EV Charging Station Finding App Development Guide

How to Develop an EV Charging Station Finding App

how to Develop EV Charging Station Finding App

The revenue in the electric vehicles market is likely to cross the US $623 billion mark worldwide and experts in the automobile industry expect a CAGR of 9.82% between 2024 and 2028. Nearly one in five cars sold was electric and there are more than 40 million electric vehicles on the roads. Electric vehicle adoption is increasing at an unprecedented pace drawing the attention of farsighted entrepreneurs to invest in EV charging stations finding applications for Android and iOS.

EV Charging Station Finding App

Looking at the promising future and fruitful business, as an entrepreneur, you can hire a top automotive software development company to build the EV charging station finder app and lead the market. One must understand the nuances of an EV charging app before delving into the project. This blog will discuss the technicalities and other nuances that will help develop an electric car charging app, its popular players around the world, the work process, the reasons behind its popularity, etc.

What is an electric vehicle charging app?

An electric vehicle charging app is a digital platform that helps electric vehicle owners find charging stations with their exact locations. Also, these apps manage charging sessions and process secure payments as their basic features; nevertheless, with the surge in EV adoptions, electric vehicle charging applications have evolved to become comprehensive solutions that offer a suite of services such as real-time availability, EV maintenance alerts, and route planning. Catering to the immense demands of EVs worldwide, EV charging stations finding apps encompasses all of EV management to streamline owner or user experience in the burgeoning EV landscape.

Why invest in an EV charging locator app?

With the growing adoption of electric vehicles all over the world, an EV charging locator app is a lucrative venture for entrepreneurs with a vision. Check the growth over a decade for EV sales in cars -the global data.

EV charging locator app

An increase in demand for EV charging stations has made EV owners get a handy app that locates the nearest charging stations for them. An app provides several other features and functionalities. If you go for an EV charging station finding app, you enhance user convenience and encourage the use of electric vehicles while making great profits. As a business, you get significant data collection opportunities to understand the EV user behavior and choices thus targeting marketing and service improvement and leading the business domain. Thus, this is the correct time to invest in an electric car charging app finder and get the early bird advantage.

Cost to develop an EV charging station locator app

EV charging app

 

The development of an EV charging locator application is a complex procedure and it involves myriad factors to consider for its overall costs. The cost to develop an EV charging locator app ranges significantly based on the app’s complexities, geographical location, features, and development teams. On average, the EV charging locator app cost ranges from US $25000 to US $250000+, and here are the key factors to consider:

  • UI/UX design sophistication
  • Choice of platform to deploy – Android, iOS, cross-platform, PWA
  • Integration of advanced features such as real-time tracking, chatbots, AI/ML
  • Development team’s location
  • Complexities – number of features and functionalities

Primarily, the cost to develop an EV charging station finding app is driven by the time invested in building the features and the hourly rates of developers. This is again dependent on the region of your development team.

  • North America: $80-200
  • South America: $70-180
  • Australia: $80-180
  • Europe: $70-200
  • India: $35-80

If you outsource your EV charging station finding app to an Indian offshore company, the app development cost is significantly low without compromising the quality. A well-designed and developed EV charging station application will help your users locate the sites and also provide detailed information about every station such as availability, pricing, and compatibility with their EVs. A multitude of features such as a secure payment gateway, electronic vehicle health, battery health, and other related information can be integrated into your customized EV charging app; however, this will add up the costs.

In addition, the realm of EV is a growing and evolving platform, so you as a business owner should refer to a competent mobile app development guide before going forward. The app development guide will help you understand actual requirements and will enable you to make more informed decisions.

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EV Charging Station Finding App?

List of popular apps for finding EV stations

There are some big players in the EV charging station location finding app. Moreover, the rise of smartphones has played a huge part in popularizing EV charging station finding apps. Here are some top apps that have made their mark in this market segment.

NextCharge

One thing that makes NextCharge one of the leading EV charging station finding apps is that it is available in various languages. Whether it is German, Spanish, English, French, or Romanian, NextCharge has everything. This automatically improves two things:

  • Native user experience
  • Increases the user base of the app

Along with this, NextCharge is available for both iOS and Android and has more than 200,000 charging station listings.

PlugShare

Along with finding electric car charging stations, the users can give reviews and connect with other EV owners through PlugShare. Due to its high accuracy in finding EV charging stations, the app has a huge user base in Europe, North America, and other major regions worldwide. There are more than 400,000 listing EV charging stations in the app.

The app allows the user to search based on the network, area, and type of connection they want to use. In its other features, the app allows payment directly through the app, and the user can add new EV stations as they find them. Available for both iOS and Android, PlugShare has more than 1 million downloads.

Chargemap

Chargemap is fast and allows the user to find the EV charging stations in fractions of seconds. This is why more than 330,000 electric car drivers use the app. Moreover, the app has a polished interface and numerous filter options that allow users to get what they specifically want.

An important thing that the users must know is that they cannot use Chargemap without creating an account in the app.

ChargePoint

This app has a huge network and thus provides a plethora of options for the user to choose from. ChargePoint is highly user friendly as it is based on near-field communication. With NFC, the user doesn’t even need to open the app to initiate the process. Moreover, the app has more than 100,000 charging spots and you can check in real-time on the app how much your car has been charged.

ChargeHub

ChargeHub is one of the most prevalent apps in the USA and Canada to find EV charging stations. It is popular for finding EV as well as Tesla charging stations as well. ChargeHub was formerly known as EV Charge Locator and this app has all the required options.

What makes the EV charging station finding apps popular?

With the increase in demand, there will be more EV charging stations available. An EV charging location finding app will help generate more revenue for the business organization as it will render an easier way for the users to locate their respective charging stations.

