Powerline Based WiFi Extenders May Disrupt MG ZS EV Car Charging UPDATE

Some owners of UK electric vehicles, particularly the MG ZS EV, who struggle to get their cars charged at home are finding that the culprit can sometimes be traced back to the use of Powerline (HomePlug) adapters, which extend your home’s wired and / or WiFi network (LAN / WLAN) by harnessing the building’s existing power cables.

Sometimes running a network cable around your house from the broadband router just isn’t viable for connecting devices, while stretching the WiFi signal may also be tricky. One well known, if still far from perfect, way of tackling this is to consider trying a Powerline adapter that sends the signal over your home’s existing electricity cables, albeit without sacrificing their primary purpose of distributing electricity.

The technology has improved a lot from its earlier generations, which were flaky, sometimes caused interference for other devices (radios etc.) and generally didn’t deliver what was advertised. Such systems were, however, usually also very easy to configure.

In most cases you simply plug one adapter directly into a power socket in one room (never via an extension), then plug the second adapter into another power socket somewhere else in the house, press a button to sync them up and you’re away. The magic happens in the background as the signal is encrypted and sent in digital form via spectrum frequency of up to 86.13MHz – the HomePlug AV2 standard.

However, recently the odd ISPreview.co.uk reader has found that the use of such adapters to improve their home network was preventing them from being able to charge their MG ZS EV car (i.e. the problem went away when they were unplugged). Upon further investigation we found other people with similar experiences via Speak EV and MG-Rover.org (here, here and here). More gripes were also found on Facebook’s MG group.

The problem appears to occur with all sorts of different smart Wall Chargers (OHME, Rolec etc.), as well as so-called ‘granny cables‘ (i.e. plugging your car in via a normal 3-pin UK power socket). Likewise, it’s been triggered by various different Powerline adapters from companies such as NETGEAR, TP-Link and the Solwise AV2 etc. In all cases, unplugging the adapters solved the charging problem.

Sample Complaint 1

“I finally managed to resolve my charging issue – which is quite niche – but hopefully the solution may be helpful to others who are as perplexed as I was. Looks like the issue was caused by my HomePlug/powerline adapter (Solwise AV2 – now unplugged!). Not sure if the car was trying to call home or something – but now the MG is now fully charging in the drive – which is nice.”

Sample Complaint 2

“Just thought I would make people aware regarding the OHME Wall charger fault that other people might come across. My ohme was installed but every time I tried to charge. It would start to power up then go into stand by mode. Myself and the installer was not sure what was causing it. Thinking it could be the MG ZS EV.

But it was found to be a powerline adapter that I had plugged in for the Tesla power wall. Once I removed it the charger started working straight away. Hope it helps other people and other cars too.”

Sample Complaint 3

“I couldn’t get my MG to charge from three different cables and several charging points in the house, including three-pin sockets for the granny cable and two separate EV wall chargers. Once I removed my powerline adapters, everything was fine. My powerlines are Netgear and TP-Link, so I’m not sure if some are better than others for interference.”

Exactly why these adapters are causing so many problems remains unclear (we’ve seen some theories about interference or a lack of filtering on the car / chargers, but nothing concrete), particularly as it’s been spotted on regular granny cables too, although other issues can affect those so that may be a separate problem that has merely become conflated with this one.

The one good piece of news is that, so far, the bulk of this issue only appears to impact owners of the MG ZS EV (granted that’s not such good news if you have the MG!). We did see some talk elsewhere about it potentially causing problems for other EVs, but not enough to make us comfortable with name dropping any particular brands (feel free to comment below if you’ve spotted a similar issue).

We have asked MG to comment on this and will report back if they respond. In the meantime, if you’re trying to charge your MG ZS at home and have these network adapters plugged-in then it’s probably a good idea to unplug them. The same goes for other EV owners, if only to help identify whether or not this issue hits other cars. As an alternative you could always consider a pure Mesh WiFi system.

UPDATE 16th Dec 2020 – 3:21pm

It took a bit of time but MG’s UK press office has finally given us a statement.

A Spokesperson for MG said:

“Our Engineers in Longbridge and China have been very active is responding to issues and feedback raised by customers in relation to our EV models. This can be seen in the various improvements that have been made in the software updates for ZS EV since launch.

We have been made aware of the Wi-Fi extender issue some customers have experienced when charging their vehicle. Wi-Fi extenders can cause ‘noise’ in the electrical system of a property which may cause interference with the charging cycle of an electric vehicle.

This is not an issue unique to a specific MG model, type of home charger or particular brand of Wi-Fi extender. The car/home charger/wi-fi extender combinations possible, plus the variability of quality and age of domestic electrical systems make this a hard problem to investigate. However we have begun some initial testing to better understand the root cause.”