OpenStreetMap gives you static data. But when charging, you almost always need dynamic data (current station availability, availability forecast, charging prices...) even in the most basic use cases.

And to get dynamic data you can't just fetch it from one operator. My employer's charging network (Digital Charging Solutions) has about 1450 technical charge point operators (those are the brands you see on the stations). Even just looking at the commercial charge point operators (those are less) you'd have to connect to hundreds.

Ok, there are also roaming platforms that interconnect everything. But they exist to connect, so they are never going to give you this valuable data for free. And you'd still have to implement about a dozen API connections to get reliable status data for only Europe...

Edit: AMA about charging stuff :) I don't handle the data connections etc but I know a bit

Is that not fraud?

I'd report it to ChargePoint as not public (in the app, there is an option), and if you're feeling spicy, report it to whatever regulatory body handed out subsidies under the conditions you mentioned.

The guy running the project doesn't seem to have the time needed to improve the site:

https://github.com/openchargemap/ocm-app/issues/37

Maybe also browser dependent? Constantly janky on Firefox/Windows/8840HS laptop; janky on Chrome while loading new locations but then mostly very smooth.

The service seems to believe there are multiple charging sites in the middle of the North Sea - which seems slightly unlikely...

FYI I'm on a 2015 MBP and Firefox is doing ok here, so I suspect this is a perf problem with Safari.

seems they just used mapbox defaults. if your device can't run mapbox something is wrong with your device, it's a common and well supported library.

We had the same experience going ~800mi in a day (each way; so we did this twice). We also had 3 kids in the car, so 5 people total... or to put it another way, approximately 500% more people in our EV than the big SUVs driving next to us.

A guy at one stop in TX was in a huge Excursion and was walking his dog near the charger, laughed and said "you're going to be here a while." We were in and out before he was. The FUD is extremely strong still. Our drive (CO to North TX) has to be one of the least populated (and anti-EV) drives in America and there was still no range or charge speed anxiety.

I also completed my first big road trip with the Tesla during the summer holidays. This was around France.

With a long trip my preference was to slow charge overnight so as to start the day at >90%, and sometimes we'd also have a single supercharge during the day. The supercharger experience is great - you plug in and it works. When you're done you unplug and continue your journey.

The slow charge experience was less good. In France there are a lot of charging points in car parks, but to actually start charging it involves a load of faf.

1. Slow chargers typically involve using an app or website, so you need to find that, figure out how to tell it which charger you're at, enter your payment details. Hopefully you've got internet access in the underground car park that you've selected.

2. Each provider has a different app or website - they're typically difficult to use and buggy, but each in its own unique way.

3. Slow chargers don't don't come with their own cables, so you need to get your one out of the boot, and put it away again.

4. Stopping charging typically involves navigating the website/app again, hopefully you haven't closed the tab, otherwise it's going to be a pain getting back there.

5. There's no indication on how much it's going to cost until after you've gone through all the trouble. Even then it can be unclear - for example do I need to pay for parking while I'm charging or not?

6. It often costs as much or more than the supercharger - although all the prices I saw were cheaper than the UK.

7. There are typically idle fees, so you might find yourself having to disconnect your car and move it in the middle of the night (assuming you put it on charge in the evening)[^1], or you might find yourself having to rush back to the car in the middle of your sightseeing.

I want to slow charge when I'm parked, because I'm away from the car anyway. My dream slow-charging experience is:

1. Broad availability in any given car park, let me just plug in if I happen to be stopped

2. Streamlined payment process, preferably automatic and through the touchscreen of the car, rather than involving a phone or website. Don't make me enter payment card details - I want something like the apple pay experience, but "Tesla pay".

3. No idling fees so I can change my mind and have a dessert if I fancy without worrying about getting back

I don't care about speed if I'm not waiting. 7kW is more than enough.

[^1]: My trick here is to adjust the charging current in the Tesla app, such that it will take longer to charge. This way I'm never idling, even though I'm taking up a space for the same time anyway.

