I've had my Q4 e-tron 45 quattro and free Ohme charger for nearly 3 months now and it is apparent to me the Ohme charger isn't "fully" compatible with the Q4. It works, but not very well and certainly not as well as it should do given they are supposed to be "compatible". The Ohme app is a bit of a joke and doesn't do what it should do, so if Ohme can't even get their app to work correctly, what chance have they got of ensuring the Audi Q4 API works?
I'm with Octopus Energy on their Intelligent Go tariff which is also "compatible" with the Ohme app and to be fair this appears to work okay and charging the car is only ever done at the cheaper 7p overnight tariff, even when "scheduled" charging is performed outside of the cheap rate overnight hours.
Some examples of issues I constantly have with the Ohme app:
1. 90% of the time when I plug the Ohme charger into the car, the Ohme charger/app is unable to connect to the Audi to determine what the current battery charge level is and therefore assumes 0%. This has the impact of !Removed! up the automated charge schedule as it believes it needs to charge the car from 0% to 80%. The car will still charge to 80%, however, errors will be generated indicating something went wrong and the car wouldn't allow it to charge. This is clearly the charger reaching 80% and then trying to continue to charge it beyond this as it has no clue what the real car charge level is at. This is basic functionality for a charger/app. I, like others, contacted Ohme and got the usual response to power off etc. etc. and that the API is always in development and so can't be guaranteed. Excuses, excuses! They tried to tell me this was an internet connection issue, but my mobile gets a full signal when placed next to the charger. Plus, if I mess about with the app, removing the car, then adding it back, this often causes the car to be contacted by the app and it then shows the correct charge level. The fact that this "forced" communication with the car works, suggests this is more of a software issue than a connection issue.
2. Sometimes, on a very odd occasion, when I plug the Ohme charger into the car, the Ohme charger/app is able to read the car's charge level and so it then produces a "relevant" charge schedule. The front screen of the app (and the charger display) correctly show the current car charge level, which is the start level for charging, and the target level, which will be 80%. So, the charger/app has all the information it needs to charge the car from the current level to 80%, or so you would think. The generated charge schedule is often wrong as the poor Ohme software has decided to create a schedule to charge the car from the current charging level, to 100%! Where does this 100% figure come from? Even when the "Charge to" figure in the Ohme app shows 80%, the generated schedule uses a target of 100%. It is just so shoddy! Needless to say, the Ohme app will successfully charge the car to 80% but attempts to continue charging beyond this and this fails resulting in the Ohme app generating errors to the affect that something went wrong.
So, 99% of the time, while the car is at least charging to 80%, there are always issues with the Ohme app and Ohme support are unable to help me resolve them.
One suggestion I had form Ohme support was to remove the Car from the app completely so that the charger/app never tries to connect to it. In this case it is then necessary to tell the app how much charge to "add" so setting the charge level is essentially done manually. Suggestions like this don't inspire any confidence that these compatibility issues will ever be resolved. I'm at a loss as to why Audi have partnered with Ohme, but then the Audi app isn't that brilliant either so maybe Audi think this level of functionality provided by the poor Ohme app is acceptable.
I would be interested to hear if others are having similar issues with their Q4's and Ohme app, or is it just me?