How charging stops are chosen

Two things decide where you stop: how fast your car can actually take charge at a given state of charge, and whether the charger will be working when you arrive. The second one is the reason our plans sometimes look different to everyone else’s.

Charging is not linear

An EV charges quickly when nearly empty and slowly when nearly full. A car that pulls 150 kW at 20% might manage 70 kW at 70% and barely 30 kW at 90%. The battery is protecting itself, and no charger can talk it out of that.

The practical consequence: the last 20% of a charge often takes as long as the first 60%. So charging to full is almost always the slow way to travel, and two short stops usually beat one long one even after the extra time getting on and off the motorway.

We model your car’s own charging curve rather than assuming a flat rate, which is why the predicted times are usually shorter than a simple “battery divided by charger speed” sum — and occasionally longer, when a plan would otherwise push you into the slow part of the curve.

Reliability comes first by default

A 350 kW charger that is broken is slower than a 50 kW one that works. That sounds obvious written down, and it is routinely ignored by planners that sort by power.

We read operators’ own live feeds every few minutes and keep a history of how each site actually behaves — how often units are out of service, how busy they get at that hour on that day of the week. Most reliable weighs that history first and power second, so you get sent to places that tend to work.

It is the default because it is what most people actually want, even when they think they want the fastest. Arriving at a bank of four dead units costs far more time than a slower charger ever would.

The other two options

Fastest optimises for total journey time, favouring high-power sites and accepting more risk that one is occupied or faulty. Worth it when you are against the clock and the route is well served.

Cheapest optimises for cost per kWh, including any connection fee. It will happily send you to a slower charger to save money, so expect a longer stop.

One thing worth knowing: not every operator publishes pricing. A charger with no price information is ranked below one with a known price rather than being treated as free — an unknown price is a risk, not a bargain.

How many stops you get

Free plans allow up to three charging stops per journey, Premium five, Pro unlimited. On most journeys this makes no difference. On a very long one, more stops let the planner keep you in the fast part of the charging curve rather than sitting through the slow tail, so the trip can genuinely finish sooner.

Next: reading charger status — what the map is telling you before you commit.