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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2025 21 By Steve Beno "Merc." If you're "into" cars like I have been my whole life, you probably think of "Merc" as an abbreviation for Mercedes- Benz. Sorry, not me. "Merc" to me means Mercury; as in a 1939 chopped and channeled Mercury coupe. I guess "my whole life" is an exaggeration. I didn't become an avid Car Craft reader till I was 11 and didn't start driving my mom's Willis Jeep stick-shift station wagon around our neighborhood till I was 12. But since then, I've been a loyal car magazine subscriber. Alas, back then there were dozens of magazines to choose from. Ten years ago, I subscribed to four monthlies. Now I get four or six issues of three each year. Which brings me to one of them — Motor Trend. (Road & Track and Car and Driver are the other two.) Motor Trend started the Car of the Year ratings in 1949, its inaugural year. Since then, the "of the Year" concept has been borrowed by many other publications and Motor Trend itself has greatly expanded the idea to include trucks, automotive personages, and, most recently, they've created the Best Tech Awards. So, I'm going to tell you about an app that I have never used, don't have on my phone, and may never need. It's true that if I were buying a new car today, it would undoubtedly be a plug-in hybrid. Plug- in hybrids are kind of a halfway point between non-electric and full-electric vehicles. Pure hybrids are like gasoline cars, SUVs, and trucks; they recharge their batteries themselves and don't need to be plugged in. Their battery-only range is short, and they need regular trips to a gas station. Pure electrics eschew gasoline and depend on regular recharging. Plug-in hybrids have an electric-only range that's beyond what many (most?) drivers need for daily use. They can also be used when their batteries are depleted and run on gasoline alone - although that defeats their purpose. But plug-in vehicles alleviate what's known as range anxiety. That's the fear common among electric- only drivers of running out of electric power before arriving at a working charging station. But since I'm not going to buy a car this year, or maybe ever again, I'm not going to have to worry about where to charge my car. That's why I don't have this app on my phone. Nevertheless, I found Motor Trend's description of this app so intriguing that I thought I'd share it with you as a brilliantly- designed smartphone app. OK, enough suspense. The name of the app is PlugShare, and anything I'm going to tell you about it comes from the 2025 Summer issue. As I mentioned, one of the concerns of an all-electric vehicle is whether they will make it to a charger before running out of juice. First, let's not overthink this concern. Most of these vehicles have a range of over 200 miles on a full charge and most can also be recharged at home. So daily local use simply causes no problems about recharging. Recharging at home is an issue in itself. If you live in a single-family home, it's easy to recharge right in your own garage. But if you are among the 40-45 percent of the population who lives in an apartment or condominium, recharging at home may be impossible. As a country, we are slowly building a charging network and will likely be evolving that network to suit more owners. Right now, public charging stations have cables that connect to the vehicle. But if you had your own cable, then all you would need is an outlet nearby; say, in a lamppost or a column in an apartment garage. But currently, if you want to take a trip in your electric car, you need to know where you can recharge and, just as importantly, if that charger is working. This is where PlugShare comes in. "It has become one of most complete and accurate public charger databases." Its "simplicity makes it easy to navigate and operate. The app's home screen is dominated by a map littered with colored dots. Green dots indicate Level 1 or 2 chargers, while orange dots are markers for Level 3 fast charging. Chargers that are off limits to the public or not operational are marked by gray dots. Clicking on the dots reveals detailed information about the charger, including its address, affiliated network, plug types, costs, hours of operation, and more. "Users can fine-tune their map with an extensive list of filters such as charging speed and networks. Among the most useful for road-trippers is the 'lodging' filter, which maps out chargers located at or near hotels." An essential reason for the accuracy of PlugShare is that it is crowdsourced. Like Gas Buddy and Waze, users provide up-to-date information about the status of charging stations throughout the country. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! Get Charged Up!

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