You will still be able to charge your vehicle if you've used all of your inclusive miles allowance within a 12 month period. You won't receive any further cash rewards during that time. Your inclusive miles allowance will reset again on the anniversary of your Pod Point being installed.
As part of your subscription you will be given an annual inclusive miles allowance. This allowance starts from the day your Pod Point is installed.
Each time you successfully complete a Smart Charge, you will use miles from your allowance. Miles used can be tracked in our app in your Wallet and withdrawn to your bank account once your balance is above £10.
You will still need to pay your energy supplier for your electricity as normal.
Each Inclusive Mile is based on an EV achieving 3.5 miles per kWh and charging with an off-peak rate of 8.05p per kWh - equivalent to 2.3 pence per mile.
We currently support all single or two rate energy tariffs. If you are on a Smart Tariff such as Intelligent Octopus Go, Octopus Intelligent Drive Pack, Octopus Agile, OVO Charge Anytime, Scottish Power EV Optimise, or other similar smart electricity tariff that is not a single rate or two-rate tariff, then unfortunately you can’t subscribe.
Pod Point chargers can integrate with solar panels – and we will be adding solar settings to the Pod Home app in the next few months.
The energy generated from solar panels feeds into the mains supply, which you can then use to supplement the energy needed to charge your EV.
However, you can’t charge your EV exclusively with this energy with Pod Point chargers, as they can’t automatically reduce their in-built charging rates to match the energy generated by the solar panels.
Even if you could, you would likely end up with a much slower charging rate than what the charger provides. For example, if you have a 7kW or faster home charger, you would be limited to the solar array’s maximum rate, which is ~4kW in perfect conditions.
Also, it’s worth remembering that solar panels only generate energy when there’s daylight. So if you charge your EV after sunset (which is very common, especially in the UK in the darker months) your car cannot use solar energy directly.
If you're on an off-peak tariff, we'll only charge your car at off-peak times when your energy is cheapest.
When you sign up to Pod Drive we'll ask your preference on whether you prefer to only charge at cheap times, or whether charging to your desired battery amount is more important.
When you plug in your vehicle, we’ll work out if we will meet your target battery percentage in your cheap off-peak period. If we can’t meet your target, you will get a notification in our app.
Simply set the time of day when you’d like your vehicle charged by, and what % you want your battery to be charged to when you first set up your app. You can always change these settings whenever you need to. Every time you plug in, we'll automatically work-out the cheapest time to charge your car, based on your energy tariff, to make sure it’s ready for when you need it.
We connect to your car automatically and calculate how much energy is needed to ensure you reach the charge target set in your car manufacturers app.
You can override any Smart Charging using our Boost feature, which will charge your car straight away.
Any charging sessions completed using the Boost feature aren't Smart Charged and therefore won’t use your Pod Drive inclusive miles allowance, and are not eligible for cashing out.
As the use of renewable energy in our energy system increases, we can help balance demands on the grid by adjusting energy usage to match the peaks and troughs of wind and solar generation.
All you have to do is plug in your car and we’ll do the rest - ensuring your car is always charged when your energy prices are cheapest.
Whenever you Smart Charge, you'll be using your Pod Drive inclusive miles allowance.