process even smoother.
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