If you’re heading out in your EV, an EV route planner app will help you plan charging stops along your route. With so many different journey planning tools available for electric car drivers, which is the best? Back in 2022 we started testing the top apps and tools – and we’ve just done it all again to keep you up-to-date.
How do I plan a trip with my electric car?
When we do it right, a long journey in our EV is effortless, and the farm shops and other places we find add a bit more colour to our journey. But, yes we do spend a little longer at motorway service stations than we’d like.
To go back to basics, when we talk about ‘planning’ we mean the following:
- Before starting a long trip, charge your EV to 100% at home.
- Download and sign in to at least one EV navigation app.
- Look for charging stations along the route in advance.
- Be realistic about how much time you need to add for charging.
- Pack your cable so that you can charge slowly all those times you’re not in your car
What should I look for in an EV route planner?
A good EV planner should plan your route around charging stops with your EV in mind. That means knowing how long your EV can go before needing another charge. Some apps also factor in the terrain (hills) and the weight of passengers and luggage in your car.
EV planners should also help when plans change – with a good map that shows all the charge points around and checks that they are available.
Some EV planning apps also take the headache out of paying for your charging. Zap Map have a Zap Pay, and Octopus Energy’s Electroverse lets you charge your charging to your home energy bill.
Our three golden rules for charging on EV road trips:
1. Stop charging when you get to 80% (any more takes much longer); 2. Plan to stop driving at 20% (better for both battery and peace of mind); 3. Stick to the best networks. Our top picks are: Instavolt, Osprey, MFG and Gridserve.
The top EV route planners put to the test
The good news is that road trips in an electric car are getting easier and easier, with faster chargers – and more of them – dotted across the UK. But, although there are more chargers and they are more reliable, there are also more EVs on the road, so you are still better off doing a little planning before you set off on a long trip. Here are the top eight EV route planning apps we tested:
Zap-Map
ABRP (A Better Route Planner)
Watts Up
Google Maps
Plugshare
EV Navigation
Octopus Electroverse
Bonnet
For each app we asked it to plan a 250-mile route from Aberystwyth, Wales to Essex in a VW ID.3. Here are the top three that we’ll be reaching for on our own road-trips…
3. Zap-Map
Zap-Map is the most well-known of route planners for EV drivers. It launched way back in 2014, and today the majority of UK EV drivers have it installed on their phones. Zap-Map has almost all public charge points mapped and around 70% showing live status data, so you can tell if a charger is in use.
Key features include search, filters, list of nearby chargers, detailed info on each charging point, Zap-Chat community feature and a smart route-planner.
There’s a free version, that allows you to do basically everything you may need. Zap Map ‘map’ has a bewildering number of pins because it shows all the available chargers, even the slowest 3kW chargers. You can filter these out to show only rapids. It shows you the cost and the availability (according to the charger itself) plus the hours or days since the last charge. Users often report chargers that are out of action. This gives you an idea of how reliable and/or busy the charger is.
The premium version costs £29.99 per year, and give you a few extra features, like What3words navigation, filters that show the numbers of chargers in any location and charger ratings to help you avoid the less reliable chargers. You have to pay for premium to get Android Auto and Apple CarPlay display in your car screen. And you’ll get a 5% discount when using Zap Pay.
Live data shows a blue marker around charge point icons when at least one is in use. But you can’t see at a glance whether this means there’s a charger free. Networks include: Instavolt, Osprey, Gridserve, MFG, BP Pulse, ESB, GeniePoint, Fastned, Ionity, Tesla, Shell, ChargePlace Scotland,
✔ Community chat is well used so you can see if a charger has had issues recently
✘ Colours of charger pins in the map aren’t very intuitive (note: we found out how to get a handy symbols key in the app)
✘ It’s hard to see the speed of chargers from the map
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2. ABRP (A Better Route Planner)
A Better Route Planner (ABRP) is an app that guides you through the quickest way to arrive at your destination. It’s a website and an app for both Android and iOS devices.
A Better Route Planner is a smart, fun, and easy-to-use itinerary maker that lets you plot out routes in the most efficient way possible.
A Better Route Planner focuses on route planning and navigation specifically for electric vehicles. You have to simply select your vehicle model, enter your destination, and hit the big blue plan button to get a full planned route, including charging stations and trip duration.
