Mobile Technology and Electrical Vehicles – A match made in heaven?

Not only are Electric Vehicles (EVs) in great demand in the UK, particularly given the recent rises in petrol prices, but there have been significant technological advances accompanying this growth. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a Tesla without the tablet style interface it uses as a dashboard. In many ways, your electric car could be seen as the natural extension of your smartphone and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

In fact, given that most of us already own a smartphone anyway, the integration of smartphone tech into our electric vehicles makes a lot of sense. But what innovations are being made and what will you need to consider if you plan on going electric in the near future?
The EV API

Administrations across the world are going above and beyond to increase the adoption of electric vehicles and one of the most profound movements has been the adoption in the US of the Smartcar API. An API (application programming interface) is used to make it easier for apps and services to communicate with your vehicle without any additional hardware. 

This can be anything from storing charge information to analytics and route planning. It’s essentially a way of bridging the gap between your phone and your car. Start planning a journey on your phone, for example, and the moment you step into your car it’ll pick up your phone and transfer the journey over to its native operating system.
Charging

Whereas charging your electric vehicle was once seen as a bit of a burden, there has been a great expansion in charging stations in recent years. If you find yourself in any supermarket, shopping mall or motorway service station then you’re bound to find a row of charging stations ready to go. Not only that, but electric cars can give you far more miles per charge now.

You can also download apps that can sync with your car’s navigation system and let you know exactly where the nearest charging point is. You can even plot a course, have alerts prompt you when you should consider finding a station and then follow the app, taking all of the stress and guesswork out of electric vehicle journeys.

Tire maintenance

There are even certain apps (some provided by the manufacturers themselves) that can help with vehicle maintenance. For example, Tesla recently added tire pressure data to its app, and it will let you know when your pressure drops to below the recommended 40 PSI.

Such apps can lead to increased tire performance and let you know when they need filling with air or changing completely. You can then buy your tires online directly from within the app and either have them delivered to your home address or to a local garage to have them fitted. We are truly living through a new golden age of automotive possibilities!