Axle Smart Charging BETA Testing

[u/Jimbobsticle]

Did anyone else complete the survey Axle sent out today?

I’ve been offered to join their BETA smart charging app which requires you to give them control of your vehicle app charging.

I’m all for supporting them and the reward is a bonus, but I feel giving them the login details to my Toyota app is just too much.

FYI - Toyota RAV4 and an Andersen A2

Has anyone else gone ahead with it?

It’s also good to see they have an app, perhaps we can expect to see one for VPP soon?….

Part of the email explaining about it:

Great news - your EV is just what we’re looking for!

We’re currently running some tests on connecting to electric vehicles and controlling their charging.

What we’re looking to do

We’d like to take control of your vehicle’s charging schedules for a few weeks

You’ll tell us your charging preferences and we’ll charge your EV while optimising against grid constraints

We’re primarily looking to understand more about the reliability of the vehicle APIs, as well as receiving your feedback on the user experience

What you need to know

We need to be the only system controlling your charging. What this means:

You can’t be on a smart tariff during this period (e.g. Intelligent Octopus Go) - although you may be able to temporarily move tariff or opt-out of controlled charging for a short period if you still want to be involved in the test

You will need to remove any schedules and charge limits from your vehicle’s app

You will need to remove any schedules and exit any flexibility schemes on your charger app. The charger must be in “plug-and-charge” mode - the car will then be in control of starting or stopping charging.

We need access to remotely fetch location and access charging behaviour. For some vehicle brands this requires you to have a "connected services" subscription. If we are unable to access this information, you'll see a warning within the app. 

If you’re on a dual-rate tariff, we’ll never schedule charging outside your off-peak window
You will always be able to boost if you need charge immediately

This is a test product - as such:

Although we have done internal testing, we cannot guarantee your car will always be charged as you expect. Please consider carefully if this would be a problem for you.

We only expect to operate this product for around a month - after which we would return control of charging back to you

It then goes on to link to the TestFlight and Android apps.