Cariqa

How incredible would it be if a navigation platform didn't just show you where a charger is, but let you actually use it, right there, in the app? Today, 90% of them hand you off at the moment that matters. Theyve done the hard part. Theyve shown you exactly where the charger is on the map. They direct you to it. But then you get there and can’t do what you came to do. You can’t actually charge. So you have to download a different app, or pay ad-hoc at the station. Finding the charger is just one part of the picture, and I think navigation platforms in particular are missing a major opportunity here. Heres what it could look like instead: You’re navigating to your destination. You arrive, you charge, you pay. All within that same tool. You dont just see a charger, you can actually transact with it. No new app to download, no new account to register. You just pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, whatever you already use, and youre done. You get on with your day. Thats the gap most platforms havent closed yet. Showing someone a charger is only part of the journey. Letting them actually use it completes it.

TEAG Mobil was running every charger at one flat rate. €0.49 per kWh, all day, every day. But the problem with flat pricing is that it sets a pattern... When it costs the same to charge at any hour, people charge whenever suits them best. For most drivers, that's straight after work. The result was, TEAG Mobil saw a prominent spike at 17:00, right as everyone left the office. In fact, roughly 1 in 6 sessions happened in that one hour. So they tried Smart Pricing as a way to encourage charging during periods where there was typically lower demand. Smart Pricing replaced their flat rate and priced every charger within their network based on predicted demand. Idle chargers picked up a discount. Congested ones carried a premium. No manual repricing needed, Smart Pricing handled it automatically. The results: sessions up 7x, energy delivered up 6.7x, revenue up 5.5x. But the result that really interests me is the change in when drivers were choosing to charge... Before Smart Pricing, 17:00 accounted for 16% of sessions. Afterwards, that fell to 10%. The evening spike didn't disappear, but the rest of the day finally started pulling its weight. And as grid capacity gets tighter in Germany, spreading demand away from one evening peak means a lower peak draw too, with zero new hardware. Smart Pricing didn't just make TEAG Mobil's network busier. It made it busy differently. See how we work: https://lnkd.in/ewz4juef

If I give you 10 seconds, can you spot what’s wrong with this receipt? ***SPOILER*** The answer is: absolutely nothing. This is what direct payments actually looks like: 1. The CPO sets their price 2. That price is distributed across the apps and services drivers already use 3. The driver pays exactly that price, with no markups added 4. The payment goes directly to the CPO 5. The transaction settles instantly It sounds almost too obvious to be worth pointing out, but most EV charging transactions today aren't this simple... Somewhere between the CPO setting a price and the driver paying it, that number usually gets distorted, marked up or delayed by someone else in the chain. This is what it looks like when it isn't. Turns out, charging payments can be this simple.

Mer wanted to boost station utilisation across Germany and Austria. Our Smart Pricing helped them do it.

TEAG Mobil switched on Smart Pricing on 28 May. Charging sessions were 7× higher over the two months after it went live.

Mer used Smart Pricing to predict demand across their stations in Germany and Austria, automatically discounting idle ones without touching prices at busy ones. Drivers responded inside a fortnight. Two months on, sessions were still higher.