Suppose you ride an electric car, far from home, and its power goes low. The only solution that remains is to visit a nearby public charging station!
Using a public charging station can be a perfect way to get a quick recharge for your vehicles, but due to the limitation of available e-car charging stations, it makes sense to use smart tech to look and locate nearby charging stations.
That’s why using mobile apps to explore nearby charging stations can be a better option for you. Also, station finder apps come with an advanced search filter to help you to locate a station that fits your needs.
If you are also looking for the top EV charging station apps, you can check these top seven apps useful for charging and locating your cars to nearby charging stations.
But first, let’s find out the advantages of using mobile apps for finding charging stations.
Benefits of using EV charging station app
The growing popularity of EV apps is proof of many hidden benefits. With just not limited to exploring nearby EV charging stations. There come more additional benefits of using station finder apps.
Let’s find out.
1. Saves times
The EV station finder helps users book charging slots in advance before reaching the station. It allows riders to save time waiting for their turn to their car at the station.
2. Helps in emergency
When the e-car’s power goes low, users can use these apps to find stations; even more, the app suggests a short-distance route to their users. Also, app users can pay directly straight from their EV app’s wallet if they are running out of cash in such a situation.
3. Keeps transaction history
The charging station finder app lets users track their transaction records to easily find out the weekly/monthly budget spent on charging their e-cars. Without using these apps, it’s hard for them to record and access their budget spent on charging their EV.
4. Helping Community
The social community in these helps other EV riders in many ways. They can share their location with other users for domestic charges (if there are no nearby charging stations). Also, members can share the latest news and awareness regarding e-cars which helps all other app users.
5. Charging Updates
These apps come with advanced features that notify riders to visit the charging station if their e-car’s power is extremely low. These apps can sync perfectly with your cars, with which these apps can keep track of car’s all parts and components, even their batteries.
6. Advanced Search Filters
These apps come with an advanced filter to set up preferences for finding nearby charging stations that fit inside their needs. Riders can set many searches and nearby recommendations filters such as available charging types input, payment options, stations with nearby lodge/hotels, etc.
E-car riders find this feature more beneficial as it avoids unwanted stations and saves time. Also, it helps station owners to know the overall preferences of every app user, which allows them to improve their charging station business.
7. Checking ratings and reviews
Users can access other app users’ ratings and reviews to decide and choose the perfect one from nearby charging stations. Also, users can put their ratings and reviews to help other app users to decide to find nearby charging stations.
Top 7 best apps to find nearby charging stations
After knowing how these apps make the e-cars charging experience awesome, you can check out the app list to find out the best apps to explore nearby charging stations.
This is the list of the top seven EV charging station finder apps:
1.PlugShare
This app helps EV drivers to search nearby charging stations. PlugShare has more than 300,000 active users. Users can find over 140,000 EV charging stations located throughout the US and Canada.
It comes with many useful features such as in-app payment integration, checking, and putting reviews for charging stations, etc. Also, it has advanced filter options like charging plugs, slow/fast charging, etc.
This app comes with the PlugShare community which allows users to share the location of their private residential charging station with another member.
Price | Free |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2009 |
Rating | 4.3 |
Downloads | 1M+ |
Revenue | $5 M |
2.EVHotels
As the app name suggests, this app helps users to find hotels that provide EV charging facilities. It’s best for riders planning for long trips as they can stay and charge their e-cars at the same time.
EVHotels have partnered with over 170 international hotel brands from which users can apply filters to select hotels based on their preferences.
Price | $2.99 |
Platform | iOS |
Founded | 2018 |
Rating | 3.7 |
Downloads | 1M+ |
Revenue | Not Available |
3.EVgo
This app is useful for EV riders looking for DC fast-charging stations. It provides a big list of DC charging stations in the US. As not all e-cars are compatible with DC charging.
This app comes with three payment plans: pay-as-you-go, EVgo Membership, and EVgo Plus. It comes with a monthly subscription of $6.99 for the EVgo Plus Membership. All these three plans include reward points and options for scheduling reservations. Also, it takes a fee based on charging per minute or charging per kWh.
It has cover-up upto 800+ charging stations and all of them are powered by clean, renewable energy resources making them a big contributor to making the planet green.
