EV charging pioneer Zapmap expands into Europe

Published by

Peter Davison

Zapmap has started mapping charge points in mainland Europe

Bristol-based EV charging location app Zapmap is expanding into mainland Europe.

Electric car drivers travelling to Europe can now use Zapmap's app and desktop map to search and filter for certain charge points in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg to help UK drivers charge their electric vehicles quickly and easily while travelling.

These charge points have a power rating of 60kW or more, offering a variety of payment options.

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Zapmap will offer displays at 15,000 charging locations in mainland Europe - marking a 50 per cent increase in its overall number of charging locations for its 700,000 customers.

The company said the move marks a key milestone in the Zapmap plan and forms part of its ambitious growth strategy to help serve close to 20 per cent of Zapmap users that travel abroad, with the past year seeing a 28 per cent increase in people travelling to Europe in their EV.

Zapmap already offers its services to over 95 per cent of the UK's public points on its network, more than 70 per cent of which show live availability data. In 2023 Zapmap has recorded an increase of more than 50 per cent in registered users.

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The coming months will also see Zapmap open up additional features such as EV route planning and charging payments for drivers in France, Germany and Benelux, in line with its comprehensive offering for drivers in the UK and Ireland.

The company also has plans to add charge points and more charging networks in further European countries, such as Spain, Switzerland, Austria and Italy in 2024. This is in line with Zapmap's expansion plans as outlined during its Series A fundraising in September 2022.

Nigel Pocklington, CEO of Zapmap's owner, Chippenham-based renewable energy supplier Good Energy, and chairman of the tech firm, said: "Zapmap has made significant progress over the last year as it continues to broaden and deepen its market presence in the UK and now across Europe.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.