BMW i3 Detected... kind of

I was happy to see my BMW i3 detected by Sense a few months ago. As soon as I plug in, Sense immediately detects it. Unfortunately, shortly after plugging in, I notice my “other” category gets rather large, and my EV bubble starts to shrink. Eventually, the EV disapears while the “other” remains very large despite the fact that my car is still charging.

Is there anythign I can do to fix this?

Thanks!

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Nothing to do other than let the support team know so they can continue to improve it.

Sense isn’t picking up the full cycle of the car, for whatever reason. You could delete the car and let Sense re-detect, but you do risk Sense not detecting or not speedily detecting. I’d reach out to Support as they can likely make some suggestions based on looking at your data.

https://www.sense.com/contact

Hi, so just an update to this issue. I reached out to support, but they said they don’t have an immediate solution so put the ticket on hold for now. In the meantime, I deleted the detected Electric Vehicle in the hopes it would be detected again later and work better. Sure enough, a few weeks ago I got the notification that it had been detected again!

Unfortunately, it’s still not working right. In fact, it’s a bit more confusing than last time. Now, when I plug it in, I clearly can see while I’m watching the live feed that it sees the EV:

However, when I go to the devices page, I don’t see any evidence that the EV is in fact detected, despite it clearly showing up on the live feed as “Electric Vehicle”.


Any ideas on what could be the issue? I’d REALLY love to get this figured out as monitoring my EV charging costs was one of the primary reasons I decided to get the Sense!

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The history and data don’t always populate right away after detection. Give it a few days and usually fills in.

I have the exact same behavior. My i3 was detected over a month ago. I normally charge daily from 50 or so percent back to a full charge. Since the sense wasn’t picking up the partial charging cycles I switched to charging every other day in the hoes that a full cycle would help with recognition.

Alas I still can only see when I plug in and have no resultant draw. Come on sense.

3 years with Sense, 3 i3 leases (end of 1st, full 2 years, first month of 3rd) and no joy. Do not hold your breath for a solution. The only suggestion I can make is charge the car at the exact same time (via vehicle charging settings) with hope that it makes a difference. I let my local utility define when to charge (via BMW ChargeForward) so mine is all over the place during early AM hours. Good luck; but have spare oxygen ready for a long wait!

You might look at @mike_gessner posts, he has an I3 that was detected fairly early on.
I don’t know much about EV’s but have read on here about the importance of what charger is being used. The lower amp chargers don’t do as well as the higher.

Thanks…I’ll check it out.

Happy to report that after ~3 years Sense finally discovered my new 2019 model i3. This is after not finding my 2014 and 2017 i3s models Over that time period.

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Maybe Sense was in cahoots with BMW. Just kidding!
Glad you have some detection going on and I know of at least one other user with the same model that has a solid detection on his own. It took months for him to get it so yours will likely improve.

Total Success

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Hoping you will see the EV backfill I experienced this week. Sense started detecting my wife’s Model S (again) back in mid-Sept when I did a run of my weekly usage graphs. Only one week showed the Model S. Now, in mid-Oct, a newly generated chart shows detections as far back as mid-Aug !

I wish it would find mine! I’ve had it since early June 2019. Over the course of 11 months before that it never detected my 2014 i3. I almost always charge overnight when there’s not much else going on, that hasn’t been any help to Sense apparently.

I am using a 16 amp 240v EVSE, for what it’s worth. EV charging is by far my largest “other” component, well over 50%, and on an annual basis my “other” is almost 50% of my total usage, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

I am in a similar state as moat others. Sense did detect my I3. But totally no readings. Whats going on?

Sense stopped detecting my BMW i3 on July 20th and hasn’t detected it once since then. I charge it with a level 2 charger that 220V 32A since its my daily driver and I have to charge it every day. luckily it has the ReX which i uses almost every day for the last few miles on my way home. I just went ahead and deleted the device in the app so maybe it’ll pick it up again. I did charge it a few times on a smart plug to give since some data for the 110V 16A stock charger but i dont use that unless im out and dont have anything else.

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