Another reason why EV charging apps are becoming popular is that it will save the time of the user. Through the app, the user can easily book their preferred time slot and reach there to get their vehicles charged without standing in long queues. Apart from saving time, the user will be able to track all the crucial statistics with real-time analysis in the electric vehicle charging location app.

The stats and analytics will inform the user about their electric fuel consumption daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Moreover, with the app, the vehicle owners can centralize all their transactions as well.

How does an EV charging app work?

The functionality of the EV charging station finding application is simple. You can customize the entire workflow and user journey for the sake of their convenience and make your application relevant, easy to use, and therefore popular. In most cases, we help you carry out a smooth workflow:

How does an EV charging app work?

Monetization techniques for the EV charging station finding app

There are several ways to monetize the app, the top being: eCommerce integration, advertisements, and many more. Let us see the top ways to monetize the EV charging station finding app below.

eCommerce integration

In a revenue model, it is important to deploy a technique that helps the users and does not confuse them. Thus, in this, eCommerce integration becomes vital as membership can help you earn profit.

Here, the user has to subscribe by paying a fee to use the facilities in the app. Thus, the business owner will make money every time a user subscribes to the app. Moreover, if, as a company, you intend to give memberships for free, there is also an option to charge the user for making a booking at the charging station.

Advertisements

One can include a plethora of advertisements in the EV charging location finding app such as sidebars, videos, pop-ups, etc. Many EV charging stations find apps that put up advertising displays instead of charging even a single penny from their users.

Key features in the EV charging station finding app

Key features of EV charging station app

The features of the EV charging station location finding app will help it stand apart from its peers and make its own identity in the app market. We have curated a list of top-rated features that will allow the electric car charging station’s app to soar ahead at a rapid rate:

Book charging station

This feature will seamlessly allow the user to book a place and time at the charging station so that they don’t have to wait in line and get their work done quickly.

EV filter station search

It is a straightforward fact that the user of the EV charging app must have the liberty to filter out the charging stations as per their requirements. Below are some station filter categories that must be included in this feature:

  • Filter by charging networks
  • Filter by station category
  • Filter by facilities rendered by the charging station
  • Filter by type of charging plugs available
  • Filter by the level of availability
  • Reviews and ratings

Also Read: Car Auction App Development: Everything You Need to Know

Trip planner panel

On a long trip, the charging station finder app should be able to notify the user about the availability of the charging stations. The notifications should be based on the nearest charging station available and the battery level in the vehicle.

Payment facility

With this feature, the user would be able to pay digitally in advance from anywhere. In addition, the user would be able to track their expenses by charging on a regular basis easily.

Add the station

Through this feature, the user would be allowed to add the new EV charging station app that is not available. Thus, another user would also find it easier to find new charging stations without any hassle.

Share the residential charger

With these features, the user of the EV charging station finder app can lend a helping hand to other users and provide their personal residential chargers either for free or paid.

Advanced features

Along with the above-mentioned essential features, as an IT business owner, you need to include something extra to make your app a leader in its genre.

Multiple payment options

Multiple payment options will give your EV charging location finding app an extra edge and lure more customers to the app. Through multiple payment options, the user can pay through credit/debit card, UPI, different popular wallets, etc.

GPS tracking

As the name suggests, GPS tracking will allow users to find nearby charging stations easily. It is the same as in-app navigation.

CRM integration

CRM integration will assist you as a business owner to manage healthy relations between existing and new customers and keep your app relevant in the long run.

Chatbot integration

Integrating chatbots will add extra support to your users as they don’t have to wait for any of the executives to get their work done. The AI-enabled chatbots will be capable enough to solve all the common queries of the users in real time.

Technology stack for EV charging station finder app

To build a robust EV charging station finding app, it is essential to have state-of-the-art technology stack for every function. This is because, in the app, modern technologies such as cloud services and the Internet of Things (IoT) must be included. Also, along with a competent tech stack, a business company must hire dedicated developers for the best results.

Below is the full overview of the required technology stack:

  • Notifications: Push.io, Twilio
  • To verify mobile number: Nexmo, Twilio
  • Server: NGINX, Tomcat, Apache
  • Database: MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, PostgreSQL
  • Payment methods: Braintree and PayPal, Stripe, UPI
  • Cloud services: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud
  • Framework: Flutter, Laravel, jQuery
  • Analytics: Hadoop, Spark, Flink, Kafka
  • Find user location: Google Maps, Core Location Framework, Google Places API

Also Read:
Top Mobile App Development Companies for Building an EV Charging Station Finding App

Steps to develop an EV charging station finding app

As a business organization, to develop an EV charging station finding app, you need a clear vision and a dedication to addressing people’s real problems. Although, the final result of the app will depend on the competency of the hired mobile app development company.

Let us see the key steps that are essential in developing a competent EC charging station finding app:

  • In-depth market research
  • Finalize the app features
  • Understand the mobile OS platforms
  • Hire a competent outsourcing company
  • Testing the application thoroughly

Final Thoughts

For the betterment of the climate, it has become essential for humankind to ‘Go Green’. Fortunately, the campaigns to save Mother Nature worldwide are getting greater responses and more and more people are now switching to electric vehicles.

More use of electric vehicles would demand more charging stations and so the applications that help trace them. The blog here provides a complete mobile app development guide to build customized apps for EV charging.

Here i have a professional advice, When developing an EV charging locator app, collaborating with best mobile app development services can be advantageous. These companies bring expertise in building customized apps that cater to specific user needs and industry standards.

The involvement of a professional development company can also streamline the process, helping to manage costs effectively while delivering a high-quality app that enhances the user experience

That said, Electric vehicles are on the rise and businesses must look to invest in the idea of developing an electric car charging station finding app as future market trends will be defined by it.

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