Google today announced a new feature for electric vehicle owners that uses artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of public charging stations while finding the best route. The level of technology needed to make this type of route planning functional is a clear indication of what an unholy mess EV load is in America today.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like solving a riddle (which is too polite a way to say it), with EV owners needing the right charging station find within the range that also the specific type of plug their car needs.
The new feature will only work for electric vehicles with Google’s original Android Automotive system installed as their primary operating system. Right now, the only two models with Android Automotive are the Polestar 2 and Volvo XC40 Recharge, but Google says more are on the way.
Google uses a newly developed routing algorithm that uses a type of math, called ‘graph theory’, to submit load stop recommendations to EV owners based on their location, the amount of range in their vehicle, and the type of plug their vehicles use. Google writes:
If you now enter a destination that requires two or more recharging stops, algorithms in Maps will search and filter through tens to thousands of public charging stations to find the most efficient route – all in less than ten seconds. You can see how long each charge lasts and your updated total travel time, so your final ETA will never be a mystery again.
EV charging stations in the US usually have one of two types of standards: CCS (Combined Charging System), which was first introduced in 2013; and CHAdeMO, a brand for fast loading method. Nissan and Mitsubishi use CHAdeMO, while Jaguar and BMW use CCS, for example.
Tesla has not yet offered CCS adapters for its vehicles. It does offer CHAdeMO adapters, but the charging industry seems to be moving towards the CCS standard. However, it is still slow. According to the US database of Alternative Fuels Data Center, there are even more places to load CHAdeMO vehicles quickly than those with CCS.
Google Maps recently added a new feature that allows you to search for charging stations for electric cars based on the type of plug they offer. But this feature uses more data about your range and plug type to extract some of the guesswork from the route planning.
The new algorithmic route planning will also work on shorter journeys and will soon include details on payment methods accepted for European customers at the individual charging stations.
EV charging in the US is a bit patchy, with companies like EVgo, Electrify America (owned by Volkswagen) and ChargePoint all offering different levels of voltage and power compatibility. Some stations are more functional than others, and there is a general lack of real-time information for EV owners about which stations are in service and which are not.
President Joe Biden wants to throw the weight of the federal government behind improving the charging infrastructure in the US. He has promised to spend billions of dollars to add 550,000 EV charging stations in the US during his tenure.