Matthias Speicher

Matthias, you always criticize apps and subscriptions but not all are bad…are they? There must be some doing it right, right?

Yes there are some, so let’s talk about them. First, meet Elton Mobility.

Elton became Norway’s most popular charging app in under two years and now serves hundreds of thousands of users and powers the Hertz EV fleet. They were even attractive enough that Uno-X Mobility AS acquired them in November 2025.

Elton is an eMSP that took a fundamentally different approach. They didn’t scream „Hej, we’re yet another app!“ and jump on the app-hype-train. They did something that sounds obvious but almost nobody does: they asked EV drivers what they actually need instead of building what the industry assumes they want. And then they built exactly that.

🌐 No mandatory subscription and no RFID chip. 85% coverage across nearly all important charging points in the Nordics including Mer, Tesla, Circle K, IONITY, Recharge, Clever, Norlys and many more.

💲A discount model that grows with your usage, up to 6%, automatically applied, no commitment required. So just the good old payback system, yet for EV charging.

📦 If you want more, there are optional packages. A general package gives you 30% discount across all operators (without Ionity) up to a chosen volume. Or a dedicated IONITY package at a fixed price per kWh. You pick what fits your driving pattern. And you can combine both.
The charging price is always the same, with or without a package. The discount is just math, not a different pricing reality. This is real transparency and it helps cut through the maze of tariffs and that’s the big difference to a subscription based model which alters prices in a way you cannot rely on.

💸 The markup per kWh? In my own experience charging in Denmark and Norway, we’re talking 4-6 cents/kWh. Elton doesn’t sell electricity against a premium. They sell convenience in the form of overview and predictability across all major Nordic operators with a built in discount model that is not based on a subscription. That’s a service worth paying for.

🎭 Is it perfect? No.
Prices still vary by CPO and session and are sometimes crazy high at certain chargers, Packages are not available in every country they serve and they’re limited to the Nordics for now. But the direction is clear: earn the customer’s usage through service, not through pricing pressure or lock-in.

What makes this even more interesting: Uno-X Mobility acquired Elton in November 2025. A CPO buying an eMSP and promising to keep its independence. „The customer is the ultimate boss“ was the shared value they cited. Whether that holds long-term is a strategic question worth watching (and this is what I do in the market).

Not sponsored. Just a customer who notices when someone gets it closer to right. And to show you that charging for me will also be digital.