The solution that tackles the risk of being stranded with a flat electric car
Range anxiety and the risk of finding yourself with a flat battery in the middle of nowhere are two of the main reasons (along with the price of zero-emission cars) still holding back the growth of the electric vehicle sector in Italy.
Today, however, we can finally talk about a new solution devised by a young Italian computer engineer to tackle these ‘fears’. It is a brand-new online platform called EViaggio.
Nicola Carlon, the founder, explains: “As I travel a lot and own an electric car, I've often found myself having to choose a hotel with charging, so as to travel with peace of mind and not stress the battery with expensive rapid charging. When choosing hotels and restaurants I always rely on the best-known websites, platforms where, however, the charging information is unclear. In particular, I noticed that many hotels that advertise an EV charging service actually mean bicycles and e-scooters (increasingly popular these days)”.
Unfortunately, there are also cases where “the hotel had listed the charging point in an adjacent public car park as its own, without being able to say what connectors it had”. These shortcomings (and many others in Italy) increasingly highlight how much a tool is missing that can point out hotels and restaurants verified by users and suitable for charging electric cars.
Carlon explained: “Among the many apps for finding charging points, there was nothing dedicated exclusively to destination chargers, where owners could also claim their property, update the information and reply to reviews. And so EViaggio was born, a platform that lets you add destinations and fill in a series of fields useful to those travelling electric such as the connector type, the power output, whether the service is free or not and compatibility with cars of the various makes”.
On the EViaggio platform you can also add links to other hotel and restaurant portals, so that users can read reviews of that particular place (including from people who don't own electric cars, who are undoubtedly still the majority today). On EViaggio, managers of accommodation or restaurants can take over their page on the site, update the information and reply to reviews.
Nicola Carlon is keen to stress that the service offered is free for everyone, users and owners alike. This is because the founder himself created it with a single goal: not profit, but to help and to build a real community.
[Source] “Hotels with car charging: there's a website that tells you which ones”, in Virgilio Motori, 21 May 2021, https://motori.virgilio.it/notizie/alberghi-ricarica-auto-sito-web/162104/
