• Swindon & Wiltshire Appointments
• Thursday March 10 2022
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Richard Bourne appointed permanent CEO of electric vehicle charging app Zap-Map

Zap-Map, the UK’s go-to app for electric vehicle charging and leading EV data platform, has appointed Richard Bourne as permanent CEO.

Richard joined Bristol-based Zap-Map – which is majority-owned by Chippenham-based renewable energy supplier Good Energy – in January 2021 as interim CEO, to work alongside the Zap-Map board on the business’ long-term strategic plan.

Following a successful year for the company, Richard will now take a permanent role leading the execution of Zap-Map’s strategy, including the ongoing development of its core products as well as international expansion, with an overarching mission to make charging simple for the next 10 million EV drivers.

In addition, Nigel Pocklington, CEO of Zap-Map’s majority shareholder Good Energy, has been appointed chair of Zap-Map. He takes over the role from Good Energy founder and non-executive director Juliet Davenport, who now steps down from the Zap-Map Board.

Nigel bolsters the board’s expertise in building successful online platform businesses, together he and existing independent non-executive director Tim Jones have a wealth of experience from leadership roles at AutoTrader, Moneysupermarket.com Group and Hotels.com

With over 660,000 downloads and hundreds of thousands actively engaged users each month the Zap-Map app helps EV drivers search for public charge points, plan journeys and pay for EV charging across multiple networks.

In the past twelve months Zap-Map has launched its Zap-Map Plus and Premium subscription services, including support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Its leading cross-network simple payment solution Zap-Pay now has nine networks signed up with Osprey, ESB and char.gy live and new launches including MFG EV Power and GeniePoint coming shortly.

It also announced a commercial partnership with worldwide leader in business payments Fleetcor for integration in its Allstar fleet payment platform.

Zap-Map’s five-person board now includes Nigel Pocklington, CEO of Good Energy and chair of Zap-Map, Tim Jones, independent non-executive director from the Good Energy board, Charlie Parry, Good Energy’s director of corporate strategy, in addition to Zap-Map co-founders Ben Lane, CTO, and Melanie Shufflebotham, COO.

Nigel Pocklington said: “Zap-Map has built an incredible leading position in an exciting and rapidly growing EV market in the UK. It plays a crucial role in Good Energy’s strategy, and it has a vital role to play in the wider decarbonisation of transport.

“As I pick up the baton from Juliet as chair, I would like to thank her for her valuable time and expertise in the role. In the past year Richard has done an excellent job working alongside the Zap-Map senior leadership team to put in place a strategy for growth, as a board we are now looking forward to supporting the team in delivering it.”

Richard Bourne, CEO, Zap-Map said: “The past year has seen great progress in the adoption of electric vehicles and as the EV revolution accelerates even faster, Zap-Map’s core mission of making charging an EV as simple as possible has never been more important.

“From continuing to focus on the EV driver experience, delivering on our commercial partnerships for payments and fleets through to international expansion, the coming years will be very exciting for Zap-Map.”

Juliet Davenport, founder and non-executive director, Good Energy and out-going Chair of Zap-Map said: “I am very proud of how Zap-Map has developed over the last two years, expanding its offering to electric vehicle owners and into payment services. The next stage of the company’s development, with the support of Good Energy, is an exciting one.”