Inside TomTom’s expanded EV suite: A smarter way of bringing accurate range to drivers

Electric vehicles are moving into the mainstream, but making electric driving feel effortless remains a work in progress. For carmakers and mobility providers, the challenge is evolving from driving adoption into making every journey simpler, from planning a route to finding a charger — while bringing these experiences to market faster. TomTom’s newly announced EV capabilities promise to take on both sides of that challenge.

As EV adoption grows, so does the competition to deliver a better electric driving experience. Carmakers need to bring new vehicles and services to market faster, while giving drivers an experience they can trust from the moment they start planning a journey to the moment they charge. Accurate range prediction is key to delivering that experience. It forms the base of EV route planning, determines charging stops and helps drivers understand how much battery they will have when they arrive. It is also remarkably difficult to get right. And inaccurate predictions can cause drivers’ trust in their navigation system to disappear quickly. An EV’s energy consumption depends on several variables. Some are relatively static, such as vehicle dimensions, curb weight, battery capacity and drivetrain. Others change constantly, including traffic, road gradient, temperature, wind, vehicle load, auxiliary power use and driving behavior. Traditionally, building the vehicle consumption model has been another challenge for carmakers and integrators. With TomTom’s previous approach, customers supplied detailed consumption curves and efficiencies for their vehicles. Producing and sharing those parameters could require significant engineering work for every new vehicle model or variant. Now, TomTom is simplifying that process with self-service vehicle registration and an AI-powered consumption model.

Vehicle onboarding in minutes, not months

Through Electric Vehicle Management in MyTomTom, carmakers can register a new battery-electric vehicle variant using simply its specifications such as the brand and model, vehicle dimensions and curb weight, maximum speed, charging connectors, etc.