British electric car charging platform Octopus Electroverse has opened for business for French, Italian and Spanish drivers.

The roaming service for charging on-the-go removes need for multiple apps. Credit: Octopus Electroverse

Electroverse launched with its simple ‘one card, one app’ concept in 2020 and the rollout marks the first time it’s been expanded for drivers living outside the UK.

Drivers based in France, Spain and Italy now also have access to over half a million public charge points across 580 brands in 40 countries. Electroverse also offers embedded features to drastically improve the charging experience for drivers, including an interactive global map showing chargers and availability, a route-planner, in-car support with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and Plug and Charge support.

They are the first countries Electroverse has expanded into for drivers outside the UK, where it now serves one in four EV drivers, and further global rollouts will follow soon.

France is one of Europe’s largest car markets and is targeting the production of two million EVs a year by 2030, backed by €2.5bn in investment. It’s also investing €300m to aid the deployment of charge points across the country.

The EV market has also supported a resurgence in the Italian car sector; EV sales are expected to reach €6.8bn by the end of the year. Spain also increased its EV sales by almost half in the first half of this year.

This is reflective of the wider EU, which saw a 60% jump in EV sales in July of this year, largely driven by favourable government support programmes and subsidies.

Matt Davies, director of Octopus Electroverse, said: “Public charging angst should never be a blocker to switching to cheaper, greener driving – Octopus Electroverse is the solution, making charging on the road as simple as possible.

“Now drivers in France, Germany and Italy will have access to hundreds of thousands of charge points with one tap. We’re on a mission to make EV charging seamless, and we’ve got big plans to roll out our tech to even more countries around the globe.”