I’d stay stick to simple stuff, use a TWC (or another dumb charger) and the car’s built in timing.
Then again, I am slightly of the paranoid persuasion...
If you were that paranoid, you’d be driving an old Jag running triple Weber carbs and about as much digital connectivity as a fire hydrant.
I too plumped for a dumb charger. The smart ones just aren’t that smart, and I cant abide clumsy user interfaces. I prefer my digital devices when they just work, with zero delay, almost total lack of failure, and without the need to regularly reboot the things or cure some software glitch. As proof I use the mother-in-law test. If your mother in law can work it and use it, and carry out a first line fix if it all goes wrong, then it’s good enough that it won’t annoy me every single time I come to use it. The Tesla wall charger works every time, is fuss free, and even has a little button on it to open the charge door. It may not seem much, but when I have the dog, the shopping and other stuff in my hands, it’s the difference between me simply plugging it in and thinking nothing more of it, or dropping things and getting mightily annoyed.
As such,
Tesla wall charger, Tesla supercharger, Apple iPad, nest thermostat, coin operated parking meters, Apple TV - All good,
Microsoft Windows pc, Philips Hue lights, Microsoft phones, anything androidy, ‘pay by phone’ parking - All horrendous.
And whiles there’s probably a special place in hell for the person who designed the interface for Pod-point public chargers, the people who came up with Polars charge installation at the Canary Wharf car park can all go boil their heads in cooking oil as far as I’m concerned. What moron puts chargers requiring internet connected phones to access them in a car Park three storeys underground, well outside of even the most tenacious signal, and then doesn’t place any signage whatsoever on how you might be able to initiate a charge. It’s like the bloody Krypton Factor...
(for the uninitiated - first scan for nearby WiFi networks, find the ‘free’ O2 WiFi. Connect, if you can, and then hand over most of your personal data. Swear as it drops the connection - repeatedly. Wait an age for advertising and the inevitable data harvesting to occur, finally gain a connection to the outside world and then load the polar app. Swear again as the app asks you for your email and password as it’s just too dimwitted to allow Apples password management and face/fingerprint recognition to remember either of them for you. Find the correct charger on the app, taking special care to fire up the electron microscope you brought with you to be able to read the chargers unique ident number, typically written in a font small enough to make it more difficult to read than the cooking time on a packet of dried pasta... Initiate charge to unlock charger, wait 2 minutes for request to travel to Polar HQ, which given the response time which is presumably on the outer moons of Saturn. After 2 minutes send request again. After 6 minutes give up and move to another charger. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum, until you realise it’s now 3 hours since you parked, and one of the Superchargers upstairs probably free by now...)
No wonder people are afraid to take up EV’s...
