July 2026
Pangea — The What and the Why
It’s been a while since I first introduced Pangea to the world. A lot has developed since then, both with the app and the business, and mostly in quiet. Because I don’t think we ever did a proper job of telling our story at the beginning, I wanted to take a bit of time to reintroduce Pangea, explain why it exists, and what we’re hoping to achieve through it.
Where it all began
This whole journey for me really began somewhere around 2021. I was on my way back to America after a 4-year stint in Japan, and just for fun, I took a test drive in a Model Y on a visit home in prep for my return. I wasn’t at all prepared for what followed. At a nearby intersection, I realized that with the next green light, I had an open straightaway. Doing what any sensible red-blooded American would do, I slammed on the pedal. A massive rush of G-forces percolated through every cell in my body, and I was changed forever. This was the magic of an electric car. I couldn’t shake that feeling for the next 9 months. This was a feeling that I needed everyone on the planet to feel.
The future felt so tangible that day, and so obvious. I haven’t stopped thinking about EVs since.
The Horror
When I finally arrived back in the US, I was taking joyrides practically nonstop. I’d take any excuse to drive my car. It was just so fun.
I started to feel out the rest of the industry, because knowing how markets work, I knew Tesla wouldn’t be the only player in the market. I started with charging, because I really like infrastructure. Utilities are the modern miracles we all underappreciate. Anyway, like the gas industry before it, there would probably be a couple big owners of each slice of the charging pie. I looked up other networks, and tried a fast charging station I found near my mom’s house.
It was one of the first times in my life where I’d felt absolutely insulted as a customer, and frankly, embarrassed as a technologist. It felt like I went back in time and stumbled on pre-iPhone era software. If you’re an EV owner, and you’ve tried your share of networks, you know this story. I arrived at the site, was forced to download an app that barely worked, and when I went to grab the plug, it wasn’t something compatible with my car. Even if it were, the box turned out to be malfunctioning. Killed three times before I hit the ground.
I tried other chargers. Virtually the same thing every time. It was astounding. I couldn’t believe it. How could a technology so important be so unreliable? Horrible. I felt a deep, painful need to do something about it.
First Steps Forward
Initially, I was incredibly eager to build my own charging network. It felt like all the incentives for making and maintaining a really great charging station were off, and I wanted to build a business whose incentives were singularly aimed at providing and maintaining a great service. …It was a nice pipe dream. My best friend mercifully reminded me that I am but a humble software engineer, and that to build out a charging network, I would need something on the order of $100 million to design, build, and deploy highly complex electrical equipment. And given my vast lack of experience with any of those things… Point taken.
But I knew there was still something there. I kept trying chargers from different networks, seeing who was doing what. What I found were lots of different approaches to boxes. Everyone’s got a differently styled box. Great. That seemed natural. What was consistent, though, was how horrible almost every single bit of software was. Whether it was on the charger itself, or in the app I was forced to download to kick off the charge, the software was consistently painful. Laborious onboarding, broken UI patterns, information bleeding off the screen, app crashes, hopeless error messages… you name it.
Aside from software that just straight up did not work, I was frustrated by the strategic failure of it all too. These individualized apps were really bad for the companies themselves. As an indie app developer, I knew all too well how hard it is to have your app discovered by users. The failing I saw was that in order for people to find their chargers, drivers would first need to find their apps. That’s just not going to work at the scale these companies need. For something like critical infrastructure, this was unacceptable. But I want to be clear, I don’t blame anyone for this. This stuff is hard and you have to start somewhere. To me, the charging networks themselves deserve better structures to fit into— better distribution, and better discovery networks.
To that end, it can all be simpler. It has to be. Whether you’re a new or veteran driver looking for a charger, there has to be one place to look. One place to know that if you drive there expecting a charge, you’ll find it. It has to be trustworthy, and attractive, and simple. It has to make the vast and fragmented industry feel like one reliable utility, designed to serve you. That’s what drivers deserve, and it’s what the industry deserves.
Pangea
Today, after about a year and a half of work, Pangea is a great way to find the right charger around you, or where you’re going. What we do best is make the information you need to know about a charger as clear, as legible, and as attractive as possible. Just about all of the information is editable by our users. We won’t know everything, and partnerships will come slowly, so we want the community to serve themselves and each other. We care deeply about simplicity, but also utility. Our app is useful for anyone brand new to charging or anyone who’s been with it from the beginning.
We’re early in curation. We don’t sort or recommend yet — what you see is just the full picture, plus your filters. There are some features we’ve made that I’m particularly proud of, like integration with your calendar. If you connect your Apple or Google Calendar, we’ll send you a notification before your next event, but only if there’s charging nearby that you should consider. (Calendar data never touches our servers; we just send recommendations based on latitudes and longitudes.)
My personal favorite feature is maybe the simplest, but also our most helpful. If you search for a specific place (say, a cafe) you’re going, and you look at the chargers near that cafe, we show your ETA as the drive time to the charger, and the walk time to the cafe. 🚘 25min 🚶♂️3min.
If it’s less than 5 minutes, I take it every time.
For as much convenience as we offer in selecting a charger right now, there is still so much that happens after someone arrives to charge. They still need the charger’s app (if the network has one, which luckily is a fading trend), they still need to initiate the charge, and they still need to be aware of the health and status of their session.
By making what we believe is the best product on the market, our hope is that we can earn the trust of drivers. And in turn, earn the trust of charging networks. With both groups on our side, we can create a more seamless, end-to-end experience for drivers, and a better business for chargers. As a driver, you find the right charger, you arrive, you plug in, we authenticate you, the charge begins, you walk away (or chill in your car). From there, we just keep you up to speed in the app — make sure you know if there’s a problem, or when your session’s about to end. Ideally, this is your experience regardless of the charger. As a charger, you get surfaced to drivers who need your service the most, and we remove any barrier to entry they would have of enjoying your network.
That’s what we aim to achieve, anyway. Make a fragmented market feel like a single, reliable utility; one that’s there for you when you need it most. We’re on our way, but we have a long, long way to go.
Only Achievable Together
To do all of this, we will need a lot of help. We very literally cannot do this alone. It’s a vision that hinges on strong partnerships. Our goal is to earn the right to achieve this vision, first with drivers, then with chargers, and finally with businesses big and small.
This is a critical part of life that can, and should, just work. We intend to do whatever we can to let it. We’re excited to work with any individual or organization who wants to see this through.
Not Following The Footsteps
One final note.
The past couple years of being in the tech industry have been embarrassing. We’ve completely lost our way. It seems that every year, we create a new technology that enables more hacky, exploitative bullshit to abuse customers. Crypto walked so gambling could run. And AI is the double-edged sword that produces superpowers in many of us, while annoying the hell out of so many others.
I want to call this out right now as a declaration of opposition. I still believe that technology can and should be used for the improvement and the advancement of life on earth. It’s not at all tempting to me to use them for value-extractive financial gain. I’d rather die broke trying to do right by others than enjoy a selfishly earned abundance of riches.
Pangea’s identity will be defined by the work we do in service of others. And that work, I hope, will be remembered for its excellence, and the care that went into it.
Thank you for reading.
Tim Isenman
Pangea, Founder & CEO