‘Single source of truth’ EV app only shows 20 per cent of chargers

With the number of electric vehicles on our roads growing, making sure you have the best EV charging app on your phone when you need to top up is an essential part of ownership.

While sales of electric cars were down 43.8 per cent for the month of February – and 36.6 per cent year-to-date – led by a 71.9 per cent fall for Tesla, the number of used EVs sold increased by 11.4 per cent.

As is the case with the number of new electric models on the market increasing, now sitting at more than 100, new apps are emerging too.

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The latest of these is the Electric Vehicle Council’s (EVC) Charge@Large app, which it claims is “set to improve EV charging by providing drivers with real-time availability, showing drivers whether a charger is working or already in use”.

The free app, according to the EVC, is a “single source of truth for EV drivers” – but, and it’s a big but, it only displays around 1600 out of a total 8100 chargers nationally.

That’s roughly 80 per cent of plugs that you’d have no idea were there if you weren’t already previously aware of them or using another app.

What is Charge@Large and how is it different?

Charge@Large is a new EV charging app from the Electric Vehicle Council and launched just over a week ago in Australia.

It gives instant visibility on charger status – whether it’s operational, in use by another driver, or out of order.

This real-world information will regularly be shared with the state and territory governments to improve the EV charging network, allowing them to pinpoint high-demand areas and help address outages to improve reliability, the EVC says.

“The number of public EV chargers and locations across Australia continues to expand, nearly doubling in the last year alone for all charger types to over 8100 public stations across 3800 sites, but drivers need to know that the charger they’re about to use is unoccupied and working,” said the EVC’s Chief Executive Julie Delvecchio.

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“The ‘Charge@Large’ app tackles multiple challenges. First, it helps reduce range anxiety and improves the EV driving experience by giving motorists real-time charger availability. Second, sharing uptime and usage trends with the government will lead to improvements in EV charger coverage and reliability. 

“Governments that sign up will be able to find out the exact areas with high charger demand and outages, so they can support the expansion of coverage and be aware of maintenance issues.”

So far, the New South Wales and Western Australian governments are involved, because they have provided funding, with other jurisdictions expected to follow suit.

The key difference is that many apps available on the market only show chargers related to the provider – such as Tesla, Evie or Chargefox for example – but as noted, Charge@Large has its limitations too.

At the time of writing, Exploren, ChargeN’Go, Wevolt, Charge Hub and Sonic Charge are onboard, with CasaCharge and Charge Post also soon to join. 

Drive understands that discussions with bigger players are ongoing.

The fact the app is missing 80 per cent of the public EV chargers across the country has drawn criticism, and gained it just two stars on the Apple App Store.

Of the accessible reviews left by users, all were one star and did not have good things to say about it.

Posting a review entitled ‘Inaccurate’ one user said, “Doesn’t show all regional chargers. Long way to go to make this a useful app”.

Another post called ‘Where are the majors’ said, “No Chargefox, Evie, BP, Ampcharge… shows Exploren and “Charge N Go” only. Pointless without actually having all brands”.

And a third, dubbed ‘Waste of time’ added, “App is pretty useless. Get ABRP, Chargefox or PlugShare if you want something useful”.

The platform is “in line” to represent more than 1600 charge points across approximately 740 different sites in all states and territories, with many hundreds more expected to be live within weeks. But so far, it’s understood not even this many are shown with “hopes” there will be more soon.

When questioned by Drive about the usefulness of the app in its current state, a spokesperson for the EVC told us, “We think Charge@Large has huge potential and over time can hopefully serve as a single source of truth, but we definitely aren’t claiming it’s there yet. 

“It only just launched and the EVC is engaging with all relevant EV charging stakeholders to onboard them.

“We’re hopeful we can make this app more and more attractive to drivers over time, because it will kickstart a virtuous cycle.”

Is there a universal app for EV charging?

Yes, there is. The largest and most popular is PlugShare, which operates in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.

PlugShare is a community-driven app that covers all charging networks, with users able to make notes on a charger’s status, maintenance or breakdown issues, and leave reviews or photos which helps keep the information up-to-date.

While it says it aims to be comprehensive, there’s no guarantee that it shows every single charger globally, especially those that are very new or not yet widely known, but it does have a large public charging map with stations from all the major networks. 

It’s listed as a top-three US EV charging app according to US environmental not-for-profit Coltura, alongside ChargePoint and Electrify America.

There are also a number of others, including A Better Routeplanner, easyCharging and Universal Charge to name a few.

What is the best app to use for EV charging?

Through regular electric vehicle testing, the Drive team has found PlugShare to be the best locally, which is supported by a high review ranking on the Apple App Store.

PlugShare has 4.7 out of five stars, which puts it on par with Google Maps – which shows users where EV chargers are in the same way it would for fuel stations. 

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It is only bested by Ampol’s app, which has 4.8 stars, though this is also not solely used for EV charging purposes.

Other individual apps include: Chargefox (2.8 stars), which has the biggest non-Tesla network in Australia, Evie (3.6), Jolt (4.4), BP Pulse (4.2), and of course the Tesla app (3.8) – which can also locate Superchargers in addition to being a connected services tool for the vehicle itself.

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