Yeah, I think people underestimate the pleasure of not rushing yourself on a roadtrip even when the destination is the important part. It's a bit healthier too as I force myself to do a bit of walking and stretching

This pretty much reflects what we get in the US as well. Obviously with the size of the US we have a ways to go before we get to ICE level of coverage but it has gotten much better the last 2-3 years. The only thing Google maps lacks over say the Tesla app is being able to see how many chargers are available at a station. I’ve changed my trip a little bit a few times when it’s clear one station is a lot busier than another one that might be 20 miles down the road.

Ireland is the ideal country for EVs, with our temperate climate and small size. We also don't have a large fossil fuel resource. We got government grants to install a home charger. Quick and easy. There are many public charges points but in the last 6 months I have noticed much more contention and have to wait frequently. Also more broken chargers. Sign of increased adoption I guess... But if we can't make it work here, I won't work anywhere.

As an EV owner, another issue I find is that there are a discomfortingly large number of chargers that are "for customers only" or that require you to pay for parking just to charge.

This is a massive UX issue. With gas cars you can use any gas station you want and you don't have to pay additional fees other than the gas.

My only feedback was that he should really really consider linking the text `Open Charge Map` to the website.

Can it filter by charging level?

It makes perfect sense for quality interstate stops. There's a reason that Sheetz, Wawa, and Buc-ees have so many of them.

Is the demand there? Affluent customers probably have chargers at home, so unless it's a 200+ mile round trip to visit the business, probably don't have much need to charge.

Because Plugshare is closed source, locked down and a bizarre cesspool of uncurated garbage with zealously curated but misleading or straight up wrong information.

For example, in Australia, the largest supercharger networks are Tesla and Evie. For reasons I won't even pretend to understand, Plugshare refuses to allow either name in their labels, so if a town has both, they're called "Town (1)" and "Town (2)" at random. Not only does this make searching a pain, but people just select whichever pin happens to be on top and then submit their charging reports for the wrong charger. Gar! Typical example:

"Oliver's Gundagai (1)" https://www.plugshare.com/location/205861 (Chargefox)

"Oliver's Gundagai (2)" https://www.plugshare.com/location/76887 (Tesla)

Being truly open is a huge plus for OCM. Checking a few locations in both I found that PlugShare had locations properly listed as under maintenance while OCM listed them as open, so at least near me the Plugshare data seems more accurate.

I also really appreciate the images and comments people have posted in Plugshare to help find out of the way stations or stations that might not be reliable. If OSM took off it would get there, but none of the stations I checked had any comments or images.

I'm not a big fan of the OCM station formatting. There's a bunch of useless information above the fold and a bunch of useful information below the fold.

OCM doesn't appear to have any pricing information while PlugShare at least tells me if the station has a charge and if the parking itself has a charge.

I hope that open services like this can get station data from more direct sources for more accurate information, but the data isn't quite there yet for me to want to use it when I'm actively looking for a station.

Plugshare is owned by evgo. It'd be nice to have a fully independent entity owning the data and sharing it freely.

This was my immediate question. Looking at this data in my city it reports a bunch of chargers that are either 100% gone or have been broken for a year. PlugShare reports those all correctly. I'd have a pretty bad time trying to charge around here (metro population of 2.5 million) if I relied on this dataset.

In London (UK), OCM seems to have more chargers and more accurate data than PlugShare. Zap Map is probably the best option though, but even them are missing some slow chargers.

PlugShare doesn't list all stations, for one.

IME, Plugshare is of variable value. Good in Germany; terrible in Mallorca, for example.

Why would I use PlugShare over other apps on which I can also charge?

Or instead of OSM.

Is there any official source that lists all chargers in China? OCM automatically imports data from different countries (UK, Portugal, France, etc). Operators can also submit their data: https://openchargemap.org/site/about/datasharing

I’m visiting Chiang Mai Thailand and China is flooding the roads with cheap EVs, BYD, Hozon. There is charging infrastructure everywhere. I don’t know how the United States is going to compete.

This is already the reality in most of EU and the UK. There are 300kW charging stations all over the place, and a decent EV can recharge in 20 minutes.

