There are a number of different type of chargers for electric cars and not all of them are interchangeable or compatible with each other. This can make it difficult to find a charging station suitable for your car but Google Maps can now help you with that.
Available today is a new setting within Google Maps that allows you to choose your “Electric Vehicle Settings”, and set the type of charger that your car uses. When you search for EV charging stations now within Maps you can filter it to only show stations that fit “Your Plugs” or to show any plugs.
Within the settings of the app is where you set up “Your Plugs”. Inside the settings is a new option for “Electric Vehicle Settings” and from within here you choose the plugs that you want Maps to find for you.
While this feature is not new it is new to Maps and hopefully in the future it will become a lot more useful to a lot more of us.
Thanks to the governments ineptitude and their subservient nature towards big coal and other major polluters the uptake of electric cars in Australia is lower than most Western nations. As such this is less useful for Australians than most countries but going forwards the governments of Australia, you would think, cannot continue to ignore clean energy and the impact of not having it is having on our environment and our lives.
Hopefully we will see something happen in this space in the next year or so and when it does Google Maps will be there to help you find the right charging station for you. This is live in Australia now so if you are one of the few lucky ones in Australia to have an electric car head into the Maps app and set your charging requirements.
Scott, the road blocks applied in the uptake of EVs, by the past and present Australian governments, is the wrong target to be complaining about for this article. The Real Problem is the need for this facility itself. It’s shown in the fourth app image. All the different, not standardized, charging connector designs. With ICE vehicles, ANY CAR can go to ANY petrol station and be certain that the nozzle on any petrol bowser will fit. Try to imagine how bad things would be if refilling a car’s petrol tank had not been standardized. “You have this make and model… Read more »