E.ON Next Drive Smart and Tesla Pre-Conditioning

theblueflash

Tesla M3, Zappi 2.0 Charger and E.ON Next Drive Smart Tariff.

I’ve recently moved to the smart tariff from another providers EV 0001-0500 fixed charging tariff window.

All is working OK with the variable cheap charging windows and everything is setup to allow EON to control the Tesla. All good so far - BUT - when the car is setup to pre- heat in morning by 0800 , car defaults to asking for peak rate supply, rather than use battery. This has led to a peak charge every morning that is eating into the savings. The charger is effectively dumb and will just provide charge to whatever controls it - as EON doesn’t request the pre-condition charge - it doesn’t know about it so it’s peak rate. Tesla can’t be changed to use battery only. Anyone got similar challenge amd any ideas to mitigate it ? Wife Not keen on manual climate switch every morning. Ideas welcome ? I believe the next version of my Zappi has a pre-condition option but the 2.0 doesn’t apparently.

Thank you

Woodstok2000

I have different equipment and a different supplier (Ovo), but I faced the same issue and they advised me that as preconditioning happens over a short period of time with a defined finish it will almost always be treated as an 'urgent' charge at full price.

I worked out my car uses about 2kWh to warm up, so overall the cost is ~30p - not a big deal as I don't drive every day.

One workaround I did find was that since OVO don't have a defined time period for charging, if I set my 'ready by' time to be the same time I want to drive, the car is almost always charging right up to that time and so the preconditioning happens at cheap rate. It's not 100% guaranteed but it hasn't failed yet. I don't think that will work where you have a defined cheap charging window though.

Can you disable charging from the EON or Zappi apps so the car has to use the battery?

theblueflash

Sadly cannot disable the pre-condition charge from either EON or Tesla. The Zappi charger is “dumb” in this as it requires to be set to “charge” all the time to let EON control the charging windows. I’m a bit lost with how to stop it 🤷‍♂️

MattMattMattUK

I rarely bother with the preconditioning the cabin, even from -5 the cabin is up to temperature in a couple of minutes and if frozen defrosted in less than a minute. The only time I use it is if on charge at the gym (free electricity) or if I am giving someone a lift on a particularly cold day. As the car warms up so quickly it does not seem worth the effort.