With a surge in the number of electric vehicles out in the market, charging points are obviously going to be point of great interest. Apple sought to capitalize upon this trend last year, when it started listing charging points as objects of interest in the US. However, the company is now expanding that functionality to Europe as well. The new feature will also include listings for bike rental hubs in three cities across the world.
The new features are being released in partnership with various local data aggregators. For instance, Apple got the data for the locations of the U.K. based electric vehicle charging stations from Munich’s Cirrantic’s Moovility service, which lists these points for Tesla and Nissan charging points.
Apple has been attempting to improve its mapping service for quite some while. The company recently announced a Hyderabad, India based facility to spur research in the direction. That particular facility aims to deploy as many as 4,000 people, who would all be working to improve the Cupertino giant’s mapping capabilities.
Speaking on the topic, Arne Meusel, CEO and co-founder of Cirrantic said:
We think that consistent, live information of the growing charger infrastructure increases the confidence of EV drivers and, especially with Apple Maps, attracts new user groups to sustainable mobility offerings like EV cars. In the U.K. we started with supporting the major charger operators, including Podpoint, CYC, Ecotricity, NPower and NewMotion. Any interested operator is welcome to set up a connection with us.
The UK alone has over 4,000 charging points. Apple will soon be listing well over 3,000 on its mapping service. Apple could differentiate its service from similar ones offered by Google by the simple procedure of giving the charging points and so on, more prominent and easily discover-able positions — something Google Maps fails to do at present.
