Athens-based Carge is a mobile app that unifies thousands of electric vehicle charging stations across Europe. Carge integrated with Smartcar to launch EV Connect, a new feature that gives Carge’s users real-time insights about their vehicle’s battery to enhance their charging experience.
The idea for Carge was born in 2020, when Eleftherios (“Lefty”) Karabatsakis took his first road trip across Europe with an electric vehicle.
To charge his EV, Lefty needed to use multiple apps to access different charging stations along his journey. And because of network exclusivities, he also had to pay a fixed deposit to each charge point operator in advance. It was a complicated, costly, and frustrating process.
“The driving experience was awesome, but I had to download and use five different apps to charge my car,” said Lefty. “I knew there had to be a better way.”
When he returned, Lefty discussed his experience with his colleague Peter Benos. Together, they decided to step down from their jobs and start building an app that could unify all charge point networks in one place. It wasn’t long before Lefty and Peter founded Carge, and embarked on their mission to become the largest electric mobility service provider in southeast Europe over the next five years.
Seamless charging across Europe
With Carge, EV drivers can find, book, and navigate to thousands of charging stations across Europe. Once there, users can manage their vehicle’s charging and seamlessly pay without extra fees — all through a single app.
“We recently heard from a user who took a road trip across Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece,” said Lefty. “He was able to charge his EV for the entire trip using just the Carge app. Otherwise, he would have had to download apps from 11 different charge point operators — without historical charging data, international billing, and of course battery-efficient route planning.”
Smartcar helps Carge enhance the charging experience
In their latest update, Carge turned to Smartcar to give users more insights about their EV batteries and to improve the overall charging experience.
All it takes is a few simple steps for users to connect their EVs to the Carge app.
As part of this process, Carge’s users grant permission to share data about their car’s battery and odometer. Once connected, the Carge app uses Smartcar’s APIs to access the battery level, charging status, and odometer from 40+ EV models in Europe.
As a result, Carge was able to quickly introduce innovative new features for their users. The Carge app can now help EV drivers monitor their battery level, designate when they prefer to stop charging, and even proactively reserve a charging station when the remaining battery range is below a certain distance.
“Building connections to different EV makes and models would have been difficult to achieve,” said Peter Benos, Co-founder of Carge. “Smartcar instantly solved that problem for us, so we could continue to deliver more value for our users.”
Carge is also using the Smartcar platform to develop proprietary algorithms for smart charging. Data from connected EV batteries allows Carge predict the best times for an EV to start charging to help balance the grid.
“Carge is a must-have app for EV travel,” said Sahas Katta, CEO of Smartcar. “We’re thrilled that our technology is helping to improve the charging experience for EV drivers in Europe.”
Currently, Carge works with over 180,000 public charge points across 16 different European countries. Before you take your next EV trip, be sure to download the Carge app for iOS or Android today!
Vehicle brands, logos, and model names belong to their respective trademark holders and do not indicate endorsement or affiliation with Smartcar or Carge.