I actually prefer this over refuelling, because filling up takes 5+ minutes of my time, while recharging is unattended, so I can plug in in seconds, and go get a coffee/break in the meantime. Chargers also tend to be next to nicer places, near food courts and other retail, which is handy, and doesn't need to be a separate stop on road trips.

> cheaper to buy

Yeah, that probably won't happen for a long time.

> more convenient

If you can charge at home, then for daily driving, they're more convenient than ICE. Road trips aren't bad if you have access to Tesla Superchargers. If you're CCS only, then it's another story.

> cheaper to use in the long run

If you can charge using residential rates in an area that doesn't have absurd energy pricing, then in the long run, an EV IS cheaper. The cost to replace a battery is a popular talking point, but it's just not relevant on any EV that isn't a first generation Leaf. It typically takes over 100,000 miles to see even 10% degradation.

EVs are cheaper to maintain. No oil changes, your brake pads last forever, no transmission fluids...your only maintenance is tires, cabin air filter, and wiper blades/fluid.

> EVs are running at 0.5 for 3, at best.

If you charge at home, I'd say they're 1.75 out of 3, with 0.25 taken out just for road trips.

Or fast WIFI and delivery bikes/bots. People just want to play with their cell phone and drink coffee.

My guess is that eventually there will be fewer but larger charging site. Built beside major routes and close to a big grid connection. Have a few hundred MW's of charging all in one place. Much easier to maintain and more investable for large companies.

> money is in the store / lounge

Is this demonstrated?

Visiting the gas station is an across-the-income-strata chore with recurring economics. Wealthy EV owners, on the other hand, charge at home--"the economic burden of installing home chargers" being unfeasiable "for many living in multi-family housing or renting" [1]. It's unclear whether electric trucks will charge en route, and if so, whether they'll have many people on board for long hauls. So you’re stuck, as a base case, with road trippers. An intermittent, lower-volume and presumably pro-cyclical market.

Put simply, the economics of gas stations don't map cleanly to EV charging.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...

I've always said they need them at all the McDonalds along the interstates. You need them at a place where a person can sit down and eat for 20-30 minutes. A 5 minute purchase at a store isn't going to charge the car much.

And tell us exactly where these are, their hours of operation, what they sell, and the best way to get there from here. A dedicated EV mapping team should have been something cooking at Google a decade ago. For some reason, they just aren't interested (or are now too stupid to realize) this massive, ripe business opportunity.

In Washington state, I’m starting to see EVGo chargers at AM/PM convenience stores. And I’m hearing that there are chargers at Pilot truck stops, and Buckee’s stores in other states.

I did a road trip through a part of Canada recently. These are only on 401 I think, but they were pretty nice. Small convenience store, a food court with 2-3 fast food choices, gas pumps, and DC fast chargers. Usually have their own exit/on ramps on the highway as well, made it super easy to get in and out. Well-spaced for charging on a road trip too.

https://www.onroute.ca/

In Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia they put major chargers next to large malls, so you have all the convenience of a mall while the car is changing.

100% agreed. Took a road trip, and at any charger I stopped at I either purchased a meal, or purchased snacks from a coffee shop. Given how spread out they are, competition is fairly thin.

I wonder if this is economically feasible. A fast charger is going to take at least 20-30 mins to charge a car, where filling up with gas is more like 5 minutes. This means a gas station can get significantly more customers per hour than an equivalently sized EV charging station.

Most of the ones in Pennsylvania are at Wawa or Sheetz. I wish they all were.

They're starting to, I've seen quite a few

No. How do you enable payment for such normal sockets? Even if you figure out a way to do that, the amount of payment for electric bikes is so tiny that just to cover credit card processing fees would require electric bike users to pay for exorbitantly expensive electricity.

In my experience in the PNW US the answer is no. They only have DC charging attachments.

You can. I've done these trips multiple times. There is a charger in Burns that makes it possible.

Are trips longer than 300 miles outlawed in your vision of the future? Barely anyone needs DC charging for their day-to-day usage, it's largely for supporting longer trips.