Charging Station App/Integrated Information

[nozferatu]

Does the Spark EV have the capability onboard to list or tell you where the closest charging stations are by map view or some app on board or on the phone? I know the Fiat 500E does have that but I'm curious if anyone has or knows of that feature for the Spark?

Cheers!

 

[cwerdna]

If you have a smartphone, you're probably better off using http://www.plugshare.com/ (via their app).

 

[nozferatu]

Oh you mean Plugshare app on my phone? What do you think of the Bringgo on the Spark? Have you used it?

 

[Nashco]

PlugShare on your phone is the way to go. Constant updates, crowd sourced info, great support. The car doesn't have any useful station locator that is anywhere near competitive, same as all other plug in cars as far as I can tell.

Bringgo sucks. I tried it last week and was extremely disappointed. My iphone is a far superior GPS. I still can't get the OnStar RemoteLink Nav feature to work either. It's a shame, I was hoping to really embrace the phone Nav on car display thing.

Bryce

 

[Oberon]

Bringgo sucks. I tried it last week and was extremely disappointed. My iphone is a far superior GPS.

Can you elaborate on "sucks" a bit? I'm tempted to try Bringgo because it would be nice to have nav on the panel instead of fumbling around for the phone. What is wrong with it?

 

[cwerdna]

PlugShare on your phone is the way to go. Constant updates, crowd sourced info, great support. The car doesn't have any useful station locator that is anywhere near competitive, same as all other plug in cars as far as I can tell.

As for other plug-in cars, I can safely say that Carwings on Nissan Leafs for station info sucks as well. UI is very clunky, info is insufficient, and sometimes the info is outdated (incorrect # of stations/J1772 handles, stations that don't exist, etc.) And, to submit corrections is a pain in the butt. IIRC, you had to do it at one of Navteq's pages and it was so unintuitive, I gave up.

Agree about Plugshare on a smartphone.

 

[Nashco]

Bringgo sucks. I tried it last week and was extremely disappointed. My iphone is a far superior GPS.

Can you elaborate on "sucks" a bit? I'm tempted to try Bringgo because it would be nice to have nav on the panel instead of fumbling around for the phone. What is wrong with it?

It costs 99 cents for a 30 day trial for the iOS version, feel free to try it yourself.

Bryce

 

[Sparkyv]

Bringgo ??? I was told that you have to buy the $49 or $59 app to get the GPS to work on your center console display so I bought the app. Now I had read that a lot of people did not like the app. Well really it was being said that it "sucks". I think it works fine. I installed the app on my iPhone 5, plugged in the USB cord in the car and sync'd it up. Works fine. Nice display. Good routing. A little unintuitive but useful. And I don't have to worry about getting a ticket for using my iPhone while driving.