TomTom

The ask

TomTom has a whole range of EV technology. There's EV routing and navigation. There's the free TomTom app, formerly AmiGO, which finds charging points and the like. And there's IndiGO, the open digital cockpit for carmakers, which computes range estimates and pre-conditions the battery for a faster charge.

The company was looking for an electric mobility expert to write a comprehensive beginner's guide to electric vehicles: the basics of what an EV is and the background people need first, the reasons to get one, how charging works, and the things to weigh up before buying.

What I did

I took the brief and built it into a full outline, then split the guide into seven sections so someone starting from nothing could read straight through.

Then the research. The finished guide cites more than 90 sources, from the US Department of Energy, BloombergNEF, MIT’s Energy Initiative and the European Court of Auditors through to the motoring and consumer press. It’s densely sourced: nearly every range figure, charging cost and subsidy sits on a citation you can click.

I wrote it section by section and handed each one over as I finished, so TomTom could review while I kept writing the next. Charging is the section I went deepest on: how home and public charging differ, what the connector types mean, what a long motorway trip really involves.

Two feedback rounds got the draft final. Then it went to their design and web team, who built it onto the site. The guide was also rolled out across its regional sites and translated for local markets.

The project took around six weeks, start to finish.

Read the full guide