The best ways to find EV charging stations

The electric car industry’s breakthrough is imminent. This technology has been around for several years now, and today there are more and more drivers planning to purchase an electric vehicle instead of a regular one. For both EV manufacturing and sales to continue to grow, drivers must find EV charging stations close to where they are. Always.

The expanding phenomenon of electric vehicles is not only seen in the United States: numerous countries in Europe have invested in building more public EV charging stations. In America, President Joe Biden has put on the agenda the issue of encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles. The idea is to reduce the pollution generated by drivers and, therefore, to take care of the environment. For that to happen, the installation of EV chargers will continue and to find EV charging stations will become easier.

How do electric vehicle chargers work?

Every driver knows the existing types of gasoline. They’re not necessarily oil and gas experts, but they usually understand which is the most suitable for their vehicle. In that regard, it’s important for a person who’s thinking about purchasing an electric vehicle to understand what types of chargers exist and what the distinctions are between them.

So, before we get into the existing EV charger apps, how to find EV charging stations, and examples of how they work, it’s relevant to have more information on the existing chargers.

The first thing to understand is that electric vehicle chargers are divided into levels. Those refer to how fast that charger can recharge the battery of a conventional EV.

There are three on the market: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 (DCFC). In order to understand how they work, you can think of your bathtub and an Olympic swimming pool: you wouldn’t use the same device to fill up both, right?

The EV charging apps, to which we’ll refer a few paragraphs ahead, will allow you to search for the different types of chargers depending on the need you have. That will depend mostly on the type of electric vehicle you have and what technology it uses. Let’s get to the chargers already:

• Level 1. This charger is commonly included when purchasing an EV. It can be plugged into any household socket and takes approximately 24 hours to recharge the battery of, for example, a conventional electric car.

It works if you want to plug in your EV and get it charged overnight.

• Level 2. It can also be easily connected but requires a slightly larger infrastructure. However, many drivers choose to install this charger at home because it can fully charge the battery of a regular electric vehicle in less than 8 hours.

These are the EV chargers most commonly found in public charging stations.

• Level 3 (DCFC). They use another type of technology called Direct Current (DC). That makes them charge an electric battery vastly faster than the L1 and L2. It can recharge it to 80% in less than 60 minutes.

As the infrastructure is huge and has many requirements, these chargers are 100% reserved for public EV charging stations.

Wait a minute, are there EV charger apps?

The growing popularity of electric vehicles has led several companies to look for ways to innovate and make life easier for drivers. So, if you are wondering “where can i find charging stations near me?” get to know that many of them have created apps that allow drivers to find EV chargers near them quickly.

There are free apps that show a map with a variety of chargers. Other apps, such as the one created by EVCS, lets drivers see which chargers are the closest. Also, it allows them to enter different payment methods that the app remembers.

Using EV charging apps often makes the experience of finding a charger and recharging the EV battery a pleasant one.

As the network of EV chargers will continue to expand, we’ll shortly find hundreds of chargers close to every driver. Cheers for that!