Enhancing EV Charging Stations Through IoT Platforms and Service Applications: An Analysis of the E-Mobility App Landscape

The rapid growth of e-mobility has led to an increased demand for charging infrastructure, requiring innovative solutions to optimize and adapt the existing charging infrastructure. The current charging infrastructure faces challenges such as limited availability, insufficient charging capacity, and inflexibility when using renewable energy sources for mobility. To overcome these challenges, an Internet of Things (loT) platform with intelligent service applications is expected to enable an adaptive charging infrastructure for efficient and sustainable resource use. As the attractiveness of the platform depends on the relevant service applications for users, which are the basis for an efficient, flexible, and user-friendly charging infrastructure, this research aims to identify and specify the digital affordances of the existing e-mobility applications in the Apple App Store. Based on a qualitative analysis of application descriptions, this study identifies several digital affordances that are beneficial for the seamless integration of charging stations into the loT platform with a service store. This finding advances our understanding of which affordances should be promoted by an loT platform provider at the application level. The study results help loT platform providers in the e-mobility context identify the relevant service application providers and convince them to migrate their applications so that the user base of e-mobilists can also migrate. Furthermore, this paper lays the groundwork for the development and implementation of an loT platform with service applications for charging stations, which can be utilized independently from the major mobile app store providers, thereby contributing to the advancement of e-mobility and the sovereignty of the charging infrastructure.