New EVSE maps website http://electric.carstations.com

[ranchleaf]

Also here is why I am so excited about the carstations site. It can be more than just where sites are. As I mentioned before we hope to allow folks to use current technology to "check-in" at these sites, letting people know where and how long they'll be charging.

The last thing I'm going to want to do when looking for a charge is get into a "Facebook/Twitter-wanna-be" state of mind and let me friends know that I'm cooling my heels at exit 14 waiting for the car in front of me to move. Am I missing the gene that requires I regularly tweet?

Surprisingly people do like letting their friends know where they are at. However, I think the most important factor for this is knowing how long someone is going to be charging. This is the virtual dashboard piece of paper with a "I'll be back by 12:00". this way you'll at least know a station is occupied so you don't have to drive all the way into the parking garage to find it full. I'll look into a possible "anonymous" type timer option. We just don't want spam gunking it up.

[TimeHorse]

The last thing I'm going to want to do when looking for a charge is get into a "Facebook/Twitter-wanna-be" state of mind and let me friends know that I'm cooling my heels at exit 14 waiting for the car in front of me to move. Am I missing the gene that requires I regularly tweet?

Nah! Nah! Nah, man! You got it all wrong, see? You use Foursquare to update your charging location and then blog about it on Tumblr then take a picture with YFrog and post it via Brizzley. Get with the program! Twitter? So old-school!

[TRONZ]

Alot of infrastructure projects and especially public infrastructure is done on demand. Unfortunately this "management by crisis" is the source of alot of frustrations and delays.

[AndyH]

The last thing I'm going to want to do when looking for a charge is get into a "Facebook/Twitter-wanna-be" state of mind and let me friends know that I'm cooling my heels at exit 14 waiting for the car in front of me to move. Am I missing the gene that requires I regularly tweet?

Nah! Nah! Nah, man! You got it all wrong, see? You use Foursquare to update your charging location and then blog about it on Tumblr then take a picture with YFrog and post it via Brizzley. Get with the program! Twitter? So old-school!

The scary thing is that those are all real.

Fine... ...if we're going to get all William Gibson, let's dump this text stuff altogether and go to a 3D heads-up display in the car with an AI and a voice interface. Pull in EVSE locations, charger status, car telematics data, and give us a virtual appointment book.

"Leafbert, schedule a charger slot at 2pm for location A, with a 2:05 backup at location B, please. Confirm the blue car at A will be done at 1:57 and we still have 72% range remaining?"

Now it's all on the grid and I don't have to post anything to anywhere 'cause the car will do it.

[TimeHorse]

OT: But my plan is this

2011 (grumble grumble late summer grumble): Buy my first EV
2021: Buy my first self-driven car.

Thinking ahead, folks, thinking ahead! Thank you Google!

[johnr]

So far there are three websites that I know of that have decent EV charging station maps:

http://electric.carstations.com/ <-- If you're reading this, then you already know about this one
http://www.evchargermaps.com/ <-- This shows the most stations in California, but currently shows only 4 outside of the state.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/ <-- This site hosted by the US DoE seems to show the most stations nationwide. It also has some really nice features - you can search for all stations within a certain radius, or you can even enter your starting and ending addresses and see all stations along your route, plus the sidebar lists all stations and their addresses.
https://www.chargepointportal.net/index ... ation.html <-- ChargePoint Network (thanks, AndyH)

[AndyH]

So far there are three websites that I know of that have decent EV charging station maps:

http://electric.carstations.com/ <-- If you're reading this, then you already know about this one
http://www.evchargermaps.com/ <-- This shows the most stations in California, but currently shows only 4 outside of the state.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/ <-- This site hosted by the US DoE seems to show the most stations nationwide. It also has some really nice features - you can search for all stations within a certain radius, or you can even enter your starting and ending addresses and see all stations along your route, plus the sidebar lists all stations and their addresses.

http://www.mychargepoint.net/ Chargepoint Network

Ultimately, we'll need someone to pull all the different data and massage it into one database.

[ranchleaf]

So far there are three websites that I know of that have decent EV charging station maps:

http://electric.carstations.com/ <-- If you're reading this, then you already know about this one
http://www.evchargermaps.com/ <-- This shows the most stations in California, but currently shows only 4 outside of the state.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/ <-- This site hosted by the US DoE seems to show the most stations nationwide. It also has some really nice features - you can search for all stations within a certain radius, or you can even enter your starting and ending addresses and see all stations along your route, plus the sidebar lists all stations and their addresses.

Next few weeks carstations will have another couple hundred more stations added. We are attempting to pull from multiple sources into one database each day and more. There are even more stations not even on maps out there you wouldn't believe. Our mobile app guy is working as fast as possible too Also site updates are coming too, real radius search, sign up for radius updates, etc. Data is most important, so still focusing on that. I suspect your Nissan leaf NAV will have all Nissan "approved" stations like dealers, etc. Not sure yet how they are handling places like L.A. Convention Center or Toyota dealerships like the L.A Car guy, but should find out soon.

We have done loads of work looking into this. DOE site makes it seem like they have lots, but reality is new ones only seem to add up to about 122 and of those, very few are Level 2. I believe there is way more out there than that. I am trying hard to get this all sorted out. This is why crowd source sites are great. Thanks to all helping out so far!

[garygid]

The "pulling" of real-time status is what is needed eventually.

Automated "merging" of other networks is needed to create a more-nearly complte database.

Ease of use, witi filtering by type and access (eventually status) is needed to make it convenient enough to use.

[johnr]

The route mapping tools found on the DoE and Chargepoint sites are really nice. Maybe you'd want to look into a similar feature. If your site proves to be easy to use, up-to-date, and has some useful features I think it really has potential. Of course all that means nothing without a comprehensive list of stations, so I'm glad to hear you're still finding data sources to pull from. Being able to search by and differentiate the different parameters such as: types of charging connectors, speed (level 1, level 2, level 3), cost, private vs public location, whether special arrangement/subscription is required, would be useful.