You’re driving off the lot at the car dealership, feeling good and barely humming as you go down the road. Maybe you purchased a Nissan Leaf, or, if you’re more affluent, a Tesla Model S. Either way, you’ve made the decision to go electric. Say goodbye to gas, and hello to the electrical outlet. Your days of $3.50+ US a gallon are over, but you’re still nervous.
Sure, you can make it to work and back on one charge, but what happens when you need to stop at the grocery store? And the dry cleaners. And the post office. Oh, you forgot that package you were going to mail back at the office. Can you make it? Time is ticking, and that battery isn’t going to charge itself. Where’s the nearest charging station?
EV range anxiety is one of the biggest roadblocks to buying electric. The simple fact is that batteries are more limited in range than a 16-gallon tank of gas. So while you’re saving the environment and keeping money in your wallet, you still have this looming fear of running out of juice while out and about.
Recent reports say most EV drivers have some anxiety about range just after making their purchase, but after three months or so, they get a better feel for their vehicle, and planning ahead becomes second nature.
“You can see within three months that there are people adapting really quickly to electric cars and seeing how they (in turn) adapt to their lives,” said Andrew Everett, head of transport at the Technology Strategy Board, a UK-based research facility. “This surprised a lot of us — and the ease with which people adapted surprised us as well.”
The transition from gas to electric can be unsettling when distance matters but you’re not alone. Millions of people in America live without a car, you can even donate your car and get a tax deduction for choosing to live green. For car free individuals or those with EV’s that still want to make a longer trip, just rent a car for a day or two or use your smartphone to seek out charging stations. The list of free locations grows longer every day! There’s a bevy of applications out there for iPhone and Android-based operating systems to help you find them all. Many of the top apps cross over into both markets. Here’s a review of the top five EV-car charge-station finder apps, all of which are free downloads for the iPhone:
1. CarStations is one of the newer apps, but the site it’s connected with (http://carstations.com) has one of the more mature communities of EV enthusiasts out there contributing to its open-source list of stations. CarStations aims to create a community of EV drivers who share car-charging station locations by using their smartphones to pinpoint them, and can leave comments about their experience, along with other helpful content such as pictures, costs incurred, or if it’s near a great coffee shop.
Instructions: After downloading, open the app and click on the settings. An info box will pop up, asking if you want the map to show you only charging stations offering a J1772 charging standard — which is a nice feature. Click yes or no, then go to the main menu by clicking the home icon. Make sure to adjust the radius around your location in the settings. The default setting is 100 miles, which can make it look like there are a lot of stations around, but in reality you could be out of luck. You can either search by city or click the map nearby to pinpoint your location. Zoom in to click the orange charge icon to get information (address, phone number, etc.) for each charging station. Once you find charging stations in your area, add them to your favorites by clicking the lightning bolt logo in the top right corner while looking at the charging station. You can toggle between list mode and map mode using the icons in the navigation bar at the bottom left corner of the screen.
Impressions: In my experience with iPhone apps (I regularly use about 15 daily), simplicity is key. In that respect, this app is a clear winner. It starts up fast, there are no advertisements and there is no lag while toggling through different charging stations. It also lets you filter easily to find the right kind of charging station for your car. However, what I would like to see added to this app is the ability for users to add more information about the charging stations. It’s easy to do from the website, but the smartphone app doesn’t have these features. An “add-your-own-photo” feature would be great, and I hear it’s in the works. This would let users show off their ride as well as help others out if a plugin is in a tricky location. This app is fun to use and has great visuals. There are good details provided for most of the stations, and it seems a lot of work is being done to list new stations as quickly as they are built. When compared with other apps, it features some of the largest numbers of stations within the USA.
2. Recargo, as with many of the EV car-charger station apps on the market, wants users to join their “community.” This app is designed to have people check-in at charging stations, share their thoughts and comments and upload a photo. A welcome feature is the integration with TomTom’s and Navigon’s iOS apps, allowing users to get fast directions to the nearest station. And while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, this app lets you read the latest EV car news from PluginCars.com and updates from Recargo users.
Instructions: Once opened, this app asks for permission to pinpoint your current location — click “yes.” It is defaulted to find charging stations within six miles, but will list below at least 20 stations within 80 miles. Click the map icon for a map view of the one-mile radius around your current location. Zoom out accordingly. After clicking on a desired charging location, you will see the station’s address, how many people have checked in at the location, and any comments or photos they added. If you want to check in and leave comments or photos, the app will prompt you to create an account, which requires a username, email, password and zip code. You can also add your vehicle information and an avatar. If you choose, the app’s users can contact you via the email address provided — you can turn that option off, if you want.
Impressions: This app has a very simple, yet modern look. There are no complaints on its user interface or usability. It runs quickly with no lag. When clicking on news articles in the app’s news section, a basic browser pops up and displays the article quickly on a 3G network (even faster on WiFi). My initial impression is this is a great app for EV car users. I like that users can check in, and that it tracks user activity by location. Knowing the station’s check-in history is helpful because it shows when people are charging their cars. So, if you’re at the mall and the charging spot was taken when you pulled in, you can see when people check out, provided they remembered to check-out on the app. Like any of the apps that encourage people to interact within the “EV car community,” it can only get better with time, as more people submit more information.
