Unfortunately you can't smart charge if you own a dumb wall box and a Gen1 ZS EV early model.
In fact, the early batch of ZS EV Gen 1 models, where produced with NO ability to delay charge via the car and would only charge instantly when plugged in.
If used with simple timer on the Granny, the car would fall into a deep sleep after a short while.
When the allotted time came to start the charge, the car reacted like "sleeping beauty" and refused to wake up, resulting in no charge being collected !.
This was a massive deal for anybody on a cheap "Off Peak" tariff, who would have to stay up at night, BEFORE plugging in, to take advantage of this cheaper rate, or pay a higher day time tariff.
It's kind of strange, because at the launch of the ZS EV Gen1 MG personally recommend two charging units that was compatible with the ZS EV Gen 1.
They where a Pod Point unit and a Rolec unit, of which both where dumb and some of these these where offered free in with the price of the car.
But, it soon became apparent that neither of these units could be used to carry out a delay charge on the early models.
MG blamed the Pod Point & Rolec, and Pod Point & Rolec blamed MG - with the customers stuck firmly in the middle.
After a lot of backwards and forwards over many weeks, MG in conjustion with the wall box providers released a small, but not ideal "work around" that would allow a very small charge to enter into the battery when first plugging in, to stop the car from falling into a deep sleep.
Far from ideal if you where on a daily single rate tariff.
Then a very clever owner of a early release ZS EV Gen 1 did a series of tests on his own car, using a unit he had built from scratch, to help find a cure for this problem and managed to get the car to delay change on command.
He then went on to install the Wi-Fi relay that was used to switch / wake up the 240 supply via the control module inside a dumb Rolec unit, that then spoke to the car via the pilot wire, to commence the charge at the chosen time from the App.
As he states in his video, a dumb charger has the ability to be a smart charger if you wish.
I will include the video, which is fairly long but very interesting ( but only to some folks I guess ).
Very unlikely that somebody with his knowledge and back ground is likely to use this type of system on his own car, if he was not sure of its capabilities and it's safety.
He had found a way to control his car from a dumb wall box for delayed charging, before even the wall box people or MG had managed to come up with an REAL answer.
It should be noted that smart charger where only just about enter the market when he developed this solution !.
