We currently drive a Renault Zoe (mostly my wife since she travels more than I do), and the MY Renault app, though severely lacking in functionallity, is still useful.
Does anyone know if Aptera is planning on remote connectivity to the car from a phone.
I've searced the forums and the FAQ for answers but have been unable to find anything substantial about it.
I find it very useful for my Zoe, mainly to be able to monitor battery level while charging without having to actually remain in the car.
I also used to check the charging history a lot before Renault removed it from the app. It would also be interesting to see the drive history, which should be easy to implement.
In the MY Renault app, I also have the option to remotely start the climate control system to defrost the car in the winter or cool it down in the summer before getting into the car, tough I never use it.
Any other ideas or thoughts?
@BMW Bloch Ya, my phone is smart enough to turn off its WiFi reception when I drive out of home WiFi range, & back on when I return. A car with WiFi should also be smart enough to do the same with its charging timers. On the other hand, many (most? all?) new home chargers have their own built-in timers.
Advantage: Aptera (again!). It doesn't even need an onboard timer, or at least you can always leave it off, since Aptera recharges a 40-mile US-avg daily drive in only 3 hours from a standard wall outlet, where a $10 plug-in timer works fine! Just set it once, for midnight to 3AM or whatever, & then ignore it.
Nearly nobody will need home L2 for an Aptera, since L1 recharges 130 miles overnight.
The Zoe also allows to start the charge with a tap on the screen ... if only I'd remember in time.
Some chargers clearly show "charging" on their displays while others show a checkmark only which only confirms
- plugged-in
- communication ok
but then either could be
- "waiting for car to charge" or "charging".
At the end of the day I can do without app. Just make the car recognize my home charger to apply my charging schedule only there lol.
@BMW Bloch & @Knix Very good points. So phone app desirability depends on user habits, location & vehicle setup.
For example, my car allows me to over-ride its onboard timer with a few clicks to start the charge immediately, before I even go into a restaurant. My car also allows me to turn the timer off with a few clicks, retaining the full separate weekday/weekend schedule, ready to just turn back on any time. No app needed for MY car.
Also, I usually just sit in the car catching up on my phone (news/forums/email), so I'd notice if charging stopped after 10 minutes. That would be a bit much to wait though, every time you want to plug into an unknown charger & walk away, so the app would be very handy if you often do that. I don't, so no app needed for MY habits.
On my normal 16-mile (each way) drive, all 20+ free chargers right on that route always provide the full 6.6kW. If they didn't, a phone app would be very handy if I didn't usually just wait in the car.
By now I have figured out that only ONE of the 20+ chargers is unreliable. When it fails though it's always within only a few minutes, so if I'm not going to wait in the car or very close, I just plug in immediately & by the time I get myself ready to leave, or only a few moments later, I know whether or not it's going to stay on. Again, no app needed for MY location.
Being able to check charging status remotely is an essential function for me. Where I live, calculating how long you need to charge is from AC is impossible since the charge rate varies greatly from time to time and place to place. Most chargers here are built to share grid capacity with other grid loads and available grid power can vary greatly.
I currently drive a Renault Zoe. I like the app feature to check if the car is still charging. Sometimes you take a break along a highway, plug in the car, it starts charging and for some unknown reason stops after 10 min while I am having lunch (by now I figured out which chargers are more likely to be reliable than others).
Also I have set a schedule to charge overnight from 20.00 to 07.00 plus all weekend when electricity is cheaper.
Unfortunately it cannot differentiate between doing that at home or on the road for AC chargers. The app allows me to start the charge immediately remotely sitting in the restaurant.
@spacepilot You're welcome to join me in I guess the 20th century 😉, where we don't mind a tiny bit of math like "I want to recharge 52 miles from my wall outlet, divided by 13 mi/hr is 4 hours" (to set the car's timer, or your phone's alarm).
My point was there's really no need for a phone app. Me & my eGolf friend are both fine without it. You might try thinking about each of the wish-list items above & comparing them to what you do in your current car. For example, do you currently need to check your tire pressures from your phone instead of the dashboard display? Or check the fuel level from your phone? Do you lose the car in a parking lot even when you can hit the fob button to beep it?
Guess I’m just going to have to suck it up, join the 21st century, and buy my car an unlimited data plan. Maybe we can preload maps and larger updates vis WiFi at home. I’m a Luddite in that respect, still on a cheaper limited data plan and trying to do the heavy data via WiFi.
@spacepilot Maybe, IF you want those features: WiFi wouldn't let you turn on the A/C while you're in the checkout line at Costco.
When my 500e's non-renewable app ran out I barely missed it at all.
My friend's eGolf app was renewable but she didn't consider it worth bothering to pay for.
Hopefully WiFi will be an option for over-the-air updates.
Does this mean we will have to have a phone subscription for our car? Could do line of sight stuff with just a good WiFi in the car, which would also update the car systems when it is home.
I think they mentioned it in one of the vids, but using Ctrl+F with "app" in the "Find" field, I found that line 458 of Aptera'a FAQ sheet says "Will it be possible to control and program the heating and AC from a distance via an app? Possibly, but we haven't progressed our software enough to know, pre-heating and cooling for sure, however, specific temps may be more work."
That seems to confirm there WILL be an app, & I'd guess it's much easier for them to make it relay lots of data like most of the wish-lists above, than to make it turn on/off HVAC like they say it will. They're not yet confirming it will be able to ADJUST hvac, since it's even more work.
Kind of a no-brainer if you figure that they are already planning on use your phone as the key, no?
Hi Knix. I too would like to see Aptera take advantage of app technology. I use my BMW Connect almost daily. I use it to:
Track or Locate my car in large parking lots or unfamiliar cities on a map.
Remotely pre-cool or pre-heat the car.
Beep my horn or flash the lights in parking lots.
Check tire pressures
Look up future service schedule
Schedule service
Review driving efficiency and electrical consumption
Review state of charging and times
Check fuel capacity in the generator.