Waze will eventually integrate a must-have feature for electric cars

Waze, which is a little behind the competition in the display of charging stations, would catch up. Indeed, after temporarily offering this feature this summer, the community app will make its big comeback at the beginning of the year.

While some motorists are still wary of electric cars, it’s becoming increasingly easy to charge their cars, especially due to perceived insufficient autonomy. Indeed, if we are still far from the target of 100,000 terminals installed in France, the network is constantly improving, more and more powerful terminals like Lidl or Electra terminals and others.

New feature

In addition, there are now many apps available to help you find an outlet to charge your car. Obviously, we are thinking about Chargemap, which remains the reference in this field, but many other operators also offer their services, such as Nextcharge or Plugshare. For four years, Google Maps has also shown charging stations on its map.

And yet one company was a little behind. This is Waze waiting until 2021 to offer this service to its users. The community app, founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2013, launched the feature a year and a half ago, but only in the US.

Of course, last summer it was also possible to find a terminal to connect your electric car to the French version of the app. But only 13,000 of the 82,107 currently in existence have been listed, according to Avere-France. It was a partnership with Norauto that lasted just a few weeks in July and August to accompany the vacationers.

A small disappointment that can be compensated for fortunately. Indeed, it may be running on Waze real route planner integration, as discovered by a user in the Facebook group “Superchargeurs pour tous France (Ionity, Fastned, Electra et co …)”. This is great news in addition to the many features the app already offers.

Full service

Indeed, Waze already includes the price of fuel and tolls, as well as the ability to listen to the radio and others. But now he would be list all charging stations in the country. As the Internet user who posted the image noted, this functionality is still being integrated and therefore not yet available to everyone. Nevertheless, some stations, such as Tavel-Sud Ionian, are already visible.

So a lot of information will only be visible to users in France, which will be about 14 million. It is actually possible to see the type of sockets available, as well as their number and power. Information about the station’s working hours is also displayed location and phone number.

That’s not all, because payment methods and means of authentication (RFID tag, app or QR Code) is also listed on the charging station sheet. So far, Waze hasn’t made any official announcements about this new feature, but it shouldn’t be too long.

On the other hand, it seems that the integration of a real route planner (which takes into account the car’s consumption and its autonomy to plan charging stops) is not on the agenda yet.

Indeed, the company plans to hold a conference on February 19 dedicated to new features for electric cars. We’ll be sure to keep you posted!

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