It has a very simple interface. But change mode and you can see the hills on the route where you could use the most energy. Users say the results are very accurate, taking into account temperature and road conditions. Tesla drivers even prefer it to the Tesla Planner as it favours more charges within the efficient ‘fast’ charging zone of your battery than the Tesla app.
The free version allows you to share to Google Maps to get live traffic updates. The premium version has traffic built-in.
✔ Accurate predictions on range
✔ Shows you all the food options near your charger
✘ Live data on top charger networks only
1. Octopus Electroverse
Electroverse is our top pick. Even if you aren’t an Octopus Energy customer, you can join the Electroverse charging network. Sign up and they send you a card so you can pay for charging through your home energy bill or on a registered card. You can even pay through the app itself. You don’t pay any more, but often pay less. Ionity offer a 5% discount and on some networks there is a discount for using chargers off-peak or when the green energy is flowing. Osprey will give you 20% off for charging after 7pm.
Most chargers are covered, but we like the fact that the map shows you rapid chargers (namely Tesla and Gridserve) that aren’t on the network. The only charger we’ve spotted that’s not on there was a 7kW Pod Point charger at Tescos.
Better still, the Electroverse card works across Europe. We drove through France to Italy using our card at every rapid charger on the way.
The route planner now works from the app with traffic data if you want that, and they seem to have done away with the autocomplete that suggested lots of places in the USA with UK names. The route suggested was sensible, and you can send the route to Google Maps on your phone to get live traffic updates. Unlike Zap Map, the colours of the pins are instantly helpful – a white spark is slow, yellow faster and hot pink is super rapid. Chargers with issues or that are fully occupied are orange.
The map shows you all the networks in any spot, including those who haven’t partnered – of which the big name missing from their payments system is Gridserve. You’ll get a 20% discount on Osprey charging after 7pm.
✔ No more upfront ‘holds’ on your credit card, just pay it off on your home bill
✔ Great for European road trips
✘ Route planner doesn’t show you alternatives along the route, but you can use the app to see all the options
✘ Network doesn’t include Gridserve chargers (although you still see where these are on the app)
Best of the rest…
Watts Up
Watts Up is definitely confidence boosting. Clear map showing logos of rapid charging options, and a very reassuring list of the real-time available nearest chargers. Status bar shows real-time status, to show the next chargers and (for some networks) their availability.
Wattup shows live status for top networks – Instavolt, Osprey, and Gridserve and now live, as are smaller networks ChargePlaceScotland, ForEv.
Nearby public chargepoints are shown within the free CarPlay interface, this shows location, distance, power rating and live availability. And you can ‘favourite’ the chargers you like for quick reference.
We tried to upgrade to a trial version of ‘Discovery mode’ (cost £1 through Google Playstore), but it never worked and was impossible to cancel from the app itself, so we can’t even report on the benefits of that.
✔ Seeing the logo of the charge operator on the map makes it easy to weigh up best operator against best location (see our top network tips above)
✘ Not on your laptop or tablet, it’s only an app on your phone
Google Maps
You can actually get some helpful information from Google Maps as an electric car driver, but it is buried deep within the mapping interface. What we trust Google to do is show us the best route and to reroute us based on what’s happening with traffic, so it’s worth including Google in this list of EV route planners. We expect that Google are working on making it better for predictions.
On a desktop computer, All you have to do is plug in your journey details, tap the option for ‘search along route’, and then search for ‘EV charging stations’. Then Google Maps will present you with all the stations along your route, with details about the type of chargers available. On your phone, tap the three dots on the top right and then ‘Search along route’. You still have to type ‘EV charging’, but then you’ll see all the chargers on your route and can add a stop.
The problem comes if you get rerouted because Google finds a quicker route. Google will think you still need to stop at that charger.
✔ Live traffic on your route
✘ No help choosing chargers
PlugShare
This app is most like Zap-Map, but it seems like it’s aimed at a US driver. With brown and green pins that look like petrol pumps, it’s looks are not inspiring. The PlugShare app can be used to plan a trips in a specific vehicle and shows you a map. It doesn’t show how elevation affects your range, just shows you the likely max range with a big green circle on the map – and that is either very conservative or hasn’t noticed what car we selected. You can filter by reviews, so you can see only the best chargers in other drivers’ opinions.
We were expecting great things from PlugShare, but in fact were really disappointed. For example, it showed us Tesla chargers for our ID.3 (not the one’s just opened up to other users) and it didn’t seem easy to filter away slower chargers.
