Electric vehicles promise greener, smarter, tech-enabled driving. But to overcome the widespread popularity of conventional vehicles, the EV industry must create a superior user experience.
CPOs, MSPs, OEMs, and innovative mobility startups are in a position to change the world by creating amazing products and services for EV drivers. These innovations will make people’s lives easier, and boost the reputation of owning an electric vehicle. But successful creators need to build on strong foundations.
High-quality data is one of the key ingredients here. Without information which is accurate, consistent, and complete, end-user experiences will always be suboptimal. This is because you cannot build trust without reliability, especially when it comes to the mass adoption of new and unfamiliar technologies.
This is where Eco-Movement helps – supporting the EV industry by providing flawless, reliable, and enriched charge point data that creators and innovators can rely on. More about this later.
Boosting Adoption: Subconscious Trust and Smart Innovation
Drivers really want a driving experience which is convenient, and most of all, anxiety-free. According to research done in 2020, “battery (range confidence), recharging infrastructure and technology (unreliability) can be considered as major indicators in influencing EV adoption.” This is no surprise.
So, until now, potential EV buyers have had to think too hard about the pros and cons of ownership, and many current EV drivers have had to think too hard about the everyday management of their car.
To reduce the burden on drivers, the focus falls on two areas, a) smarter products and services, and b) better infrastructure. We want to reach a point where drivers don’t need to consciously think about how, when, and where to recharge – or whether they can trust the charge point information to be correct. They simply rely on their selected EV services to make decisions, and are happy to follow their lead.
Put simply, we need to build on subconscious trust and an underlying confidence in the EV experience.
Product innovation in the EV industry
When the data is reliable and complete, creators and innovators can develop incredibly smart products for EV drivers – making the driving (and charging) experience seamless and enjoyable. And when original data sources do not have the depth to enable these smart products, the information needs to be enriched.
One example of an innovator is Chargetrip. They’re doing amazing things with navigation and routing, helping mobility providers, CPOs, and other industry stakeholders provide navigation apps to workforces and consumers. Chargetrip’s engine calculates real-time range for any EV, taking into account weather, charge speed, elevation, and many other variables to establish the best route for any electric vehicle.
Chargetrip’s APIs and white-label apps remove the pain of navigating from A to B (and to C, D, and onwards) in any vehicle that has limited range. They make it possible for businesses to operate EVs efficiently, because drivers’ route schedules account for pre-planned stops in specific locations. And they help car companies like Porsche provide their customers with great navigational tools for EVs.
As Eco-Movement, we currently also see some very promising new initiatives to optimize the costs and user experience of electric vehicle fleets with the help of our data. We’re also supporting global companies such as Bosch, HERE, and TomTom with exciting new innovations in their EV offerings.
In all of these cases, innovators are helping the EV industry mature by building solutions that solve private and commercial pain points. They’re contributing to an ecosystem which boosts mass adoption.
And in all of these examples, Eco-Movement’s high-quality data offers a flawless foundation.
Eco-Movement: Rebuilding Trust in EV Charge Point Data
Eco-Movement collects raw charge point data from hundreds of CPOs across Europe. Using machine learning, we clean up fields, enrich data, and deliver it to the market in a uniform format.
Cleaning up data using smart noise filters
Things get messy when huge volumes of data are produced by many different parties simultaneously. For example, more than one source might report on the same charge point – meaning navigation systems pick up conflicting or duplicate data, distorting user expectations and causing confusion.
Even when duplication doesn’t happen, data from multiple sources can be presented in a non-standardised manner, meaning the information users see is scruffy or unclear. Eco-Movement’s smart filters ensure that this type of noise is eliminated. We clean dozens of geographic, administrative, and technical data fields – ensuring that it’s always standardised and user-friendly.
Quality assurance through automated machine learning
Machine learning allows us to spot inaccuracies which are impossible for the human eye to see. Our automated technology simultaneously compares hundreds of data fields against each other, flagging all suspicious data points that might need to be rectified (e.g. a “public” charge point at a private property).
This level of automation allows us to make sure every individual data point is accurate across 55 countries (and counting), meaning users can trust the charge point information wherever they travel.
Algorithm-powered predicted availability
Correct information is great, and helps establish the foundations from which to innovate. But we go further by enriching data to provide smarter insights. As just one example, we’ve built algorithms which calculate the future availability of a charge point, based on smart use of various historic trends and variables.
By using this algorithm, which is recalculated every day, OEMs and MSPs can let their users know in real-time whether a charge point is likely to be available when they need to stop along a pre-planned or ad-hoc route. This is something that really adds value for EV drivers, and reduces the uncertainty about their journeys even further.
And other examples include enrichments for the location type such as parking garage (including coordinates of the entrance), accepted payment methods and charge cards, facilities on offer, and derived opening times – all of which enable service providers to optimise their trips according to the individual preferences of their users.
This is just a taster of what we do at Eco-Movement. If you’re a Charge Point Operator or Service Provider active in the EV domain, and you’re interested in partnering up, contact us today to learn more about our game-changing charge point data platform.
