You can now plan a sat nav route for your electric car

Zap-Map Route Planner will take you past charge stops so your batteries don’t run flat

Electric car on-street charge pointsPopular electric charge point locator app Zap-Map has launched a new route planner tool that lets electric car owners plan long journeys without having to worry about finding chargers en route.

The new tool will suggest up to three rapid chargers situated within a mile of their route, based on the estimated battery range of their car: users pre-select this when setting up the app.

Users can alter the parameters if they wish, creating a customised route: charger search criteria can be tweaked, as can percentage battery charge assumptions and route filters. EV newbies can also choose to have a higher battery ‘buffer’; old hands can remove this so they have a lower level of battery charge upon arrival.

Zap-Map route planner

Clever features will even use real-world data to automatically reduce the range if a lead-footed driver averages much over 50mph, or if they drive on roads with significant inclines.

The app, which has launched on Android devices and is due on iOS later this summer, contains a network of almost 16,800 public chargers at nearly 5,900 locations. Over half of them will show their status, which is updated every five minutes.

Zap-Map COO and co-founder Melanie Shufflebotham said: “With over 60,000 Zap-Map users across our desktop and app platforms each month and the EV parc expanding at a rapid rate, we know that there is a real demand from EV drivers.

“This new Route Planner will enable EV drivers to plan their electric journeys across any charge point network, with the latest status information.”

There’s more in the pipeline, too: future releases will let users select additional range factors, and alert them if important roads are closed or charging stations go offline.

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Richard Aucock
Richard Aucockhttps://www.richardaucock.co.uk/
Richard is director at Motoring Research. He has been with us since 2001, and has been a motoring journalist even longer. He won the IMCO Motoring Writer of the Future Award in 1996 and the acclaimed Sir William Lyons Award in 1998. Both awards are run by the Guild of Motoring Writers and Richard is currently vice chair of the world's largest organisation for automotive media professionals. Richard is also a juror and Steering Committee director for World Car Awards and the UK juror for the AUTOBEST awards.

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