Price | Tiered membership program |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2010 |
Ratings | 4.2 |
Downloads | 100K+ |
Revenue | $22 M |
4.ChargePoint
This app allows its user to find ChargePoint’s station. Also, users can find other brands nearby charging stations.
ChargePoint lets their user pay for charging with a tap of their phone along with getting notifications and checking their car’s battery status. Its official charging stations come with smart features like viewing e-cars charging history, remotely activating EV charging, etc.
Price | Free |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2007 |
Rating | 4.3 |
Downloads | 500K+ |
Revenue | $146 M |
5.ChargeHub
ChargeHub suggests nearby charging stations suitable for planning longer trips. It has an installation on over 100,000 phones, making a great community that has left reviews on almost every available charging station.
Talking over other features, users can save filtered searches like available charging slots and payment options to access more relevant charging stations quickly.
Also, it allows users to share their domestic charging point location among other app users making an overall great experience for using the Chargehub app.
Price | Free |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2012 |
Rating | 4.5 |
Downloads | 100K+ |
Revenue | $6 M |
6.EVConnect
With this app, users can explore nearby charging stations along with search filters such as location, available charging slots, payment options, etc. A driver can start charging their e-cars by scanning a QR code and will get notified when the charging of their cars gets full.
Also, it comes with 24/7 chat support for app users to help and solve their doubts and provide suggestions related to charging their battery cars.
Price | Free |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2009 |
Rating | 4.6 |
Downloads | 10,000+ |
Revenue | $10 M |
7.Chargeway
This app uses a special number and a color-coded system to help car riders easily identify the charging station that meets their needs.
The app’s color scheme separates and identifies the different charger connector types such as:
- The J1772 connection
- The CHAdeMO connector
- Tesla Connector
App’s number system suggests the charging speed of chargers available on stations. A higher number offers fast charging while a low number means slow charging. Its number scale ranges from 1 to 6.
If apps show 1 on their system, it means the machine will take roughly 8 hours to charge their cars. While number 6 displayed on the app suggests that the machine will finish charging in under half an hour.
This coding system turns out to be useful as app users can quickly identify upcoming charging stations and locate if it fits their requirements.
Price | Free |
Platform | iOS & Android |
Founded | 2016 |
Rating | 4.5 |
Downloads | 5000+ |
Revenue | $5 M |
Conclusion
After exploring the list of top apps to find nearby charging stations, you can figure out how these apps are making the life of e-car riders easy day by day.
Also, the EV station provides many business opportunities, which makes better options to start a business.
If you think you have some excellent app ideas in these charging stations or want to invest in these businesses by app development, you can contact Idea Usher.
Frequently Asked Questions
Check the top asked questions relevant to these EV station finder apps to solve your issues and doubts.
1. How much time is required to develop the station finder app?
The app development time depends on the complexity of features that needs to integrate inside the app. Check out app development tips to understand the app development process.
To understand even better, there come four stages in a development phase, have a quick look at all of these:
Discovery Phase: This stage is all about exploring ideas for the EV station finder app. It includes finding out about customer pain points, new opportunities, out-of-the-box ideas, etc.
UI and UX design: This phase includes the choice of design and colors for the many displays of different screen sizes to publish your EV station finder app.
Backend and mobile app development: It is the phase where coding begins. It includes working on prototypes, app functionality, storyboards, workflow charts, etc.
Launch and gather feedback: You can either distribute the app to the store or provide it to the business owner to use in their facilities (in the case of a web application).
2. Can I open my own e-cars charging station?
Yes, you can contact major charging station companies to take their franchise. After the deal, they will provide technical support for installing their machines on your site.
If you don’t want a franchise, then you can buy charing equipment in your home and can share your locations with EV drivers in the above-listed apps and take fees in return.
3. How to start app development for the EV charging station finder app?
You can learn to code and understand app development strategies to start app development for your e-car station finder app. Even better, you can contact the app development team, Idea User.
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Also, you can buy already developed e-car station finder apps and customize their design and functionality to make them published on app stores.
4. How to make money with the EV station business?
You can set up your EV charging station by taking the franchise for various companies. Or go for its app development (a better option).
Also, there are many other better options available to look at that might need more investments than developing its apps.