In the perspective of responsible, sustainable tech and digital services, Plug Inn is the “patient zero” for a carbon case: though it is still under review, and will evolve when we will have access to more data, we believe Plug Inn to be the perfect study case. The idea is to assess what in terms of emissions the software produces vs the carbon emissions that the service helps and will help avoid in the future. Through constant scrutiny of the data, we can assess, test our hypotheses and make projections.

By 2022, there were 1 million electric cars in France, but the infrastructure couldn’t keep up and there were only 80.000 charging stations available. That meant that driving long distances was still a problem for electric car owners, especially when driving through remote places where there were zero charging stations. This generated range anxiety and made the switch from thermic to electric more difficult. The challenge for Renault was to find a solution that would make the charging network grow fast, without having to deal with the constraints and bureaucracy of building public charging stations, while still making it available to everyone.

The carbon case is resting on the Net Zero Initiative Methods. 6 main levers of change were identified, facilitated by the Plug Inn service. As of now, only one has been fully explored for projections: Plug Inn as an accelerator of the switch from hybrid to all electric vehicles by reducing range anxiety. It is too early now to be able to get accurate measurements from the app but the first evaluations (still at the stage of hypotheses) showed that the service could help avoid 30,000t of CO2, vs a total carbon footprint of 50t of CO2 for the period 2023-2030

Our solution comes from a data-driven insight: there are only 80 000 public charging stations for more than a million of electric drivers. While waiting for the public network to grow up (400 000 charging stations in 2030), we needed to bring a solution to the electric drivers especially off the main roads. Our main objective is to quickly offer to this audience a national charging stations network by creating a community concerned and sensitive to the electric boundaries. And our second objective is to allow people to monetize their charging stations and to try to make money with it, in a context of a decreasing purchasing power.

1M electric cars in France but only 80K public charging spots. A problem when you’re the leader in electric vehicle. But a problem that becomes an opportunity when we know that there are over 700 000 private home charging spots just waiting to be made available for everyone.

A pre-launch campaign allowed us to collect data to identify the areas in need of charging spots. Being all of them remote areas, we thought of an app that would not only provide drivers with the possibility of re-charging anywhere, but also give the locals a space to show what their town had to offer by suggesting local shops, restaurants, and other attractions. Right on the app and while turning their electricity into money.

The Plug Inn app is by design customer centric. Through analytics, tagging plan, satisfaction measurement and continuous testing, the experience is iterated on in order to fit customers expectation. Additionally, Plug Inn will target users in regions where there is a low density of charging points, as it doesn’t aim to compete with publics ones, but provide a service where there is none. Finally, Plug Inn is currently under review for a carbon case to assess its potential impact in terms of change in behaviors of customers: it could be a lever to switch to EV and BEV, as it provides reassurance that one will always have access to a charging point.