The holidays are coming: Thanksgiving in the US followed by Christmas and other solstice-adjacent celebrations. With that comes driving – the mad dash to grandma’s house, the beach, the airport.
Christmas is by far and away the busiest time for EV charging in Australia, and Google has just launched a new feature to make life just a little simpler for EV drivers – an estimate of how many stalls will be free when you arrive at a charger on your route.
With most charging networks now supplying live data to Google, now including Tesla as I wrote about recently in The Driven, Google has used its knowledge of charging behaviour to make predictions about when chargers will become free.
Google says that “EV charger availability predictions start rolling out next week on Android Auto and cars with Google built-in for hundreds of thousands of charging stations around the world.”
This means it won’t just be limited to Android Automotive-based vehicles like Polestars and Volvos but available through any Android phone. It is not yet confirmed if or when this feature will come to Apple Maps and CarPlay.
Nonetheless, Google Maps features do continue to evolve. Google has brought the charging success feature that has long been a part of the mobile version of Maps. If a charger has been successfully used recently, it says so and how many days ago.
Charger pages now feature a banner that says “Most drivers successfully charged here in the past 30 days, based on reports”.
What was particularly pleasing was that it took a while to find an example of a site where most drivers weren’t successful. I would like to take this as a good reflection on the quality of charging sites across all networks.
I did eventually find one – Evie Networks in Avoca – which is probably a reflection on the density of Evie sites in Victoria and the fact that I started in Melbourne and searched outwards, rather than on the quality of the network.
Every new feature like this on the most popular mapping and navigation platform in Australia normalises EV ownership, makes EV charging more accessible, and helps fight the misinformation and disinformation that hold back the transition to electric vehicles.
Ed Lynch-Bell is Principal at Second Mouse, dedicated to building more sustainable energy tech and mobility products, services and businesses. Ed is also a co-host of the Melbourne and Sydney EV Meet-ups, bringing the e-mobility industry together.