MotorMartin’s been saying for quite some time now that for Electric Vehicles to be truly successful two things need to happen. The first, EVs need a far greater range than they currently have, even Tesla, say around 350-450 miles and the charging network needs to keep on expanding into the more harder to reach corners of our green and pleasant land. Don’t get me wrong, MotorMartin likes the idea of Electric cars and motorbikes, the instant torque on offer is really quite extraordinary but they need to be more practical, more ‘real life’ if you will.
So with that in mind, sitting up on the top floor of MotorMartin Towers, looking at the blinking vacuum bulbs of the news desk and pondering the very nature of motoring in the UK when the following news arrived.
With the UK EV parc currently at around 80,000 vehicles and rising rapidly, the UK’s leading EV charging platform Zap-Map passed a significant milestone in August by attracting over 40,000 users.
These figures, according to Zap-Map, cements their position as the UK’s number one EV charging platform, covering all charging networks and providing EV drivers with key charge point information. Integral with the mapping service is Zap-Chat, a real-time peer-to-peer comms channel allowing users to provide status updates and last-mile information.
To date, Zap-Map has achieved its market-lead with no external funding, the user-base growing sustainably through website, user and industry recommendations. Going forward, as the EV market develops apace, Zap-Map is entering an investment phase to improve its user experience and secure its leading position. Vital in MotorMartin’s opinion as investment will continue to allow Zap-Map to provide the EV driver with the best possible service.
To take Zap-Map through its next phase of growth, Next Green Car Ltd has set up a new company Zap Digital Ltd and has appointed two new non-executive directors to the board: Patrick Fuller who brings with him a wealth of automotive digital experience as a former group director of Haymarket Consumer Media; and Keith Johnston, an EV consultant who has worked extensively at the corporate level developing EV solutions and services.
Speaking about the future of Zap-Map and the two new appointments, Melanie Shufflebotham, director of Next Green Car Ltd explained to MotorMartin that: “We are delighted to have Patrick Fuller and Keith Johnston on board as non-exec directors; their experience and market knowledge will help form our strategy as we build new smart tools for EV drivers and B2B products to help companies deliver electric mobility solutions.”
Zap-Map will be transferred to Zap Digital where it will form one of a number of EV products within a larger Zap platform; products designed to: (1) enable EV drivers to locate, access and share info on charge points; (2) support networks to promote charge point usage; and (3) help mobility companies to assess the market and deliver their solutions.
Examples of forthcoming Zap products include: Zap-Pay, a payment and access interface allowing users to pay and access participating networks; and Zap-Insights, a survey portal which will open up an opted-in (and incentivised) Zap-Map users-base for market research.
Dr Ben Lane, founder and director of Next Green Car Ltd shared with. MotorMartin that: “We continue in our mission to get the information EV drivers need into EV drivers’ hands. Having achieved our initial objective to build smart, simple-to-use tools powered by a quality dataset, we are now focusing on extending the product range across a purpose-built Zap platform.”
To view Zap-Map on desktop and mobile web, visit: https://www.zap-map.com/live/.
For more information about the Zap-Map app, visit: https://www.zap-map.com/app/.
Well done then to Zap-Map for continuing on their journey to provide the EV driver with the means to get the information that they need.
Where will you go?