In the past few months, our team has been focused on building product features and capabilities that make our customer's everyday lives easier.
With over 1.000 B2B customers and 1.5M EV drivers registered on our platform, we aim to keep making our product more scalable, customisable and user-friendly. This helps our customers grow and optimise their charging operations to stay aligned with the growing EV charging market.
In this blogpost, we'll walk you through the key releases from the past quarter. If you prefer to consume your content in a video format, watch our Product Release Highlights video guide:
Product Release Highlights - What's new?
We want to empower both sides of the EV charging ecosystem: helping E-mobility Service Providers (EMSPs) deliver the best possible EV driver experiences, and enabling Charge Point Operators (CPOs) to achieve operational excellence. Let’s start with what’s new for EMSPs.
Helping EMSPs offer reliable charging experiences for EV drivers
Autocharge
Autocharge is a technology designed to simplify the EV charging experience. Even after years of development and innovation, charging an electric vehicle isn't as straightforward as it should be. EV drivers often juggle multiple charging apps, RFID tags, or have to manually input card details to start charging.
Autocharge removes that friction. As its name suggests, the authentication process is automated, so charging starts once the charging cable is plugged into the car.
How do you benefit?
Charging providers benefit in several ways. Automation makes the process seamless for EV drivers, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. The added ease also encourages more frequent charging, boosting charger utilisation for CPOs.
How does it work?
EV drivers will see Autocharge-enabled stations clearly marked in the Virta app. They must activate Autocharge the first time they charge at a specific station. After that, every charging session starts automatically.
Find out more about Autocharge in our blog!
Instant Payment
Instant Payment enables drivers to pay immediately after each session, eliminating the need for credit management. Following this payment model, drivers can enjoy a more transparent, secure, and hassle-free payment experience.
How do you benefit?
Instant Payment introduces a pay-as-you-go model, offering EV drivers more convenience and flexibility. EMSPs benefit from more revenue stability and reduced financial risks from unauthorised transactions or overdue balances.
How does it work?
Instant Payment method is automatically enabled upon registration. Payment is made in real-time at the end of each charging session, with individual receipts replacing monthly summaries. The user experience remains unchanged, as it supports all existing authentication methods — including mobile apps and RFID cards.
Supporting CPOs on their journey to operational excellence
Enhanced
self-healing
Reliability is key to running a successful EV charging network. And that means keeping chargers online and functional. While manual intervention is one way to fix charger faults and errors, there is also an automated way - self-healing. Virta's self-healing capability resolves issues in real-time, minimising the need for manual intervention.
How do you benefit?
Your drivers expect chargers to work when they need them. Self-healing maximises uptime, reduces the need for on-site technician visits, and saves both time and money by resolving common errors automatically.
How does it work?
With our latest update, manual reboots are no longer necessary. The self-healing functionality monitors the charging stations on your behalf and automatically reboots when necessary. Once a CPO activates self-healing in Virta Hub, error messages are sent from the faulted charge points and Virta Hub sends a reboot command to solve the issue.
Notes Tool
The Notes Tool is a centralised solution for keeping charger related information well documented, visible, and actionable. Easily log and manage this information for seamless communication between you and your technicians, reducing downtime and improving efficiency.
How do you benefit?
Operating a network of charging stations involves keeping track of maintenance schedules, ensuring smooth communication within your team, and preventing important updates from getting lost in scattered emails and messages. Virta Hub The Notes Tool keeps everything in one place, ensuring charger updates are visible and actionable.
How does it work?
Accessible directly in Virta Hub, the Notes Tool lets you create, edit, and filter notes with ease. Your team can collaborate in real time to ensure everyone stays informed.
One-Time Payment interface update
- Full AFIR-compliant ad hoc payment support
- Station-specific tariff visualisation
- Faster, more secure, and intuitive user experience
How do you benefit?
This update ensures more accurate pricing display, fully aligned with your configured tariff settings. It delivers a frictionless, more transparent payment process for drivers, encourages charger usage, ensures AFIR compliance, and enhances user satisfaction.
Virta APIs
Virta's set of open APIs allows you to integrate your existing systems and applications with the Virta platform, giving you access to critical data and functionalities. With APIs, you can enjoy a unified experience whether you’re a CPO or an EMP.
How do you benefit?
The goal of running EV charging operations is to grow and become profitable. But dealing with multiple systems to manage business assets, customer experience and payments might slow your growth down. Thanks to APIs, you can centralise all your processes into one system, make proper use of your data and ultimately save a lot of time and costs.
APIs also let you integrate EV charging into your own customer-facing apps and loyalty programmes for a unified experience. The offered operational efficiency and smooth user experience add to your competitive advantage and let you stay flexible and scale your operations easily.
How do Virta APIs work?
Our comprehensive suite of APIs can be divided into six key areas:
- EV driver experience
- Charging network management
- User and access management
- Data and analytics
- Pricing and payment
- Energy management and smart charging
Our onboarding process is secure and scalable, built around customer needs and industry best practices. You'll get professional support, extensive documentation, and a strong developer experience.
And that concludes our Q2 product releases. These updates, features and capabilities are all here to help our customers stay ahead in a rapidly changing industry. As the EV charging market continues to grow and evolve, we’ll keep delivering the tools and technology you need to scale efficiently, serve your users better, and stay compliant with new standards.
Want to explore how we can support your business goals? Reach out to our team!
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