The worst part of EV driving isn't range — it's arriving at a charger that's broken or blocked. Here's how to stack the odds in your favour.
Match the connector before anything else
A working charger you can't plug into is no better than a broken one. Filter the map by your connector — CCS, CHAdeMO, Type 2 or Tesla/NACS — so every charger you see is one your car can actually use. This single step removes most wasted stops.
Check the power rating against your need
A charger's kW rating decides how long you'll sit there. A 150 kW DC unit is a coffee stop; a 7 kW AC unit is an overnight. If you're mid-trip and need a quick top-up, filter out the slow AC chargers so you don't commit to an hour you don't have.
Read recent status and reports
Hardware fails, and it fails silently. The most useful signal is a recent driver report: "charged fine at 130 kW, 10 min ago" is gold. Where a network exposes live port status, Refuelia shows whether a port is free, in use or down. Combine both — a recent human confirmation plus a live "available" — and you're rarely disappointed.
Always know your next-nearest option. Even a perfect charger can be occupied when you arrive. Before you commit, note the second-closest working charger so a queue doesn't become a crisis.
Avoid the classic dead ends
- Single-charger sites. One unit means one point of failure. Prefer sites with several ports.
- Chargers with no recent reports. Silence isn't good news — it just means nobody has confirmed it lately.
- ICE-blocked bays. Common at retail car parks; a recent report will often mention it.
Leave a report when you're done
EV charging data goes stale fast. Thirty seconds to confirm the charger worked — or flag that it didn't — saves the next driver a detour. That reciprocity is the whole point of a driver-updated map.
Ready to use it? Open the live map to find real stations and chargers near you, check their current status, and add what you see for the next driver.