I’ve used zap map since 2021, but today I decided to pay for premium, why? Because it’s saved me an absolute fortune :) Up to now I’ve used it mostly to find FREE chargers, I’ll be honest although I like the cost of free chargers, I don’t like the abuse they get so I’d be happier paying something ideally below 30p/kwh. But if it’s FREE I believe in paying the ferryman & #payitforward . So for example yesterday I had a steak you can see the pics at x.com/peoplestariff at the Swan pub just off the M5 J7 & the pub offered free charging & I found it via zap map, the pub have had to padlock the chargers due to misuse by non customers & sadly that’s what can happen with free chargers , but please go & eat there - the food is amazing I also used zap home for the first time yesterday where you rent someone’s home charger & that was a great experience Owning an EV without the benefit of home charging is challenging to say the least & zap map does an excellent job at helping you save money if you’re unable to charge cheaply at home , which is the holy grail of EV ownership I’m happy to recommend this app to everyone & glad I’m paying less than 10p per day to benefit from it’s premium service Pad.A

I’ve used Zap-Map for a long while, and in general it is my go to app for EV planning. However with a long trip over the holiday period - 950 miles over two days in a relatively short range Ioniq - I took the free trial of the Apple CarPlay integration to use over the trip because currently it was the only option with live statuses for the motorway chargers. Coming towards my first stop I opened the app and was greeted with a loading screen, which then failed to open. After restarting the app when I was stopped at the charger (I took a chance on it being available) it then came up with nearby chargers. Moving on to the next stop, due to traffic I was diverted off the motorway, but although it loaded, it didn’t list any nearby chargers. Once again stopped I was able to restart the app on the phone and it worked.Unfortunately while the app is still useful stand alone, the CarPlay integration still has issues, and until those are solved is not worth the £50 a year being asked for to get the functionality.

I've used zap map since getting an EV last year - and the big thing going for it is the number of users and reports and status integrations of charging points - you can know what to expect of a charger when you arrive. I suspect there may be charge points that have been reported faulty, and subsequently fixed - nobody has updated the app with this (since zap map users will avoid it as it's marked as faulty) - certainly I've seen that to be the case on a few occasions. But on the whole, having comprehensive data about charge points is excellent. The route planner, is okay but not super. It's a bit clunky and could do with bit of streamlining. Filtering networks is tricky - a search box or sort order selector would be handy (as they're not in alphabetical order). Also networks change branding often, feels like this hasn't been solved for as many networks are named with the old name - rather confusing! There might also be some networks missing - I noticed this when trying to create a filter for Octopus Electric Juice supported chargers. I used the CarPlay app once but didn't find it very useful. I'd rather have the ability to tap to "plan a route to this charger" with Waze or another navigation app. Or export routes (or just a list of waypoints) to another app which specialises in it to handle navigating for me. Or even have those apps to integrate with zap map to show chargers on their route plans and estimate state of charge. In any case, it's overall a good app for knowing about charge points.

I used this app as a way of checking chargers near my destination before setting off. But when I had to do a cross-country trip I decided to invest in the pro paid version so I could use the CarPlay feature, I was soon disappointed to find out it has no navigation or significantly useful features, in fact, I’d say is a safety hazard as the car play integration constantly fails.I would have loved it if it offered live navigation paired with consumption estimates and live stations status. Instead it was no more useful than an old-style paper map.I hope it’s improves as non-Tesla owners are still stuck with a disjointed network and at least 3 different apps being used in order to plan our long journeys.