✔ Easy to filter chargers by user ratings (this is Premium feature in Zap-Map)
✘ No option to share route to Google for real-time navigation from the app. And it let us choose chargers ‘along the route’, so we accidentally picked a Northbound charger on a Southbound journey!
EV Navigation
Back to the geeky end of route planning, EV Navigation, is a comprehensive solution for predicting the discharge rate of the battery with precision but it also manages to look simple. It calculates routes and takes the charging times into consideration. You can tell it how many people you have in the car and how you are likely to drive (sport, normal or eco), even the pressure in your tyres.
This gives EV drivers the ability to optimise their drive time and spend the least amount of time necessary waiting at charging stations. If you don’t like the look for the charging stop they suggest, it’s very hard to find alternatives.
✔ Great to see the impact of passengers and driving style, etc.
✘ Not very interactive if you don’t want to use the charger selected
Ovo Charge
OVO Charge is the new name for Bonnet, a payment app that lets you plan routes across the UK and Europe and access charging through a single app (or RFID card if you prefer). It is similar to the Electroverse app, except you can buy a number of Boosts which are subscriptions that get you a discount on all charging sessions. For £2 a month you can get 10% off charging, Turbo £8 gets you 15% off.
We were disappointed in how difficult it was to use the app. If there are 2 chargers in one location, you have to zoom in several times in order to see any information at all. There is no route planning. And we were bombarded with offers to join a subscription. We couldn’t even find out if, like Bonnet, OVO still holds £30 in prepayment authorisation for each charge you do.
Premium does offer a route planning app for newer EVs. It is currently being offered for free as a beta product, but you need to add a payment method and will get a reminder if it ever starts to be a charged-for service.
We gave the route planner a test last time, with disappointing results – this time it looks like it is only available to Turbo members. That’s a no from us.
Main features of the best EV route planners
| EV route planner | Desktop version? | In-car version? | Live data connection to your EV? | See charger availability? | Predictions based on route elevation? | Live traffic navigation | Multiple EVs | Cost of Premium version |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABRP | ✓ | Premium | ✓ | Top networks only | ✓ | ✓ Premium. (Basic allows you to send to Google Maps) | Premium | £48/year |
| Zap-Map | ✓ | Premium | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Premium | £45/year |
| Electroverse | Route planning in app and share to Google Maps | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | Free |
| EV Navigation | ✓ | ✗ | trial | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | |
| PlugShare | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | |
| Wattsup | ✗ | CarPlay only | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | |
| Google Maps | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
The features offered by these apps are changing all the time. We’ve done our best to compare apps in May 2022 (latest update October 2024), but if you have found any changes and would like to give us an update, we’d love to put things right. Email us at: hello@lovemyev.com
Our verdict: Which route planning app is best?
We gave each EV route planning app a score for various aspects of planning a long journey. The best app scored 5, with the worst getting a 1:
| EV route planner | Ease of use | Good for EV beginners | Accurate EV predictions | EV Features for free | Total score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABRP | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Electroverse | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 19 |
| Wattsup | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 15 |
| Zap-Map | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 14 |
| EV Navigation | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| PlugShare | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Google Maps | 4 | – | – | – | 4 |
By way of background, we’ve been driving an EV since 2019. We don’t often use public charging, as most of our journeys can be completed with home charging. We have always used Zap-Map to plan trips and Google Maps to navigate to avoid traffic jams and hold-ups. We stick to the better charger networks (see the golden rules above), and try and avoid charging when the roads are busy. Probably as a result of this, our experience of rapid charging in the last year is generally quite positive.
Following our desk-based research, we’ll be immediately retiring the PlugShare app. We’ll recommend Watts Up to our more anxious EV-newbie friends and relatives. And we’ll watch the newer EV Navigation for further developments.
Which is the best EV route planner app?
For our longest trips, we’d go to ABRP to provide the most accurate route planning. For the genuine ease of use (with one RFID card to almost end them all), we’d use Octopus Electroverse (and better still, you can get £5 credit when you join using our link). Although we’d love to see payment links with the reliable Instavolt or motorway-based Gridserve networks in the future.
If you have a passenger who can check updates, Zap-Map is useful for the live charger status data for Gridserve chargers, but an update every five minutes could still leave you waiting for a charger, so it’s probably best to head to a larger site anyway.