Modern electric vehicles (EVs) are computers on wheels (anyone interested in research on this is welcome to contact me), e.g., they provide in their navigation system (live) data concerning EV chargers (location, power and plug type such as AC vs. DC, availability such as busy or not). Concerning Icelandic charging stations, these data bases need to be improved. My experience is that this EV charging station data displayed in the cars comes from the big map providers (i.e. TomTom and Here), but not from their maps, but from some extra data base. For example, TomTom has -- in addition to their map data -- a data base for EV services (it seems that Here does not have such an EV-specific service and even if your car has map data from Here, the EV services probably come from TomTom).

(Having as many DC chargers as possible known to the car is needed to make the car pre-heat the battery before charging, as in case of Kia/Hyundai, this requires the charger to be known to the car.)

The Icelandic Ísorka charging operator is using the Virta infrastructure and Virta is collaborating with TomTom and therefore, their stations are pretty complete and provide dynamic live data concerning availability in my TomTom-based car. But the data for the Icelandic Orka náttúrunnar (ON) chargers are often outdated (e.g. assuming everywhere only a 50 kW DC fast charger where ON nowadays has 150 kW or even 225 kW fast chargers) or in the worst case simply lacking on the map or do not exist anymore (e.g. the fast charger in Kirkjubæjarklaustur used to be operated by ON in the past and is therefore still listed in TomTom's EV service data base, even though it is now operated by N1 -- I anyway have the feeling that N1 chargers are not in the data base). Also, some ON stations (e.g. the two DC chargers on the two sides of Miklabraut at Kringlan) are listed as Charge and Drive and others as Orka náttúrunnar.

(If all these names of the Icelandic charging operators confuse you, please have a look at my overview on the Icelandic EV charging infrastructure operators.)

I was wondering how I can improve this. I reported electric vehicle charging POIs to the TomTom Mapshare tool. And indeed, it seems that after a couple of days, my reported POIs have been added to the map: at least in Viðigerði, I reported the missing ON charger and the N1 petrol station that has been moved. And now, these POIs are in the TomTom online map and my car displays it on the map (even though, I did not install manually a map update in my car). This means, my care got this updated information using TomTom's EV service data base that it accesses online. TomTom was really fast in adding the charger at Hof in Akureyri that I reported; both are now on the TomTom online map and in TomTom's EV service data base.

Obviously, my car uses another source for charging stations than the map data (but POI reporting on the map helped to get charging stations also into the EV service data vase). Another evidence for this is that while my car knows the (so far only) 350 kW HPC charger in Iceland as Porsche dealer, the TomTom Mapshare tool does not even display this charger as POI.

TomTom has this extra EV service's API that provides exactly this kind of data (but it does not mention how to get data into that system: bug POI reporting on the map helped to get a charger into that data base, however the power information is lacking). Also, my car displays live data for Ísorka stations (some listed as Virta, some as Ísorka -- so there is also some chaos there), but not for ON. This is all evidence that charging station information does not come from the TomTom map itself, but via their EV services that provide, e.g. static information (the example response contains charger locations, plug type, etc. -- this is information that is not on the map, but that is nevertheless listed by my car) and dynamic real-time (availability) information.

So, very likely even without any map updates installed in your car, just getting updates into this static EV services data is already enough to let a car know about charging stations.

I have asked ON to contact TomTom to get more up-to-date static ON charging station data (e.g. correct info on max. charging power) into the TomTom EV services (and preferably also the dynamic live data on availability). And ON answered me that they are working on it.

Update 25.4.2023ON kept me up-to-date: they partnered with some company to make real-time data available and Google maps lists now real-time data for ON (if you let Google maps display EV charging station). Later, the data should also be available via TomTom EV services.

Update 21.6.2023 There was new firmware for the headunit available that also has new map data. While some of the ON HPC chargers that were before listed as DC (i.e. =150 kW), I am not sure whether this comes from the map or from the live data (I forgot to check before I did the map update). But in addition to reporting updates for the chargers, I also reported updates for the map itself, i.e. changed roads, and none of them are contained in the updated map: this makes it more likely that the updates come rather from live data and not from the static map.

Update 22.10.2023 The ON charger live data on availability of chargers is now actually displayed in my car, so the information from 25.4.2023, that this info will sooner or later show up there, became reality. Currently, I have now for the same charger two entries shown in my car: one from the static map (using the Icelandic name Orka náttúrunnar) and another with availability status from the live data (using the English name "ON Power"). Currently, the information concerning DC vs. HPC is not up-to-date, i.e. the live data lists HPC chargers as DC (whereas the static map has them correctly listed as HPC).