Intelligent Octopus Go: Customer questions answered

Intelligent Octopus Go is compatible with over 280 cars from top EV brands and selected chargers. You can check on the IO landing page if your EV or charger is supported.

Don't have a home charger yet? Our Octopus engineers can install a charger for you.

Since the start of Intelligent Octopus Go in 2022, we've added more and more devices. Find out more about the journey here.

To give you a smooth and reliable experience on Intelligent Octopus Go, we’ve updated how we connect with your EV and charger.

If both your EV and charger are compatible, you’ll automatically be guided to integrate with your EV.

Why?
Simply: EV integrations give us much better data.

Your EV can tell us its exact charge level. This allows us to charge it to the level that you set in your preferences accurately, getting you to the level of charge you need by the ready by time that you set.

A charger integration works by ‘topping up’ your battery by a relative amount, which is less precise.

(Don't worry, if your EV isn't compatible but your charger is, you'll be able to connect via your charger as usual!).

Want to use your charger anyway?
No problem. If you’d prefer to use your compatible charger for your smart charging, just let us know here and our team will enable that for you.

If you were not eligible for Intelligent Octopus Go, this may be because:

• You don’t have an iPhone (iOS v14.0 or later) or Android (v7 or later)

• You are using a car or charger that we’re not yet compatible with

• You don’t have a smart meter, or you do, but we're not able to connect to your smart meter

• Your smart meter is sending us daily or monthly readings, instead of half-hourly

• You are not on supply with Octopus yet

Octopus customers can download our mobile app without being eligible for Intelligent Octopus Go.

Intelligent Octopus Go has always offered super-cheap power for your whole home every night and smart charging to let you charge cleaner for less.

To keep our off-peak rates as low as possible, in 2026 we will be updating Intelligent Octopus Go to automatically apply the 6 hour limit for super-cheap smart-charging. Find out more about upcoming changes here.

We're always looking to expand the list of EVs and chargers that we can connect to. Here are a few brands that are coming soon:

• Sync Energy

• VCHRGD

• waEV-charge

If you have one of the above devices & would like to be a tester for us, please reach out!

Find out more about how we calculate our ad claims here.

Don’t worry, your first 6 hours of smart charging will be always be billed at off-peak rates regardless of when it happens.

Of course, Outgoing Octopus and Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) are both compatible with Intelligent Octopus Go.

You’ll receive a payment for your export (price is dependent on the tariff you choose) and will still be able to benefit from our smart charging schedules.

Your monthly statements are the best way to keep track of your charging costs.

We’re also working on adding your charging costs to the Octopus app. In the meantime, you can find this information in third party apps like Octo-Aid.

IHDs don’t always work with our smart tariffs like Intelligent Octopus Go - you can read more about why here.

One of the ways we’re able to offer you a really good rate to charge your EV is because we enrol you in a flexibility service when you join Intelligent Octopus Go. This means you won’t be able to join any other flexibility service whilst on the tariff.

Watch our Intelligent Octopus Go EV charging 101 video to find out more or read below.

We connect to your car or charging equipment through the Octopus app. You tell us what time you need your car by and how much charge you need. Then, across all the hours you’re plugged in we’ll charge your car when it’s best for the grid.

Energy’s usually greenest (and cheapest) overnight. That’s why we ask for a ‘ready by’ time between 4-11am, as it helps us make the most of those off-peak hours.

If you need a quick charge during unscheduled hours, you can also use the boost function on your app. Just remember that any charging we haven’t scheduled is charged at your normal home energy rate.

Use the “bump charge” button, which will start a charge immediately. You can stop this charge from the app at any time.

Please check the following:

• Check the charge cable is properly connected to both car and charger - unplug at each end and try plugging in again.

• Check the car and charger used are the ones you’ve registered for Intelligent Octopus Go.

• Make sure any other charging services aren’t controlling your car.

• We might think your car isn’t at home. We currently identify ‘home’ as your car’s location when you signed up to Intelligent Octopus Go. If your car was not at home during your onboarding, then you will need to disconnect your car in the app and reconnect it while your car is at home.

