VinFast App – Ewing VinFast of Plano

To Charge Overnight or to Not Charge Overnight…

Charging your VinFast at night is, in most cases, a logical answer to when you should charge your car. Fewer items in your home are bogging down the grid. While you may be running your dishwasher at night, it’s rare that you’re also running your washing machine and the dryer, all while charging your car while you are sleeping. This means that energy costs and usages are typically much lower, as even your AC or heating system isn’t running as often or as hard, in most cases. However, it should be noted that energy companies could, at some point, start pricing their energy higher due to more demand at supposed off-peak hours around or after midnight.

Check If Your State Uses Solar Energy for the Grid

With that being said, there are states, like California, that utilize and take advantage of solar energy during the daytime when the sun is out and about up in the sky. This window is between 10 am and 4 pm. These would be optimal times to charge a car, as the grid is emitting less carbon dioxide (CO2) and various greenhouse gases. Instead, it’s being charged more naturally by the carbon-neutral sun. According to Recurrent, though, in California only about 25% of all EV charging occurs during 10 am to 4 pm.

Electricity hydro power electric energy smart meter on the brick wall

Can the Grid Have Too Many EVs Charging?

Now what happens if there are multiple EVs in your neighborhood that are all plugged in overnight? Well, believe it or not, the meter attached to your house is pretty intelligent. Most meters attached to houses are now called AMRs, or Automated Meter Readers, which send all your power and energy usage digitally to the energy provider. With the switch to digital, that means the meters and the grid as a whole can monitor things more closely. For instance, if you have a dozen cars on one street that are all plugged in to charge overnight, the meters and overall grid communicate with one another. They know the energy/charging needs of each car and can appropriately choose which vehicles to charge first. The systems also know when you typically plug your car in to charge and when you unplug your car. So, it will attempt to charge your car to 100% before the usual time that you unplug your car to leave.

What to Do?

What is the answer? Well, home EV chargers can be set to charge to full by a certain time manually via the actual charger or by the app on your smartphone. If you leave for work at 7 am, then you’ll want to make sure your charger knows this and to tell it that you don’t care when your car gets charged, so long as it’s topped up to 100% by 7 am. Some utility companies offer users the ability to tell them when to charge your car, and some companies are working together to develop even smarter home charging systems that can learn when charging is cheapest, as well as automatically charge from renewable energy sources, whether from your house or the grid.

Why You Should Choose Ewing VinFast

At Ewing VinFast of Plano, we have the best prices on dozens of new VinFast EVs and used cars. Our well-educated sales staff and finance department will happily assist you with your EV questions and needs. Our fantastic service department will ensure your vehicle stays in the best condition.

We look forward to serving you.

VinFast has worked hard to provide customers with an excellent mobile app that allows owners to schedule and monitor vehicle maintenance, approve vehicle repairs, check the charging status of their VF8 or VF9, and plan a trip with scheduled stops for charging, among other useful features. One feature that seems to elude most manufacturers of other electric vehicles is the ability to use just one app to pay for charging at any station in America. However, VinFast has easily figured this out and provided it to customers in the VinFast mobile app.

The VinFast Mobile App

While the VinFast mobile app is a great all-in-one accompaniment to your VinFast, there are good reasons to ensure that you have other charging apps downloaded just in case. For instance, there could be a network or server outage where the VinFast app has an issue when paying at the pump. While this is unlikely, it is nice to have a backup plan just in case. Below are some other apps that can handle finding charging stations and payment with various pros and cons.

Some of the Different Charging Companies

Each charging station company, such as Electrify America, EVgo, ChargePoint, etc., all have their own apps that may even offer discounts if you choose to pay for a low monthly membership to use the chargers. This could be helpful if you live, work, or run a lot of errands near one of the major charger brand stations.

PlugShare Mobile App

One app that all EV owners should download and utilize is PlugShare, which not only shows you the locations of all charging stations, including Tesla Superchargers, but also provides user data with reviews and photos of each station to help you avoid areas that are always busy, have inoperable chargers, and the like. On both iOS and Google, the app has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. The app also allows you to connect your credit card information to pay at any station quickly and easily. As one of the five-star reviews says, “Last month’s round trip between east coast and Kansas was our first … Being able to map out entire 1500 mile northern and southern routes, planning for adequate charging and our overnight stops was pretty easy and confidence building.” However, it’s not all wine and roses for PlugShare. As one reviewer said, “Used this for a trip from LA to San Fran. I’d say the best way to use plugshare is to open Google Maps first and figure out in which city you want to make a stop, then go in plugshare and search that city. The trip planner is a good idea but needs work.”

ChargePoint Mobile App

ChargePoint is the largest EV charging network in the world. In the United States alone, there are more than 30,000 stations with about 50,000 Level 2 and Level 3 DC fast chargers. The app reviews are good, averaging 4.5 out of 5 on iOS and Google devices. One reviewer says, “ChargePoint is a great service and they did a great job with this app—so much so that I bought a home EV charger from them. The app makes it pretty easy to find and monitor charging stations … The home charger integration works seamlessly allowing you to control charging times and even choose from multiple utility rates (or set manually) to track spending.” On the not-so-positive side, though, multiple users have complained that the app has been buggy due to recent updates with their personal home ChargePoint chargers.

EVgo Mobile App

Another large charging company, EVgo, has its own app that assists EV drivers in finding their respective chargers. The app has an average rating of 4.2 stars for iPhone users and 4.6 for Android users. While users seem to enjoy the app, they don’t like that the chargers seem unable to work without the app. Also, sometimes, the chargers themselves are down for maintenance issues, which the app does not seem to fully disclose when drivers are on their way to a station. It seems VinFast owners should probably steer clear of EVgo in general until the user experience improves.

Electrify America Mobile App

Electrify America is one of the largest networks that aims to try and give EV owners a good, non-Tesla Supercharger experience. While they have fallen short of that over the years, the company has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to updating and upgrading their charging system to make the chargers more reliable for owners. The app has a cumulative 4.7 stars on the Apple App Store and 4.6 on the Google Play Store. With over 4,000 Level 3 DC fast chargers across America, they offer drivers the ability to drive cross-country or from state to state without having to wait forever to charge their vehicle from 105 to 70 or 80%. The app allows you to track your charging status and will even notify you if you are waiting for a charger at a busy station. However, users complain that the app is confusing and convoluted. Some even say that the app will let you know that your vehicle is charging, and then minutes later, they say there’s a charging error, except the car is still charging. So, obviously, there are some kinks.

The VinFast App Seems to Reign Supreme

While it is important to check out the other EV charging apps to ensure you have all of the information you can get about stations and overall networks as you drive around, especially in unfamiliar areas, it seems that some of these apps lack usability. That’s why it’s essential to use the VinFast mobile app as the primary way to charge your vehicle at stations, along with the other apps as backups, just in case. Everyone must remember that EVs are still relatively new, and the charging networks, while not perfect, are getting better at a quicker rate than before. Although, patience is key.

Why Choose Ewing VinFast of Plano