How to Develop an EV Charging Station App: Practical Case

We can't predict the future, but Fortune Business Insights published a research report and by 2028 the market for charging stations will be estimated at about $111.90 billion. And the average annual growth rate is 30.26%. In addition to the growing availability of EV charging networks around the world, there is a demand to develop an online app for mobile devices that will help EV owners:

• search for nearby stations;
• find out the necessary information (type of charging, power, and so on);
• calculate charging time and cost;
• track all your charging sessions in one app.

During the EV charging app development, you may encounter problems such as how to create a map of charging stations, how to track the status and charge level of an electric car, or how to receive real-time data from the charging station. And in this article, we’ll explain in detail all the necessary information that’s useful for EV app development. Let’s start!

 
 

🤓 Understanding EV Charging Station Apps

Let's start with the basics: what is an EV charging app?

The EV (Electric Vehicle) Charging App is a mobile application designed to help electric vehicle owners find, access, and use suitable car charging stations.

Such applications play a crucial role for both drivers and EV charging station owners. Among the main benefits of using such an application are a simplified charging process, information about the location of charging stations, availability of free charging slots, and supported charging connectors.

Tesla

Tesla operates and owns the biggest fast charging network in the world, with over 50,000 Superchargers. You can check the availability of Supercharger stalls, keep an eye on your charge level, and receive alerts when you're ready to go via the Tesla app.

Recently, Tesla opened its service to all electric vehicle owners.

📱 Key Features of the Application for Charging Electric Vehicles

What are the main features that you should keep in mind when you started electric vehicle app development? We have collected all the useful information that will help you make your charging station business more successful. Read on!

 

View all EV charging stations on the map

Let the car owner see all EV charging points on the map. Thanks to this feature, the driver will be able to see and find charging stations in his city or country and feel more confident when building a route.

 
 

Push notifications

Push notifications are an essential feature of any application. With their help, car owners can get status updates (battery capacity, charge, pending payments, etc.), news, and personalized offers. In some apps, push notifications are quite aggressive, sending a bunch of unnecessary information and reminders. Therefore, it’s very important to set them in a way that contains only useful information and doesn’t distract by the frequent vibration of the smartphone.

You can add the ability for the user to customize push notifications. For example, send alerts when the electric car is fully charged or charged to a certain percentage, when there is an EV charging station nearby, and so on.

 
 

📬 How to Receive Real-Time Data from the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

We asked our experienced developer, Cyril Troitsky, to share his insights on How to Receive Real-Time Data from Electric Vehicle Charging Stations. Let's dive in!

This is the most EV-charging-specific part of the app. To communicate with the commercial charging stations by different charge point operators (CPOs) you’ll need to use a communication protocol, a popular example of which is Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP). Using it, you’ll have a unified communication interface between specific charge stations and your backend.

To give you an idea of how this works, you can have a look at the following diagram:

As you can see, charging stations use a charging protocol (OCPP in this case) to send data to the network management system, or an eRoaming network.

However, if you don’t want to build an EV charging management software from scratch, you can already use some of the existing EV charging app solutions, such as Hubject.

Then, on the app side, you will need to implement a subscription to any updates in the backend database. This would ensure that as soon as there is any change in the data of the charge point, the backend would immediately push that update to the app so the new data can be displayed to the end user.

There are numerous options out there to implement subscriptions, the choice of which depends both on your app's framework & platform, as well as on the backend framework.

The library that we often use at Stormotion for this purpose is Apollo Client, which both allows for very advanced type-safety (due to being a GraphQL framework) and integrates greatly with React Native on both iOS and Android .

