Building Smart Charging Mobile Apps for EV Vehicles

Smart charging apps for electric vehicles (EVs) are a critical piece of the self-driving puzzle. EV Mobile app development can make using your car as much of a software experience as a mechanical one. Specifically, smart charging apps leverage your vehicle’s onboard charging system and monitor its state in real time. This article will help you build the right app for your vehicle and get users to adopt it.

What makes a smart charging app?

There are plenty of reasons to build a smart charging app. You may want to connect your car to a central control system or create a revenue stream by charging fees.

The key to building a smart charging app is to assess your specific business goals and then select the right tech stack to achieve them. Some of the most popular use cases for smart charging apps include the following:

Supporting autonomous driving: Your app can monitor the charging state of your car and alert you if the charge runs low. Note that this is a very specific use case for autonomous driving.

Managing your charging station: With an app that manages your charging station, you can monitor and remotely manage charging sessions from an app. With advanced features like prepaid charging and automated billing, these apps can make charging at home (or on the road) a seamless experience.

Also Read: Top 5 Energy Industry Trends Paving New Opportunities With Mobile App Development

Key Features of an EV charging app

Several features make a good EV charging app. These include:

Locate Charging Station: The app displays all the details about the stations nearby and the available and occupied charging units.

Detailed Information: The app can provide the user with detailed information on tariffs and prices as well as billing statements.

Booking in Advance: Spot is a mobile app that allows EV drivers to book charging stations in advance. This makes it easy for them to charge their EVs.

Notifications: Every action taken via the app, like reserving a parking space, scanning a QR code, and charging a vehicle, incur notifications.

Key Factors for Developing EV Charging App

The factors in developing an EV charging app vary greatly depending on what your goals are for the app. Here are some key factors to consider when building an EV charging app.

Complex technology characteristics: With the help of an app, EV chargers can control EVSE hardware and software components, such as onboarding a charger, selecting a port type, smartphone-based user authentication, generating alerts, and integrating a variety of protocols and connectivity options. As a result, each parameter of the charging experience significantly impacts the app design. It is crucial to comprehend the individual components’ effect on the app’s ease of use.

Real-time Status: An EV charging app must work all the time flawlessly and provide real-time status of battery charging, energy rates, and available locations, among other things. App developers must also consider limited bandwidth and wireless connectivity while developing and testing the app.

IoT/Cloud Backend: A lot of telemetry data and service requests are generated by EV charging sessions. Cloud backend infrastructure is needed to continuously monitor and ensure the high availability of charging services. The backend system should be tightly integrated to ensure that the charging app generates alerts for critical information.

Also Read: Reasons Why Mobile Applications Drive Utility Customer Experience

Integrate third-party services in your app

Your app will need to integrate several third-party services to provide full functionality. These include:

Charging station management: This feature lets you manage charging sessions, set billing policies, and create profiles for users.

Billing management: This feature lets you manage user billing information. You can create profiles for users and even provide prepaid billing options.

Charge card management: This feature lets you manage multiple cards, set spending limits, and provide re-bill options.

Device tracking: This feature lets you track your car’s location, create maps, and even create navigation routes.

Battery health: This feature lets you know if your car battery is below 50%. This lets you avoid having to replace your car battery at a later date.

Wrapping up

With the rapid transition to electric vehicles (EVs), EV Mobile app development will become even more important for EV businesses. An EV charging app can help owners monitor the charge level of their cars, control charging sessions, and even manage to charge station deposits. Automakers and e-Mobility providers have utilized EV charging apps to connect and analyze EV usage and charging activities. They generate a large amount of qualitative information (i.e., locations, payment processes, evaluations, etc.) as well as quantifiable data (charging duration, use patterns, battery state, etc.). This data-driven approach presents an intriguing opportunity for them to continuously adjust services and create new offerings.

Mobio Solutions is a leading Renewable Energy mobile app development company in UK. Our team of professionals develops Renewable Energy technology solutions that help to enhance your energy business.