3. PlugShare touts itself as the “world’s largest electric vehicle charging network,” with more than 2,500 charging locations at your fingertips. The number is rather misleading because it lets app users count their home as a charging station, and even submit their personal address. (Knock, knock. Who’s there? “Hi, I was driving, was low on juice, can I plug in?” Blank stare.) Conclusion: Don’t pull into a random driveway that has a charging station featured on the map unless you know that person.
Instructions: This app overwhelms you with a cluster of green and blue icons for the entire United States, including the Virgin Islands. Come on Montana, you’re short on charge stations! After clicking the pinpoint icon in the bottom left of the app, you’ll see your local blue dot and all stations around your location. You must create an account and login to view the blue icons, which are personal home addresses. Green icons, indicating public charging stations, include the type of charge and an address. Clicking ‘Get Directions” exits the app and brings you to Google Maps.
Impressions: Messy, cluttered and, in my opinion, annoying. To have the app open to a map is a bad idea — especially if you have only a few charging stations in your location. It takes a few seconds to load the map, and even more time to load the 2,500+ icons. Letting people add their personal charging stations to the network is a complete waste of space — who is going to drive up to a house for power? I suppose, to be fair, if you ran out of gas, you could go to a home and ask for help. Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a “Good Samaritan.” The app crashed three times while I was playing around with it — which was a first during the app review experience. I think this can be attributed to all the information stored in its network. The worst part is that there is no list mode, so you’re forced to use the crash-prone map. Surprisingly, this app has gotten great reviews from users on iTunes. By far, it has the most users, but I’m still calling it a work in progress.
4. ChargePoint is one of the few apps targeted at a specific charging station, and is called (you guessed it!) ChargePoint. A little background on this California-based company: ChargePoint sells meters for about $3,000 to cities, organizations and private business owners. ChargePoint users buy credits that are needed to charge at these meters, and in return users can not only charge their car, but also see real-time availability of the meters. Users can even reserve a station for a certain time. You can read about this service on a previous EV Authority article. This app brings all the information to your smartphone, which makes it easy to know when your car is fully charged or when a spot becomes available. Note: This app is iPad compatible.
Instructions: When you open the app, it asks you to input your login information. If you don’t have an account, go to MyChargePoint.net or click “skip” to see what the app has to offer. The map is defaulted to find ChargePoint stations within 12 miles of your current location. Pinch to zoom out and see what’s available and what’s in use — green means “available” and blue means “in use.” Remember, this app only shows ChargePoint stations — which are quite common in bigger cities. One of the coolest features of this app is its trip-mapping feature. Click the icon at the bottom and you’ll be asked to input your destination, then it will help map a route which includes all the charging stations along the way.
Impressions: While this is limited to just their own stations, it’s a great app for ChargePoint users. You can get a “ChargePass” key fob that you swipe at the station, which then sends an alert from the app or a text message to let you know when the car is fully charged — a huge plus. The ease of the app and its ability to show you what’s available and what’s currently being used makes it a great app. If that’s not enough bells and whistles for you, the app also can provide turn-by-turn directions. One downside is that there is no multitasking — if you exit the app, you’re back to square one. That’s unfortunate, because outside of banking apps, multitasking should be a common function on all apps. Loading the map is also slow; it took me about 20 seconds to find my location (on WiFi) and nearby stations. Other than these two setbacks, though, this is a solid app.
5. EV Charger Finder is definitely the most basic of free EV charging-station finder apps. It takes user’s contributions and puts them in a database, then lets you filter the information by geography and charger adapter type. To contribute to the database, use www.EVChargerMaps.com, which is simply a Google Map with pinpoints on it.
Instructions: This app is definitely easy to use, because there isn’t much to it. No bells or whistles here. It is, however, difficult to see what’s closest to you. The app opens to a list of cities in alphabetical order (which is rather useless, because most users are only concerned about how far away is the next station is.) Then, by clicking the distance icon, you can see which charging stations are closest to you. After clicking on a location, you will see a map for the location and its address, along with a phone number if available. Click “Get Directions,” and you’ll be asked to go to Google Maps. That’s really all there is to it.
Impressions: Where do I start? This app is disorganized, slow and has a small database of charging stations. , It could be more helpful as more users add stations, but only as helpful as its usability. In addition, the, map view is slow and clunky and opens to nearly half the world, like the CarStations App. Zooming is slower than with other apps. One positive is the comments that users are leaving, e.g.,“The ClipperCreak CS-40 station now has a cord management system installed. Station was used during the Nissan Leaf Tour event on February 17. Everything is working fine.” Those types of comments make station finder apps much more useful. Unfortunately, though, in my opinion this app just doesn’t cut it.