 
 

⚙️ Tech Stack to Create an EV Charging App

Here we have tried to collect for you useful technical tools that will help in the EV charging station app development and release of your application:

1. With Firebase Cloud Messaging, you can set up push notifications in your app. You can distribute messages to specific devices and take into account the user's time zone.
2. Implementing AWS IoT Core will allow you to securely and efficiently transfer data and interact with cloud storage and other devices. All EV vehicles data (device signals, power, temperature, energy) can be stored in this cloud service. AWS IoT Core supports communication protocols over MQTT over WSS, HTTPS, and LoRaWAN.
3. Map feature: depending on the language, different app solutions should be chosen. For example, for React Native a popular library is react-native-maps
4. Subscriptions to get real-time data: SignalR, Apollo Subscriptions, etc.
5. Protocols: OCPP, OCPI, OpenADR, OSCP, etc. (depending on charge point operators’ requirements)
6. You can use the Google Maps API to integrate the geolocation service in EV station finder app. Or if you are using React Native, there are separate plugins and libraries, for example, react-native-geolocation-service, react-native-geolocation.
7. There are several options for developing support chat: using XMPP, MQTT, WebRTC and MML libraries (supported in any language) or using development tools like Firebase or WebSockets & Socket.io. But an app development company might prefer to work on top of a dedicated chat API and SDK solution. Consult with your mobile app developers about the choice of the most optimal option.

 
 

🧑‍💻 Steps to Develop an EV Charging Station App Based on Our Experience

By following these steps, you can create an EV charging station app that meets the needs of users and contributes to the growth of the electric vehicle ecosystem.

So, how to develop an EV charging station app?

EV Market Research and Planning

Determine if your target market is the owners of EVs, organizations, or the government interested in popularizing the use of EVs. Then, research your competitors.

You can analyze EV charging station apps for the following features: the functions provided, the charges involved, user experiences, and strategic placement. Discover what market niches are not served by any other application at the moment.

Define Features and Functionality

This is the conceptualization part where one has to visualize all the characteristics that the application will possess.

• Ensure the ability of users to find where these stations are on the map and information regarding their current status, their price, and what types of stations are available, such as fast charging, level 2 charging, etc.
• Ensure that users can schedule charging sessions and pay for them through the application. Use a secure method of payment to facilitate the transaction.
• Allow users to create profiles and add their favorite places, set preferences regarding the charging rate, and notifications, and view the list of transactions.

Design User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)

To create a general view of the application for electric vehicle mobile app development, focus on a user-friendly design and clear structure. This will ensure users can easily navigate the app and won't be confused between registration and payment processes.

EV App Development

Choose the right technology for your EV charging mobile app development based on the targeted platform (iOS, Android, Web), future expandability, and ease of maintenance. Design and implement on the backend all the necessary infrastructure to support the features of registering users, and managing data from charging stations, booking, and multiple payments.

Develop the portions of the UI that will run on the client side on any device and screen it is to be displayed on.

For the API integration, you can use Google Maps, OpenStreetMap for mapping, payment services like Stripe or PayPal, and any other third-party services.

App Testing

Confirm that all the functions are operational, from searching and booking charging stations to payment and transaction history. To get the best results, check how it performs under various circumstances (e.g., at high speed, on various devices).

The main goal is to collect feedback from the end users and analyze it to identify any usability problems and make adjustments if necessary.

Deployment

Finalize and package the application for publication in app stores such as Google Play Store and Apple App Store, among others, based on the guidelines laid down by the various app stores.

Launch and Marketing

Develop a marketing strategy to publicize the app through different outlets, such as social media, news articles, and collaboration with organizations that deal with EVs, emphasizing its contribution to emobility meaning and sustainable transportation solutions. Promote the application by providing consumers with special offers like free charging times or inviting friends.

Maintenance and Updates

It is important to constantly review the app and its operations in relation to performance, users’ responses, and new tendencies on the market. Continuously work on the app to add new features, fix some of the glitches, and include the changes that users are likely to suggest or that the technological enhancements offer.

 
 

🗃 Case study: DeftPower

Deftpower is a white-label EV charging app platform, that we at Stormotion helped to build an EV charging station app for. The app has most of the common features: maps with charge points, the ability to start a charging session via the app and link a way to pay for it, as well as the ability to see charging history.

The app provides a great example of clean minimalist design with a focus on the UX: