Ask the Expert: Why will my Land Rover no longer charge during cheaper hours?

Dear Alex,

I received an email from my electricity supplier, Octopus, saying that my car will no longer work with Intelligent Octopus Go. As a result, my low-cost charging hours have been reduced, the cost has increased and, because I use a three-pin plug to charge, I will now have to charge into the peak rate. I have not been informed about this by Land Rover and I am appalled by its blatant disregard for the financial impact this change will have on its customers. What’s behind it? And do I have any recourse?

– MI

Dear MI,

For readers not au fait with the vagaries of electric car charging, a quick explainer. Octopus is one of several providers that offers tariffs geared towards EV owners, allowing them to charge their cars overnight, when demand is low, at a lower rate: this tariff is known as Octopus Go. 

Intelligent Octopus Go builds on this by using machine learning to work out the best time to charge the car. You use an app to tell the service when you need the car charged by and how much charge you require, and then Octopus does the rest, charging during the cheapest periods to keep the rate at its lowest. 

However, Intelligent Octopus Go requires the use of a phone app, where Octopus Go does not. This is where the issue lies, because it seems Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has recently changed how third-party companies’ phone apps work with its cars.

In short, it’s a privacy thing. “To continue keeping our clients’ data as safe as possible, we have updated how our electrified vehicles interact with the ever-growing list of third-party phone applications,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “As a result, some smart charging tariffs are affected. We are working with energy companies to keep our mutual clients informed of their options.”

To put it another way, JLR is worried about owners’ personal data being accessible to third-party apps that can access said data and has moved to prevent access to it by any third-party app it hasn’t tested and authorised itself.

In many ways, this is a good thing, because it suggests JLR is taking privacy seriously and ensuring its customers’ data can’t be hacked or mined by nefarious apps. Not that Octopus’s is one of these, for the avoidance of doubt, but JLR is clearly taking a blanket approach.

Unfortunately, it does mean that owners like you are left up the creek – and I’m afraid there isn’t much you can do about it.

That’s because it’s within JLR’s rights to safeguard its owners’ personal data; indeed, it is incumbent upon it to do so if it believes there is a threat, so you could say it is acting properly in taking this action. 

In my view, it is then incumbent upon Octopus to ensure its app matches the standards required by the manufacturers of the cars it needs to interact with. Hopefully this is already the case, and I would imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to get its app added to JLR’s list of authorised apps – especially given Octopus Go is already JLR’s recommended EV tariff, so there’s already a relationship between the two companies.

So I think the best thing you can do is take up your case with Octopus, rather than with JLR. If enough customers complain about the new restriction, Octopus will work to get its app authorised, at which point access to the Intelligent tariff will work again. 

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