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Octopus Electroverse x Chargetrip: How a Routing Engine Change Improved Speed, Accuracy, and Driver Confidence

Newsroom

Octopus Electroverse x Chargetrip: How a Routing Engine Change Improved Speed, Accuracy, and Driver Confidence

Newsroom

Octopus Electroverse x Chargetrip: How a Routing Engine Change Improved Speed, Accuracy, and Driver Confidence

Octopus Electroverse replaced its legacy routing tool with Chargetrip's engine, moving from a slow, limited system to near-instant, vehicle-specific route planning across its network of 1.5 million public chargers in 40+ countries. The switch changed how power users engage with the app, how confidently drivers navigate abroad, and how Electroverse's licensing partners can build on top of the network.

Insights below come from Rachel Beaton, Commercial Director at Electroverse & Octopus Fleet. Rachel has over 15 years of experience across tech, spanning insurance tech, proptech, and, more recently, eMobility, with a career path across product, data, project delivery, compliance, and now commercial and financial strategy. At Octopus Fleet, she works with businesses as they electrify their fleets using Octopus Fleet's product suite.

The challenge: a functional but limited routing tool

Before Chargetrip, Octopus Electroverse already offered routing as part of its charging experience. It worked, but it was holding the product back.

"It was functional. It did what it needed to do — it got people a route from A to B with charging stops along the way," said Rachel Beaton at Octopus Electroverse. "But we were limited in terms of how we could improve upon that and build on it moving forward."

Speed was the biggest issue. The old tool was slow, and that ceiling made it hard to layer in the features Electroverse wanted to build next, like richer search and filtering for drivers.

Why Chargetrip

Electroverse evaluated routing providers on how much room they had to grow, not just what they could do on day one. Chargetrip stood out on feature depth and performance.

"Ultimately, it was the number of different features that were available — the ability to prioritize certain operators. If a customer's got a subscription with an operator, they want to be able to prioritize that.” Early testing also showed a clear performance jump: "We could see that we'd be able to build a much more performant solution than what we currently had."

A faster-than-expected integration

The technical rollout kept pace with, and even outran, the commercial side of the deal.

"It was definitely a smooth technical experience... the integration was actually almost done in the background while we were doing the contracting. It was quicker than the legal side," Beaton said.

The results

Speed drives engagement

The clearest shift since launch has been in how often power users come back to the routing feature.

"What we see is it's a bit of a tool for our power users. People who really engage with Electroverse engage with the routing tool, and they come back and use it again and again," Beaton said.

Electroverse has seen an uptick in that repeat usage since the switch to Chargetrip, something they attribute largely to the speed of our routing engine.

She described the jump from the old tool as a step change:

"It has gone from putting your requirements in and watching a little polling circle while you wait for a route to come back, to tap it, and you get it back instantly. That's huge for user engagement with the feature, and your willingness to rely on it when you're out and about."

Built-in confidence for unfamiliar journeys

Electroverse sees clear seasonal spikes in routing use around Christmas and summer road trips, when drivers are travelling to places they don't know, often abroad.

"Having that route planning tool gives them confidence that they know they can get to where they need to get to, the ability to use a route planning tool in a foreign country, where maybe they're not confident about reading signs or understanding where to find chargers, is really powerful for our end users."

Reliability backed by Electroverse's own charger data

One factor behind Electroverse's choice of Chargetrip was the ability to route using its own EVSE database, rather than a third-party one.

"We have absolute confidence that every charger that's returned, you can use your electric card there, or you can charge using the app. Drivers are always being directed based on the latest data we've got in terms of status. We can do everything in our power within the app to build data going into Chargetrip, to make sure drivers are going to reliable chargers that we know are working."

From support tickets to feature requests

There was also a change in the kind of feedback Electroverse gets on routing.

"What we're seeing now, rather than any sort of tickets on it's not working, or complaints, it's actually more suggestions of new things we could do with it. And what's really exciting is we have the capabilities to do that now."

What Chargetrip's routing engine changes for Electroverse

Chargetrip doesn't just plan a route. It shapes which chargers drivers see first, which fleets can afford to run, and which businesses can license Electroverse's network and ship a working product on day one.

What Chargetrip made possible that the old tool couldn't

Speed as a foundation, not just a feature. Drivers don't engage with a slow tool, so performance was treated as a baseline requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
CPO prioritization tied to subscriptions. Drivers with a charge point operator subscription can prioritize those stops to get more value from what they're already paying for. Electroverse's data already shows higher utilization of routes that favor a driver's subscribed partner network.
Routing for fleets, not just personal vehicles. Support for vans as well as cars was a step forward from Electroverse's previous provider, and one Octopus Electroverse doesn't believe any other vendor they evaluated offered.
A foundation for what's next. Amenity-based routing, factoring in charger reliability and performance, and load- and temperature-adjusted range calculations as capabilities still ahead. For fleets specifically, Octopus Electroverse highlighted load and temperature-adjusted range calculations as valuable for managing the trade-off between charging cost and vehicle downtime.

Where vehicle-specific accuracy matters most

Octopus Electroverse sees the value of factoring in state of charge, topography, and weather playing out differently across driver segments. Established EV drivers tend to already know their car's range. The bigger opportunity is with newer EV drivers, and even people still deciding whether to make the switch.

Looking ahead

As Octopus Electroverse continues to grow its partner ecosystem, licensing its network to other businesses building consumer-facing charging apps, Chargetrip is core to that offer. Partners who license the Electroverse network can now get charging stations and routing together, rather than sourcing routing separately, giving them a stronger out-of-the-box proposition when they build on top of the network. Octopus Electroverse considers Chargetrip a strategic partner in that growth.