BMW "remote access charging" will be limited to electricity provider, what is the impact for evcc?

[tbiest]

I just received a push notification in my BMW app stating that per September '25 the remote load session management integration is only possible with the platform of supported electricity providers. It seems that they will block 3rd party integrations because of security reasons. Will there be impact on the use of EVCC? Below is the q&a article:

BMW's "remote access charging" charge mode is currently available with the following compatible electricity providers:*

Belgium: Luminus, Eneco, Engie
Germany: Octopus Energy
France: Octopus Energy
Italy: Octopus Energy
Netherlands: Eneco, Engie
Norway: Yve, JedliX
Portugal: Iberdrola
Spain: Iberdrola, Octopus Energy
United Kingdom: Octopus Energy, E.ON Next, Scottish Power, OVO Energy
*As of 07/2025. The list of available countries and compatible electricity providers is continuously updated. Please check with your electricity provider whether they support "remote access charging". There is currently no offer for countries not listed.

[mfuchs1984]

Some electricity providers use a BMW API to start an dstop charging through the vehicle. Evcc does not, it controls the charger. From the API, it requests the status and soc. Difficult to say if this is affected by the change or not.

[SolarPower2024]

The BMW connection is not an official one, it's a reverse engineered connection.
So no one can tell you if they change the API in a way that it's impacted or not. We will see.
Anyway the chances are high that if it would be impacted, the community will find a way again ;-)

[DetlefZ]

Above mentioned BMW push notification comes with another statement. September 2025 onwards control of the vehicle by house automation won't work anymore.
Original German text of the push notification:
"Hausautomation: Die Steuerung deines Fahrzeuges über Hausautomation ist nicht mehr möglich."

What might be the impact on evcc controlled charging of BMW vehicles?

[schweiger2]

This BMW announcement wants to be clear but it's not - from my point of view.
It's not the car that is controlled by evcc but the charger.
I think it's a read only connection from evcc to BMW to get SOC and connection details - or am I wrong ?

Is there a software available that really controls the car and not the charger? If yes then there's hope.

[tbiest]

Maybe the developer of the evcc integration can tell something about how the connection is set up and if it indeed is read-only. And we also don't know if the read-only access is limited by BMW as well.

[SolarPower2024]

Don't get worried guys. No need to panic ;-)

Let's see if something will change or not. The evcc integration is based on the bimmer-connect integration with hcaptcha login. evcc users are a minority, there are many more users that use the integration in Smart Homes like Home Assistant or iobroker.
And yes, with the same integration you can also control the vehicle, as said above it's not an official API, it's reverse engineered - where you also can control your vehicle.

But at the moment it's working anyway. And in case it will stop working, there are couple of thousand of Integrationspolitik breaking, not only evcc. Then people will work anyway to get it working again.