With MOBIX Park & Charge, you can unlock your electric vehicle’s (EV’s) full potential by tapping into an expansive and innovative network of privately owned charging points. This system addresses one of the most significant barriers to widespread EV adoption: reliable and accessible charging infrastructure. It reimagines how EV drivers can power their vehicles by integrating private chargers into a shared, community-driven ecosystem.
What?
The core idea behind MOBIX Park & Charge is to supplement the often-limited public EV charging infrastructure with a decentralized network of private charging stations. Public chargers, while essential, are frequently insufficient in number, unevenly distributed, and can be subject to long wait times or maintenance issues. By contrast, private charging points – typically installed at homes, workplaces, or other personal properties – represent an untapped resource that vastly outnumbers public stations. This approach can significantly expand the total charging capacity available to EV drivers, reducing the anxiety associated with finding an available charger, often referred to as “range anxiety”.
Why?
Through MOBIX Park & Charge, EV owners gain access to this network via a user-friendly app, which allows them to locate, reserve, and utilize privately owned chargers. This increases convenience and maximizes the existing infrastructure’s utility without costly and time-consuming public installations. For instance, the system enables seamless booking and payment processes, often powered by advanced technologies like AI agents (as developed in collaboration with Fetch.ai), ensuring a smooth experience for both charging station providers and users. This peer-to-peer model empowers individuals to share their chargers when not in use, turning a private asset into a public benefit while potentially generating income for the owners.
How to find, reserve, use, and pay for a private charging point
This step-by-step guide will show you how easy it is to find, book, use, and pay for a private charging point with the MOBIX Park & Charge feature inside the MOBIX App. All screenshots have been taken from a test version of the MOBIX app – images and numbers may differ from the ones in the upcoming live version.
Open the MOBIX app and browse the map for available charging points. MOBIX lets you find public and private charging points. Private charging points are recognizable through the droplet icon, while public chargers are shown as circles.
Tapping on the droplet provides more details about the charging point, such as the offered plug type and the hourly price. If you are happy with the conditions (all numbers/prices may differ from the upcoming live version), you can select your preferred arrival time and the duration you want to charge before booking the station. Compared to other EV charging station apps, which only display public charging stations, private charging stations can be booked in MOBIX so that they are still available when you arrive at your destination as a driver.
During booking, you can select your preferred payment option. The app lets you pay with either PayPal (FIAT) or $MOBX (crypto). If you are new to MOBIX, take a look at our news section: if you ride a bike, eBike, scooter, or if you go for a run, you can collect MOBIX Miles, which you can swap for MOBIX tokens ($MOBX) every MOBIX Monday. Alternatively, you can buy $MOBX on the MEXC crypto exchange.
When you arrive at the charging point, you only need to scan the QR code provided by the owner, plug in the charging cable, and start charging. Exchanging QR codes makes the booking process transparent and secure.
While charging, the app keeps track of the remaining time of your session. To end the session, tap the finish charging button, review the payment summary, and scan the QR code provided by the owner to pay using your selected payment method. In this MOBIX version, the consumer and the provider must meet to start and end the charging session. In future versions, there will be additional options to start and end charging sessions remotely.
After completion, you can rate the charging point’s owner and leave an optional message.
That’s it! That’s all it takes to find, book, use, and pay for a private charging point with MOBIX Park & Charge. The scenario shown here is ideal. However, imponderables can occur in traffic, such as delays or misunderstandings between the person making the booking and the charging station owner. To counter these uncertainties, the first version of MOBIX Park & Charge includes a chat function allowing users and providers to communicate. The plan is for Fetch.ai agents to take over these tasks in future versions, i.e., to recognize delays and make appropriate adjustments to the booking automatically. For now, the MOBIX team has confidence in the community to communicate via chat in case of a problem.
Stay tuned for more information as we approach the official launch. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on it!