The last you heard from us was September 2025, when we went to ICNC25 in Berlin. Back then I wrote that chargEV v4 was feature-complete but not released yet, and that there were good reasons for it.

Since then: silence. For almost a year. That wasn’t by design — it was a consequence of what we were working on. Time to clear it up.

The original plan

chargEV 4.0 was meant to be a new app replacing chargEV 3. Rewritten from scratch with SwiftUI and modern frameworks, targeting iOS 17 and up. Not a renovation of the old foundation, but a new one.

That was the plan, and that part happened exactly as intended.

The point where we changed course

We had already put the key question into words before Berlin:

What’s the point of seeing a good price if the app can’t start the session—or you have to switch to a different provider on-site?

We could have shown you the price and sent you elsewhere. We didn’t want that. If we want to actually solve the problem, we have to be able to start the charging session ourselves. So we decided to become an EMP — an E-Mobility Provider — and bring charging and payment directly into the app.

The app itself was largely complete. The larger undertaking was becoming an e-mobility provider: contracts, roaming integrations, payment processing and invoicing all had to become part of a reliable service. We decided to talk about it once those pieces formed a product we could stand behind. That’s why it stayed quiet for so long.

The new name

chargEV v4 became ChargEV FleX. For us, FleX is the EMP product — charging and paying without being tied to a provider. Since that is now what sits inside the app, the app carries the name.

ChargEV FleX logo

Here’s what you get in ChargEV FleX:

  • No account, no subscription. Download the app and go.
  • Check the price first. On the map and in the station details, before you commit.
  • Pay with Apple Pay or your card. Right in the app.
  • A PDF invoice after every session. Automatically, with your billing details if you want them.

The map, the filters and the favorites you know from chargEV are all still there. It is the same app lineage, after all.

Filter and presets in the ChargEV FleX app, with a maximum energy price set

Why not an update to chargEV 3?

This is the question I expect most, so let me answer it right here.

ChargEV FleX is not an update to chargEV 3 — it is a separate app in the App Store. Two reasons:

First, it is technically a different app. The code was rewritten from the ground up and requires iOS 17. Shipping it as an update would have cut off every device that can’t get iOS 17.

Second, we did not want to force an immediate migration. Shipping ChargEV FleX as an update would have replaced chargEV 3 on existing devices. Releasing it as a separate app creates a transition period in which you can try ChargEV FleX and move when you are ready.

New development is now focused on ChargEV FleX.

And the page you’re on right now

The launch also gave us the opportunity to update ev-freaks.com. The result is cleaner, more modern, and closer to what EV Freaks stands for today.

Take a look

Everything about the new app, including screenshots and the download, is here:

ChargEV FleX app icon

Ready to just charge? Take a look at ChargEV FleX.