Apps for charging stations: Stiftung Warentest recommends these
Created: 04/27/2022, 10:14 am
By: Marcus Efler
Which apps help best on a long tour with the electric car?
Stiftung Warentest tried it out.
A key vendor performs surprisingly poorly.
Berlin – The big tour with the electric car is still considered an adventure.
A lot can happen on the road: from a blocked charging plug to an odyssey in the search for charging stations, the journey can hold many surprises.
To avoid the latter, almost all Stromer drivers rely on apps that display charging stations.
Apps for charging stations: Stiftung Warentest recommends these
They usually come from the network operators themselves, usually also enable charging – and ideally also show the locations of the competition.
But not all of them help equally well - this is the conclusion of the Stiftung Warentest, which tested 20 charging apps from ten providers (for iOS and Android).
And this with some effort: Two trained testers evaluated the apps in five test drives in the city, in the country, on the freeway and on country roads.
The search function, the correctness of the information, user-friendliness and data protection were evaluated.
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Apps for charging stations: "Very good" not awarded
None of the mini-programs achieved the top rating of “very good”.
After all, these apps scored
“Good” or once with “Satisfactory”
:
For Android
apartment | Notes for Android | Notes for iOS |
|---|---|---|
EnBW mobility+ | 2.2 | 2.1 |
eCharge+ | 2.5 | 2.3 |
Next charge | 2.5 | 2.2 |
Chargemap | 3.2 | 3.1 |
Ladenetz.de | 3.3 | 3.7 (sufficient) |
plug surfing | 3.4 | 3.4 |
Shell Recharge | 3.4 | 3.4 |
Maingau simple electricity charging | 3.7 (sufficient) | 3.4 |
In the test: charging apps from different providers.
(Iconic image) © Rüdiger Wölk/Imago
It is remarkable who is missing from the list of the best: Ironically, Ionity, the flagship network of the car companies BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Ford as well as the Korean providers Hyundai and Kia, only manages an "adequate" app according to the testers - and brings up the rear together with PlugShare.
The testers complained about the lack of information about the charging point from the provider of the German brands, and that it only displays its own charging options, which are mainly installed along the motorways.
