How Drive Charge Eat works
Three steps to a planned trip, and a fair amount of work in between them. This page describes both: what you do, and what the app is doing while you wait the few seconds for a plan.
1. Tell it what you drive, and how full you are
Choose your car model once and it is remembered, along with the restaurant chains you like, the minimum number of chargers you want at a stop, and the reserve you want to keep. Before each trip you set your current charge — from the phone, or from the CarPlay screen once you are already in the car.
2. Enter a destination
Type where you are going and, if you want, the stops you need to make on the way. The app computes the route, then works out where along it you will need energy and which real places near those points can supply it.
3. Drive it
Start navigation on the phone or in CarPlay. You get turn-by-turn voice guidance, the distance to the next charging stop, the time you will arrive, and the charge you will arrive with. At the stop you see what is there to eat and how many chargers are free where that is published.
What happens in those few seconds
The route is fetched, then candidate stops along it are gathered from several open sources and merged — the same physical place often appears two or three times under different names, and the halves of a paired motorway aire must never be merged with each other. Each candidate is then checked for chargers, power and plug count, and for what there is to eat. Only then does the energy model choose the sequence of stops that gets you there with the least time lost, keeping your reserve intact.
If something changes on the road
Plans survive contact with reality badly, so the app expects it. Leave the route and it re-routes; stay off it and it re-plans the whole trip from where you are. Arrive at a stop that reports no free chargers and it warns you out loud and offers reachable alternatives ahead. Find that the projected charge on arrival has dropped below your reserve — a headwind, a climb, a heavier right foot — and it goes looking for a closer charger instead of leaving you to watch the number fall.
What you need
An iPhone on iOS 17 or later, and a subscription. CarPlay is supported but not required. A connection is needed to plan and to read live charger availability; the last computed plan and cached maps stay usable if you lose signal on the way.