Amber for EVs, our automated charging feature that shifts your car's charging to the cheapest wholesale electricity windows, now supports all MG, XPeng and Audi models that have built-in connectivity, alongside Tesla, and is available to everyone from today.
If you drive one of these cars, that means your EV can now charge itself around the cheapest electricity of the day, automatically, with no extra hardware needed and no electrician to book.
Here's how it works:
Your biggest expense becomes your cheapest appliance
Amber customers pay wholesale electricity prices, which change every five minutes as supply and demand shift across the grid. Running appliances like the kettle or dishwasher in cheaper windows can help save a bit each month, but the savings are small compared to what your car can do.
A typical EV battery holds around 60kWh, which is a lot of capacity to charge cheaply. Wholesale prices regularly drop to a few cents per kilowatt hour in the middle of the day and overnight, and sometimes go negative, meaning you can get paid to charge. Automate that, and your car goes from your biggest expense to your cheapest appliance.
How the automation works
Once your car is connected, Amber tracks wholesale prices and starts or stops your charging to catch the cheapest windows. Our price forecasting, developed with the CSIRO, predicts where prices are heading over the next 24 hours, so charging is planned rather than reactive. If prices are low now and rising later, your car charges now. If a cheaper window is coming, it waits.
You don't need to watch any of this happen, but you can. In the Amber app, the EV screen shows you what your car is doing right now and the charging plan for the next 24 hours. It runs in the background once it's set up, the same way SmartShift automates your home battery, just applied to the battery in your driveway.
Ready By: charged when you need it
The obvious worry with price-chasing is waking up to a flat car when you really need to go on a long drive. That's what our Ready By feature takes care of. Tell the app the charge level you need and when you need it by, say 80% by 7am, and we work backwards from your deadline, checking the price forecast for every window between now and then, to build the cheapest possible plan that still gets you there on time. You get the savings without the risk of an empty battery.
Prefer full control? Scheduled charging lets you set fixed windows, say overnight only, so charging happens exactly when you choose regardless of price. Or use price based charging to only charge when the price drops below a threshold you set, say 8c/kWh or lower, so you catch the cheapest windows without needing a deadline to work backwards from.
A few things to know
MG, XPeng and Audi cars can only be told to start or stop charging, not to speed up or slow down. This means these models don't yet support our excess solar charging feature, which Tesla models do. That feature works by constantly adjusting charge speed to match your spare solar output, speeding up when there's more sun and easing off when there's less, and it needs that level of control to work. But we’re working on it.
Your solar isn't locked out of the car though. If your car is plugged in and charging while the sun is out, your panels' output flows straight into the battery, exactly like it would with any other appliance running at the same time. You're not missing out on your own solar - just on the fine-tuned speed matching that Tesla owners get.
Cheap wholesale windows and abundant solar tend to fall at the same hours of the day. Grid-wide solar output pushes prices down, so when Amber charges your car around the cheapest prices, it's often charging around the sunniest hours too. So what's missing is the precision, not the solar.
Getting started
Not sure if your car has built-in connectivity? A good way to check is whether there's a companion app for your EV that lets you control charging remotely. If you can tell your car when to charge from an app, it qualifies.
Already with Amber?
Connection happens through your car maker's account, using the email and password you already use for the dedicated MG, XPeng or Audi app. If you don't already have that account set up, you'll be prompted to sort it out as you go.
To link it, open the Amber app and:
- Go to the devices tab
- Tap add an EV
- Pick your brand
- Sign in with your car maker's account
Once done, your car will be connected and ready to start charging on the cheapest wholesale prices. If you run into any trouble or have questions along the way, our support team's ready to help at info@amber.com.au.
Keen to join Amber?
Signing up only takes a few minutes. Once you're set up, you can connect your car the same way existing customers do:
- Sign up at app.amber.com.au/signup
- Open the Amber app and go to the devices tab
- Tap add an EV
- Pick your brand
- Sign in with your car maker's account
Once complete, your car will be connected and ready to start charging on the cheapest wholesale prices.
An EV plus wholesale prices is one of the easiest ways to make the numbers on electric driving look even better than they already do. Head to Amber for EVs to learn more.
