Finding the right place to fill up on alternative fuels might be as close as your iPhone. The Energy Department’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed a new, free mobile application for DOE’s Clean Cities program that helps users find a place to top off their tanks, whether it’s electricity, natural gas, biodiesel, e85 Ethanol, propane or hydrogen.
The Alternative Fueling Station Locator App, now available through Apple’s App Store, allows iPhone users to select an alternative fuel and find the 20 closest stations within a 30-mile radius. Users can view the locations on a map or as a list containing station addresses, phone numbers and hours of operation.
“If you drive an electric vehicle, for example, you can now use your iPhone to easily identify, contact and navigate to the charging station that is most convenient to you,” NREL Project Manager Trish Cozart said. “Generally, people don’t search for a station while they are sitting at a computer; they need this information while they are out and about, which makes a mobile application the ideal means to deliver it.”
“The number of alternative fuel vehicles on the road has been increasing steadily over the last two decades,” Cozart said. “Drivers and fleets have an unprecedented array of options to cut or eliminate petroleum use, and this new app serves as one more tool to make that easier.”
The app draws information from Clean Cities’ Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC), which contains a database of information for more than 15,000 alternative fueling stations throughout the country.