find_charging_station
Returns EV charging sites near a place or coordinate: operator, plugs, max power, price per kWh where published, and points free now where live status is published. Filters: plug, power (min/max kW), operator, free now, conditions (24/7, card, free of charge, public). Use when an EV driver asks where to charge ("Wo kann ich laden?", "CCS 150 kW near Leipzig", "ist gerade eine Säule frei?"). Do NOT use for petrol or diesel (find_cheapest_fuel) or E-Kennzeichen rules (get_driving_rules). Radius ≤ 25 km, ≤ 10 sites; missing availability is unknown, never free. Show the attribution line.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| lat | No | Latitude in WGS 84, e.g. 48.137. Use with lon when the caller already holds coordinates; otherwise use place. | |
| lon | No | Longitude in WGS 84, e.g. 11.576. Use with lat; otherwise use place. | |
| limit | No | How many lines to return, nearest first (1–10, default 5). Places within 50 m that read alike are folded into one line that says how many units it holds; structuredContent.sites has one entry per place of the lines shown, with siteIds naming every record of that place, so it can be longer than limit. | |
| place | No | Where to look, as free text: a city ("München", "Munich"), a district or Kreis ("Kreis Fulda"), a Bundesland, a station or stop ("Hamburg Hbf"), a motorway junction ("AK Neufahrn"), or a street address with a house number ("Bahnhofstraße 12, 36037 Fulda"). A motorway number alone ("A7") resolves to the road, which has no single point — name a town or junction on it instead. Use this instead of coordinates whenever the person named a place. An address needs its town or postcode — a street and a number alone exist in many towns. A place or lat+lon is required (unless the tool names another way in, such as a road): when the person named neither, ask them for a town, a postcode or their position before calling. Given both, the answer is about lat+lon with the place as its label, and is refused only when the two lie further apart than the search reaches. | |
| language | No | Set this on every call to the language the person is writing in: "en" if they wrote English, "de" if they wrote German. Do not leave it out: it defaults to German ("de"), which is only the fallback when the language is genuinely unclear, so an English question sent without it is answered in German — a wrong answer. Place names, station names and road numbers are never translated in either language; in English the German term is kept in parentheses so the person recognises it on signs and in local apps. | de |
| operator | No | Only sites of this charge-point operator brand, as the person names it: "IONITY", "EnBW", "Tesla", "Aral pulse". Spellings of one brand match together ("EnBW mobility+ AG", "ENBW"); sites whose source names no operator are left out. Omit unless the person named an operator — a question about WHO operates the chargers sets none. | |
| connector | No | Plug the vehicle needs: "ccs2" (CCS Combo 2 — the DC fast-charging standard on almost every European EV), "type2" (Typ 2 / Mennekes, the AC socket), "chademo" (older Japanese DC, e.g. Nissan Leaf) or "mcs" (Megawatt Charging System, the plug of electric heavy lorries — only for a lorry or truck). Omit unless the person named their plug or their vehicle — filtering on a guess hides chargers they could have used. | |
| radius_km | No | Search radius around the place in kilometres (1–25, default 10). A charging stop is worth a detour, so this is wider than the fuel radius — but 25 km is the cap, and a larger circle is a dataset request rather than a driver's question. | |
| conditions | No | Only sites with ONE point that meets every listed term: "open247" (open around the clock, "rund um die Uhr", "24/7"), "card" (pay by credit or debit card at the charger, "mit Karte zahlen"), "free" (free of charge, "kostenlos"), "public" (open to the public, not customers only). Example: ["open247"]. The Bundesnetzagentur charging register states these, and "free" also an operator's published ad-hoc tariff of 0 no older than 90 days; a site that states nothing is left out and counted, never assumed. Omit unless the person asked for one. | |
| max_power_kw | No | Only charging points of at most this many kW (1–1000). Use for a normal AC post ("normale AC-Säule", "Wallbox": 22) or, with min_power_kw, a band (50 and 149 = DC fast but not HPC). Never below min_power_kw. Omit unless the person set an upper limit. | |
| min_power_kw | No | Only charging points of at least this many kW (1–1000). Use when the person names a number or asks for fast charging: 50 = DC fast (a bare "fast"/"schnell"/"Schnelllader"), 150 = HPC ("HPC", "ultra", "ultraschnell"), 300 = the fastest posts in Germany. Omit for "where can I charge" — 11 kW overnight is a valid answer to that question. | |
| only_available | No | When true, return only sites with at least one point reported FREE right now. Default false. Use it when the person asks what is free at this moment. Note that only some operators publish live status: the result always says how many nearby sites were dropped because their status is unknown, so the filter never silently hides a charger that may well be free. |