TomTom

The ask

TomTom has a whole range of EV technology. There’s EV-focused routing and navigation. There’s AmiGO, its free navigation app, with EV-specific features like charging point info. And there’s IndiGO, its digital cockpit platform for carmakers, which includes EV range and charging.

They were looking for an electric mobility expert to write a comprehensive EV buyer’s guide: 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:

• A lesson in EV basics

• EV battery basics

• Everything you need to know about EV charging

• Why now’s the time to get an EV

• What to consider before buying into the world of EVs

• Life with an EV

• The future of EVs

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. Two feedback rounds got the draft final. Then it went to their design and web team, who built it onto the site.

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.

The project took around six weeks, start to finish.

Read the EV Buyer’s guide here.