The Free Charging feature on the Virta Hub presents an invaluable opportunity for you as a charging point owner (CPO) or e-mobility service provider (EMP) to enhance EV driver satisfaction, promote loyalty, and attract drivers to your stations. This feature enables designated drivers to charge their vehicles at no cost across selected stations, offering a competitive edge in the growing EV ecosystem. For example, you can use Free Charging to incentivise high-value customers, support employees with EVs, or participate in eco-friendly initiatives to boost your brand reputation.
In this guide, we will cover:
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Free Charging Feature Overview
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How to Activate the Free Charging Feature for Your Organisation
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How to Add Free Charging for Drivers on Selected Stations
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How to Manage and Update Free Charging Configurations
Let's start:
1. Free Charging Feature Overview
The Free Charging feature allows drivers to charge their EVs at no cost at designated stations operated by specific organisations. Drivers enabled for Free Charging can initiate sessions through the app or their charging tags. If the station is private, access management rules will also apply.
Free Charging Permissions
Users assigning Free Charging need to have access to both the driver profile and the organisations’ stations where Free Charging is being enabled.
Single Assignment
Free Charging can currently only be assigned to one driver at a time. For larger groups, please consider using Loyalty Tariffs.
Comparison with Free Usage
It is good to notice that Virta Hub also provides a similar yet significantly different option, Pools Free Usage.
Unlike Pools Free Usage, which requires no driver authentication, Free Charging mandates authentication and applies only to authorised drivers.
2. How to Activate Free Charging Feature
By default, Free Charging may not be active for your organisation. It is a dedicated module under the "Drivers" section in the Virta Hub. To verify if the module is activated for your organisation, you will navigate to the Organisation tab, select Modules and Services, and review the Summary of Modules section to locate it.
If unavailable, you will first activate it.
Activating the Free Charging Module
To activate the Free Charging Module, you will:
- Navigate to the Organisation tab. Select the Information section. On the right, under the available actions, click "Manage Modules".
- Scroll down to the "Drivers" section to verify if the Free Charging module has already been activated for your parent organisation.
- If the module is activated at the parent organisation level, you can enable it for your sub-organisation by toggling the activation switch. To activate the module for your sub-organisations, you need to have either the Administrator or Driver Manager role.
- If the module is not activated for your parent organisation, please reach out to your dedicated Customer Success Manager or our Support team to activate it for your parent organisation.
3. Adding Free Charging for a Driver
Enabling Free Charging for a driver is a straightforward process.
- Log in to the Virta Hub and navigate to Drivers tab
- Open the Driver page for whom you want to add Free Charging.
- Click on “Set up free charging” under the "Available actions" menu.
- Search and select organisations where the driver can charge for free
- Please note that according to Virta Hub's general privacy rules, you can set Free Charging for your own organisation as well as the sub-organisations under your control.
- Optionally, you can select “Include all sub-organisations” to extend Free Charging for selected organisations and all of their sub-organisations as well.
- Click “Add organisations for free charging” to save.
The selected organisations will now appear under Free Charging Organisations in the driver’s account details.
4. How to Manage and update Free Charging Configurations
4.1. Viewing Driver’s Free Charging Locations
- Navigate to the Driver’s page.
- Under “Account Details”, locate the “Free charging” section to view the assigned organisations.
- Click “Manage Free Charging” under the "Available actions" menu.
- On the Free Charging Organisations list, click on the organisation name to view
the list of associated stations where Free Charging applies.
4.2. Editing and Removing Driver’s Free Charging
- Navigate to the driver’s page and click Manage Free Charging under the Available actions.
- To remove organisation, click on the remove icon “ – “ at the end of the row.
- To add more organisations, click on the “Select organisation” button above the list.
Thats it!
You now know the values of the Free Charging feature and how to align it with your business strategies. You also know how to activate Free Charging, assign it to individual drivers, and manage and update the configurations effectively.