The European Parliament will soon ratify the principle of a universal charging port for smartphones, tablets, helmets, consoles… but not for electric cars. Between the six socket standards, the four charging modes, and the dozens of competing networks, it is not always easy to navigate. Chargemap aims to solve the problem with its map of charging stations, its application to go from one to another, and its “pass” to pay. Interview with Yoann Nussbaumer, founder and CEO of Chargemap.
How did you come up with the idea of ChargeMap?
In 2008, I discovered the Tesla Roadster, a superb sports car capable of going from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds with 350 to 400 km of range. When I saw that, I thought something was going to happen around electric cars. I created the site clean automobile, and of course, I bought an electric car. I asked myself the usual questions: how am I going to recharge it? Where can I find stations? Can I take long trips? That’s when I had the idea for ChargeMap, first as a website, then in 2011 as a mobile app.
Identifying charging stations is a long process. What are the challenges of this data aggregation work?
Users can reference new terminals in the application, add photos and comments… We started like that, with the community. Since 2016, we have also been working with charging network operators to automatically retrieve information, and even obtain the real-time status of infrastructures. We therefore have two sources of information, on the one hand the community, in a more artisanal way, and on the other hand the network operators, in a more automatic way.
