Intelligent Drive Pack FAQs

Intelligent Drive Pack is our new subscription add-on. Instead of paying based on how much energy you use, Drive Pack includes all your scheduled charging for just £20 a month. So you’ll always know what you’re paying – and (hopefully) bag some big savings.

The £20 a month will be added to your existing direct debit.

As Intelligent Drive Pack is just for EV charging, your home energy and any unscheduled EV charging you might want to do will be on a separate tariff – you can choose between Octopus Fixed or Flexible Octopus. That split means we can give you even cheaper charging at the greenest times of day.

Good to know: if your EV battery’s running low and you need a quick top-up outside your scheduled charging slot, you’ll be charged your standard home energy rate (p/kWh).

All charging is also subject to our fair usage policy – just to keep things fair and stop a few EVs from gobbling up all the green electrons.

Intelligent Drive Pack costs £20 a month for all your charging scheduled by us, no matter what time of day it happens.

Since Intelligent Drive Pack is only for EV charging, your home energy will be on a separate tariff. And If you ever need a quick boost your charging outside of our scheduled hours, you’ll pay your normal home energy rates.

Not for you? If you decide to leave, no hard feelings. You can leave anytime and there are no exit fees.

It depends on how much you drive and how much you are able to shift your home energy usage. Our Intelligent Drive Pack is great for people who don’t like surprises and who want to budget their car charging costs accurately - all the scheduled charging we do for you is included.

Your monthly price is fixed for 12 months from the date your subscription starts, so even if wholesale costs go up, your car charging costs will stay the same.

You can cancel your subscription at any time by emailing us at hello@octopus.energy. Your household energy will continue on the tariff you selected alongside Intelligent Drive Pack, either Octopus Flexible or Octopus Fixed.

There is no charge for cancelling your Intelligent Drive Pack subscription, however if you are on a fixed tariff you will remain on this tariff for the remainder of your agreement or until you cancel early and pay any applicable exit fee (with all EV consumption charged at your household rate).

If you cancel within 14 days of subscribing, and you haven’t done any smart charging sessions, we’ll refund your monthly fee.

If you cancel your subscription after 14 days, your subscription will remain active until the end of the current billing period, after which it will not renew. No refunds or partial reimbursements will be issued for unused time within the paid month.

As well as being an Octopus Energy customer, you'll need a few things to join Intelligent Drive Pack:

• home energy supplied on our Flexible or Fixed tariff
• a working smart meter
• A compatible EV & charger
• If you also export your energy, your export must be registered with us, and you must be on our Outgoing Octopus export tariff.

Only customers who meet all these conditions can join Intelligent Drive Pack. If your charger or EV isn’t compatible with Intelligent Octopus Go for automatic charging, it’s still worth checking out our brilliant value Octopus Go tariff.

Intelligent Drive Pack works with over 280 cars from top EV brands and selected home chargers. Click here to check if yours is compatible.

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

Heads up: if you’re a Polestar, Renault or new BMW / Mini customer, our new subscription feature won’t work just yet – but we’re working on it.

Yes, you can join Intelligent Drive Pack if you also export energy. However, you need to have both your import and export with Octopus Energy and you can only be on the Outgoing Octopus tariff. You also cannot be on the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) or have export with another energy supplier.

We will update your billing cycle to the 1st of every month and will credit you for any additional energy you exported as recorded by the export register on your smart meter.

You can plug in whenever you like – but your £20 covers charging that’s scheduled by us. You’ll also need to choose a ‘ready by’ time between 4am and 11am.

Top tip: Want to charge during the day? Plug in at 11am and set your ‘ready by’ time for 7am the next morning. We’ll pick the cheapest, greenest times to get your battery full.

Yes! You can switch to Intelligent Drive Pack and keep your current EV / charger connected.

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.

Still want to charge during the day? It’s possible. Just plug in at 11am, set your ‘ready by’ time for 7am the next day, and we’ll build you a smart schedule across the daytime 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 – not included in your £20 monthly payment.

To ensure there’s plenty of electrons to go round, Intelligent Drive Pack has a fair usage policy. If you regularly charge 3 or more battery electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles or use more than 700 kWh of charging per month twice in a six month period, we reserve the right to take you off of Intelligent Drive Pack. To give you a sense of what 700 kWh means, this is equivalent to a bit more than 2,000 miles a month.

No, this is limited to your own cars only. If everyone starts charging their friends’ cars, then we wouldn’t be able to offer this add-on anymore, which would be a shame for all of us!

Charging will be for the car we connect to. So if you’ve connected to your car directly, then it will cover only this car. If you’ve connected to your charger, then you can connect multiple cars but keep in mind that we have a limit of 3 different vehicles per month.