Release Notes for the Alternative Fueling Station Locator

This release is a major redesign of the Alternative Fueling Station Locator to better support the growing volume and complexity of alternative fueling and EV charging station data. As the most-used tool on the Alternative Fuels Data Center—receiving about 4.5 million pageviews and 32,000 data downloads each year—this update is intended to help users find stations more quickly, interpret results more easily, and share data more effectively.

Key enhancements in the redesigned Station Locator include a more modern, mobile-friendly interface; improved map visualization to better handle overlapping stations as station density increases; and performance improvements that enable quicker searching and filtering. The update also adds new ways to explore and use the data, including historical station views and additional geographic filters.

Highlights of this release include:

• Streamlined, unified filters to support faster, more intuitive searches
• Improved visualization of overlapping stations to better represent dense infrastructure areas
• New geographic filters for city and county to enable more targeted results
• Historical station views to help track infrastructure and market trends over time
• Optimized mobile experience to better support users on the move
• Enhanced search options, including searching by landmarks (for example, national parks)
• Modernized database structure aligned with Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) protocol to support future interoperability and data partnerships

The Station Locator now has refined logic for setting open dates for API-imported EV charging stations to improve accuracy in the data. Previously, a station’s open date was set to the first date the station appeared in a network API feed—unless the network provided an explicit open date. This approach sometimes resulted in planned (not yet operational) stations receiving an open date even though they were not yet available to the public.

To address this, the Station Locator now sets the open date only when a station’s status changes to available or temporarily unavailable for the first time. This update improves the accuracy of open dates for API-imported stations and better distinguishes planned locations from stations that have entered service.

To support emerging medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle charging needs, the Alternative Fueling Station Locator now includes a new connector type—SAE J3271—to identify stations that use the Megawatt Charging System. This update makes it possible to find MCS-capable charging stations through the Station Locator map and data downloads.

The Station Locator user interface now includes an MCS (J3271 DC) connector filter, allowing users to more easily find stations equipped with MCS hardware. This enhancement helps fleet managers, alternative fuel corridor planners, and other stakeholders quickly locate high-power charging options as MCS deployment expands.

To improve data quality and reduce confusion for users, the Station Locator now applies a new rule for stations from EV charging networks that provide station status via API. If a station remains in the “temporarily unavailable” status for more than six months, it is automatically switched to “unavailable,” which means it will no longer appear in the Station Locator. If the status of the station switches to “available” again, the station will be visible in the Station Locator again.

This update helps ensure that stations shown in the Station Locator more accurately reflect locations that are expected to be operational again while limiting the display of sites that may be offline indefinitely or no longer in service.

Previously, it was only possible to track funding sources at the station level. This enables showing which ports are funded by specific programs to provide an accurate number of EV charging ports with these funding mechanisms. This includes tracking funding sources for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Grant Program, and the Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator (EVC-RAA).

The Station Locator’s fleet type and max vehicle class options are updated to clarify how vehicle classes map to medium- and heavy-duty vehicle categories. Medium-duty now includes classes 3 through 6, and heavy-duty includes classes 7 and 8. This change addresses prior confusion about why class 6 vehicles appeared under a heavy-duty selection when FHWA defines heavy-duty as classes 7 and 8.

In response to frequent requests from EV charging infrastructure stakeholders, the Station Locator now provides power output data for EV chargers. This dataset can help EV drivers, transportation planners, and analysts understand how much charge can be achieved within a certain duration.

Developing this new capability included collecting data from the EV charging networks and EV charging site hosts. Most of the data provided is rated maximum power capacity in kilowatts, but in some instances, actual power supplied is provided. Future work on this dataset will entail standardizing whether maximum power or actual power data is tracked.

The power output data is available on each station details page, and you can search for stations by power output ranges in the advanced filters.

The Station Locator has a new field to track the funding source for stations. This new feature was launched to make it possible to see EV charging stations funded by NEVI. In the future, this field will be used to track other key federal funding sources for stations like the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Grant Program as well as the Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator (EVC-RAA).

The latest version of the Android mobile app is an overhaul that aligns the mobile app features with those offered in the website version. Previously, the Android mobile app was developed as a separate application, which meant that keeping features in sync with the website version was laborious and inefficient. The new version is a mobile view of the website so new features added to the Station Locator can be made available in the Android mobile app seamlessly.

Notably, the Android app now includes the ability to submit new stations or suggest changes for existing stations as well as additional details like vehicle accessibility and fuel types like renewable diesel and whether the station sells renewable natural gas. Some features like advanced filters and measuring alternative fuel corridors are excluded from the mobile version intentionally so the app is optimized for mobile devices with features people need the most on the go.

The updates to the form for adding and editing a station were focused on gathering more complete and more accurate information so the data collection team can process station submissions faster, including adding a series of fields that existed in the database but were not on the form yet. Key improvements included:

• A new approach for entering EV charging connector types and power output by connector
• New fields for:
  • Access restrictions (for public stations)
  • Point of contact
  • Type of vehicles allowed (for fleet fueling facilities)
  • Largest vehicle type (ability to access the station)
  • Propane sufficient fill rate
  • Renewable propane sold or dispensed
• More required fields:
  • Status
  • Business hours (for public stations)
  • Charging level
  • Charging ports by level
  • Charging network
  • CNG dispensers installed
  • Propane nozzles
  • Hydrogen pressure
  • Hydrogen SAE standards compliance

The stations data download has a new country filter to select stations only in the United States or Canada. Previously, U.S. and Canadian stations were both included by default in all data downloads, which caused confusion for some people, so this explicit filter by country makes it clear what the data download provides. In addition, the data download tool also includes a new option in the status filter for “temporarily unavailable” stations. Previously, you could only include those stations by selecting the "All" option from the status filter.

The historical stations data download provides a snapshot of stations in two views:

• Single Day: Provides a list of published station locations on a given date.

• Date Range for Specific Station(s): Provides a list of changes that occurred in the database for a given list of one or more station locations that were published at some point within a given date range.

The station counts by state page also now includes an option to view counts on a given day as far back as 2014. For more details about the historical stations data, learn about the information included in the data download.