Today I submitted a new idea in Waze’s suggestion box. I love this product, and I hope they’ll pick up at least some of my ideas. Here’s my suggestion, just in case they prefer directly deleting it (for example, for breaking a “community guideline” or whatnot 🙂 )
If you would like to have that implemented, please go to the suggestion and boost it as “Important” or “Critical”. Thank you in advance!
Dear Wazers,
I have been using your product far before “the Google times.” When I first downloaded Waze, the road to my home was not “Wazed-paved” yet, so I had to pave it myself :). Anyway, that’s not what I’m writing you about. I want to extend a request to you through a few user stories, which would significantly enhance my electromobility driving experience. I hope you’re already thinking in that direction, and we’ll see enhancements for BEV (battery-electric vehicles) soon.
There’re plenty of elecromobile-specific apps, but Waze is my current choice for a guidance app. As such, I am suffering because I need to switch back/forth from Waze to another app when it comes time to plan a long drive.
If you would like to enhance our experience with Waze easily, you could partner with the two most powerful solutions, PlugShare and abetterrouteplanner.com (of course, if they agree). But I think you’re big enough to believe in enhancing your app by yourself and giving us the functionality to fulfill our e-mobility needs.
I took the liberty to draft a few user stories, which I can find very useful. Although all of them will give excellent functionality to Waze, the first one is the most important, which would position Waze as the first massively used navigation software which incorporates proper functionality for e-mobility. I hope you have plans to win this market even better.
In any case, here’re the stories. Each story has a justification/overview to it.
As a user, I need to see charging stations on the map so that I can plan my travel accordingly
This one is the “mother of all e-mobility” stories. Of course, it’s so big that it’s easily epic, but shortly said, we, the users, need a way to see the charging stations on the map.
The distinguished properties of each charger on the map should be like those below:
name: "Awesome charger" # The name of the charging station, user free-form
owner: "EVPoint" # the charging station owner
description: "Please use our apps, available at our home page https://evpoint.bg/, to activate the charger."
max-power: 150 # the maximum power, in kW, of the whole station. Sometimes people use only this parameter to judge the power delivery speed, but often it's necessary to have granulation per socket.
connectors: # Lists all charging connectors available at the station. This is a good reference for it: https://evcharging.enelx.com/resources/blog/552-ev-charging-connector-types
- CCS2: # CCS2 charging connectors at the station
- count: 2 # two CCS2 charging connectors
- max-power: 75 # 75 kW max power each
- CHADEMO: # Chademo connectors at the station
- count: 1 # one Chademo connector
- max-power: 50 # 50 kW max power The description might seem optional, but without it we will need a place to know the URL from which we will access the charging app. Usually, most of the manufacturers have their specific apps. So any particular data on how to access the station services is put in this field.
A very important part of this functionality is the filters. When a BEV travels a long distance, we usually use the fact DC-chargers. These give us a charge for approx 100-150 miles (150-250 km) in 10-20 minutes. Most of these chargers are located near (or directly as part of) existing gas stations.
As part of an MVP, I would accept the first four fields, with the ability to filter by max-power. However, an “MVP-2” stage with the connectors property, and the ability to filter by their type, will be a must since not all cars support all connectors. For example, a TESLA might have its own connector only, and my car has only CCS2 for DC charging.
As a user, I would like to enter my BEV range so that Waze helps me plan longer rides
This is a must if I could use Waze as my assistant for BEV travels. My vehicle has a range (let’s simplify this for now – just a number of km or miles in my account).
Based on this range, Waze could show me in a friendly way, directly over my travel map, where my coverage ends. Then I can zoom in, choose a suitable charging station, and plan my ride accordingly (see below). For this, Waze has to have support for more than one Stops (I think right now you allow only one stop, but even this would do, for an MVP, it’s more than OK).
As a user, I need better support for community-driven charging station data and status
The community feedback is critical since the map is not yet saturated with chargers. Thus, having the ability to rate/comment on each charging station is a functionality that I use very often. When I plan my trip, I usually avoid chargers, where the community says “broken.” And when a charger comes back online, the community is very fast to indicate this.
The best way to leave feedback is to indicate if any user had a successful charging session. A simple Yes/No would do. The system can then calculate an overall rating per charger and display it in a Rating section. The written feedback from each user can also be displayed there (if there’s such a given with the “Charge-successful/unsuccessful” rate).