EV Charging Stations

You can use any of the POI searches including Fuzzy Search, Geometry Search, or Along Route Search ( see the SEARCH API reference) to find a charging point for your electric car.

The EV charging stations IDs are returned from a search query. You can use this ID for checking the real-time availability of EV connector types at the charging station using the Extended Search API – EV Charging Stations Availability endpoint. You can view charging station availability when you want to stop during the drive, or due to an event like the low level of the battery. The EV Charging Stations Availability endpoint provides information about the real-time availability of charging points based on criteria such as charging power, probability of being available, etc. The Response of EV Charging Stations Availability Request is grouped by the connector type. You can also specify the connector type in your POI searches including Fuzzy Search, Geometry Search, or Along Route Search by defining [connectorSet] to narrow the results. By doing so, the Response will only return EV charging stations for the specified connector type. Have a look at the detailed documentation about EV charging stations availability.

To use EV Charging Stations Availability, first you need to make an API call to a Search endpoint ( Fuzzy Search, Geometry Search, or Along Route Search) to retrieve UUIDs of one or n-number of charging stations, then a call to the Extended Search endpoint to retrieve the availability of these n charging stations. You use multiple API calls in this case: If you want make a Request to retrieve n charging station details, separate n Requests have to be made.

Sample use case: As an EV driver you want to see the EV POIs around a certain location (e.g.,: when approaching a destination), so you know what charging stations are available around this place.

Sample use case: You want to see upcoming EV POIs along a planned route, such that you always have a quick preview of charging possibilities that are in range, matching your vehicle and preferred energy vendor.

Sample use case: You would like to know whether the EV POI that is included on the route has any available charging spots (e.g., they are all occupied or otherwise unavailable) and would like to find an alternative EV POI.

Sample use case: You are planning to visit the area of Amsterdam. You need to find EV charging stations in the city center in Amsterdam.

Use the code snippets below to try this in your app:

First you need to make a Request to an appropriate search endpoint:

• Along Route Search

searchApi.alongRouteSearch(searchQuery) // Single<AlongRouteSearchResponse>
    .flatMap { mapFromAlongRouteResultsToChargingStationsDetails(it.results) }

• Fuzzy Search

searchApi.search(searchQuery) // Single<FuzzySearchResponse>
    .flatMap { mapFromFuzzyResultsToChargingStationsDetails(it.results) }

• Geometry Search

searchApi.geometrySearch(searchQuery) // Single<GeometrySearchResponse>
    .flatMap { mapFromGeometryResultsToChargingStationsDetails(it.results) }

After that you need to do mapping from the returned EV charging station ID’s to the actual data about them:

1return Observable.fromIterable(evSearchResults)
2    .map { it.additionalDataSources.chargingAvailabilityDataSource.get().id }
3    .map { searchApi.chargingStationsSearch(ChargingStationsSpecification(UUID.fromString(it))) }
4    .zipWith(evSearchResults) { stations, result ->
5        ChargingStationDetails(
6            result.poiName,
7            result.freeformAddress,
8            result.position,
9            stations.value().connectors
10        )
11    }
12    .toList()

Screenshots presenting how the EV charging stations availability functionality works: