Atlas Mobility

Atlas Mobility runs one of Portugal's fastest-growing networks of public chargers for electric cars. Its app worked, technically, but drivers didn't trust it: a charger shown as free on the map was often taken by the time they arrived, and payments failed often enough that many people kept a backup card in the glovebox.

The challenge

Atlas asked me to redesign the app ahead of a national expansion. The brief was broad, so we started by narrowing it down to one question: what makes a driver choose an Atlas charger, and what makes them never come back?

What we learned

I spent the first two weeks riding along with drivers in Lisbon and Porto and interviewing people who had stopped using the app. Three things came up again and again:

• Drivers plan around certainty, not distance. A charger ten minutes away that is guaranteed to be free beats one around the corner that might not be.
• The moment of plugging in is stressful. People want to know straight away that the car is charging and what it will cost.
• Payment problems were the main reason people left, even though they affected fewer than one session in twenty.

The approach

We rebuilt the app around a live map that shows only what matters: which chargers are free right now, how fast they are and what they cost. Drivers can hold a charger for fifteen minutes on their way, and the app starts the session automatically when the cable goes in, with a clear running total on the lock screen.

Behind the scenes, I worked with the payments team to replace the old card flow with one saved payment method and instant retries, so a failed charge is fixed before the driver ever sees it. Every flow was tested with real drivers in a car park, often in the rain, with one hand on a cable.

The outcome

The new app launched in spring 2025. Charging sessions started from the app rose by more than a third within three months, and support tickets about failed payments halved. Most importantly, drivers started recommending Atlas to each other again.