Every schedule is different - it depends on when you plug in, how much energy your car need, and when you need your car charged by. Your smart charging schedule is always displayed in your app after your plug in.

You get 6 hours of super cheap smart charging regardless of when the smart charges are happening.

After plugging in your EV, it will charge for a short period before the Intelligent Octopus Go smart charging schedule takes over.

There are a few reasons why your car might continue to charge for longer after plugging it in:

1. The charging plan has started when you plug in, so all is according to plan! You can check the charging schedule in the app to check if this is supposed to happen.

2. Something else is causing the car to charge, such as a charging schedule in the car, or smart charging features on the charger. You should turn these off in order to guarantee smart charging.

3. Intelligent Octopus Go may not be stopping your charge because it believes your car isn’t at home. We currently identify ‘home’ as your car’s location when you signed up to Intelligent Octopus Go. If your car was not at home during your onboarding, then you will need to log out of your car in the Intelligent Octopus Go app and go through the process again while your car is at home.

4. Intelligent Octopus Go checks in on your car at regular intervals to monitor your charging status. If the car is plugged in just after one of these checks, it could mean up to 30-minute delay in us stopping the charge.

Intelligent Octopus Go only works for home charging. If you charge your car away from home, then you will pay for charging like you normally would. With Intelligent Octopus Go you get 8% off charging on the go when charging on the Electroverse network.

You can turn off smart charging from the app from the settings page. This means Intelligent Octopus Go won’t wake up your car, or create smart charging schedules. Remember to switch smart charging back on when you’re using your car again.

Our charging plan won’t impact your battery any more than regular charging. Car batteries are designed to handle this pattern of charging, and should also be covered by your car's battery/warranty.

To smart charge your car we’ll need to wake it up. We let your car go back to sleep (to avoid battery drain) as often as possible. We recommend keeping your car plugged in at home to help it go to sleep more often and for longer periods.

Unfortunately, no — here’s why. 

Intelligent Octopus Go is designed to give you ultra-low rates by working behind the scenes to balance the UK energy grid. 

To do this properly, we register your setup so the grid knows what's happening. At different points in the day, the grid asks us to ramp your charging up to soak up excess renewable energy or halt it to avoid busy times. In return for acting like a mini power station, we get payments that we pass back to you as cheap electricity.

Services like Axle Energy do a similar thing but with one crucial difference. While we use those grid payments to lower your actual unit rate so your whole home gets cheaper energy, third-party apps like Axle aren't energy suppliers. Because they can't lower your energy rate, they just give you a cut of the payments they receive from the grid as a cash reward for your battery's flexibility. 

The 'too many cooks' problem 

The issue right now is that the UK energy market doesn’t have a central system to track who is controlling what. If another provider is calling the shots on your battery at the same time we’re trying to manage your EV, it creates a problem.

Two different apps could end up giving your home completely clashing instructions at the exact same second. If we can't accurately report what your home is doing to help balance the grid, we can't lock in those rewards — which would mean we couldn’t guarantee those delicious ultra-low Intelligent Octopus Go rates.

What are my options?

• Switch to Octopus Go: If you really want another service to manage your battery, that’s fine. You can easily hop over to our standard Octopus Go tariff. Because it uses a simple, fixed window of cheap night rates rather than active, dynamic management, there’s no risk of a clash. You're free to share control of your battery with whoever you like.

• Wait for our all-in-one idea: We're building a way to bring your home battery into the Intelligent Octopus Go fold. This will let you stay on the tariff and unlock extra rewards for your battery. Drop us an email if you’d like to join the test group.

We want to see the market improve to give customers more choice
Right now, the grid flexibility market is a bit of a Wild West. There’s no sheriff in town keeping track of which provider is managing which device! The good news is that a body called Elexon has been appointed to be that sheriff (the market facilitator), but they won’t be up and running for at least 18 months. In theory, this should give you the flexibility to mix and match different services (so Octopus could manage your EV while another app runs your battery) without any risk of crossed wires.