In case you hadn’t heard, smartphone apps are the number one accessory for any plug-in car owner. 

In fact, nearly every mainstream electric car on the market today has its own dedicated iOS, Android and Windows Mobile applications, designed to help you monitor your car’s charge level, remotely start cabin preconditioning, and even plan your next journey. 

Now an independent software company has developed a third-party application for Apple’s iOS which gives owners of the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt a new way of keeping track of their car’s state of charge, driving patterns and mileage.

Called GreenCharge, the application can connect to Nissan’s Carwings and General Motors' OnStar services and retrieve accurate state-of-charge information about your Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt. 

And while it doesn’t have some of the day-to-day features like remote charge activation, door unlocking and remote preconditioning that you’d find on most manufacturer-sanctioned smartphone apps, it does keep accurate mileage and recharging logs for your car. 

It can then display that information as daily, weekly and monthly totals, detailing how far you travel and how much it has cost you. 

To help you feel extra-smug about driving a plug-in car, it also then calculates your car’s total carbon offset compared to a regular gasoline car, as well as predict how much gasoline you’ve saved since switching to an electric car. 

Xatori, the same development team behind the crowd-sourcing PlugShare smartphone application we covered last year, hopes you’ll then consider sharing that information with your friends on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. 

Ultimately a way to track your own personal electric car use as well as help educate your friends and family about the true cost of owning an electric car, GreenCharge is part utility, part fun, and can be purchased from Apple’s AppStore for $9.99.

If you’re tired of Nissan’s Carwings and Chevrolet’s OnStar applications and want to try something different, this app is worth a try.

But without the full suite of remote interactions possible with native Carwings and OnStar applications, we feel GreenCharge is a little overpriced as a basic trip-logging program. 

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