Patent ID: 8880238

Claim:
A method for assisting a person with planning a journey with an electric vehicle, comprising: acquiring a current vehicle location at which the electric vehicle is located; acquiring a current state of charge of an energy storage device of the electric vehicle, which stores energy for a drive motor of the electric vehicle; determining a starting region having a first boundary that is within reach of the electric vehicle from the current vehicle location and based on the current state of charge without recharging energy; determining locations of charging stations for the electric vehicle in the starting region; for each of the charging stations, determining an indirectly reachable region having a second boundary that is within reach from a respective charging station and based on a state of charge that was changed at the respective charging station in a predetermined manner, without additional recharging; determining, in a recursive manner, for an additional charging station in the indirectly reachable region an additional indirectly reachable region, whose boundary is within reach from this additional charging station and based on a state of charge that was changed at the additional charging station in a predetermined manner, without additional recharging, outputting information for an overall region formed by the starting region and the indirectly reachable regions, wherein for outputting the information a road map is displayed, on which the overall region is indicated, marking zones in the overall region indicated on the road map, with markings of the zones indicating: a) a minimum number of charging stations required for recharging energy in order to reach the respective zone, or b) at least one of the charging stations or the additional charging station, via which a respective zone can be reached, wherein when a zone can be reached via a plurality of the charging stations, using the charging station where energy needs to be recharged last to reach the respective zone, or via which the shortest path leads from the current vehicle location to the respective zone, or via which the respective zone can be reached in the least amount of time, or via which the respective zone can be reached with lowest energy consumption.