The next charging stations, where drivers have none

Elise chooses where a large electric vehicle charging company builds next in Montreal. Each site costs about two hundred thousand dollars, and she picks them from spreadsheets and gut feel. Last year, two stations opened a block from a rival’s fast chargers, and sat idle. Meanwhile, busy malls in Laval had nowhere to charge. With xMap Flows, Elise built Compass. On the first of each month, across greater Montreal, Compass finds the supermarkets, gyms and shopping centres, counts the chargers within a kilometre of each one, keeps the ones with no fast charger nearby, asks how good each would be for a charging stop, keeps the best ten, and puts them on her map. This month, Compass looked at six hundred and forty places and found twenty-three with no fast charger within a kilometre. Elise takes the top ten to the board on one map. Her last three stations were busy in their first week. Elise stopped guessing where drivers will stop. Now she knows where they can’t.

The story in words