Method
How the app works out what's in reach
Most maps answer “how far is that?” WattAround answers a harder, more useful question: “can I get there and home again, on this battery, today?” Those are not the same question, and the gap between them is where a nice afternoon turns into a long walk. Here's how the app closes it.
01Straight lines lie
A café can sit two kilometres away as the crow flies and eight by any road you'd actually ride. So WattAround never trusts the straight line for anything that matters. It traces the real route, following the roads, paths and greenways you'd take, and it reasons about that distance, there and back. The straight-line guess is only ever used to shortlist candidates before the real routing does the deciding.
02A hill is worth more than its height
Ask the app how far you can go and it won't just count kilometres, because kilometres are not all equal. A flat run along a towpath barely touches the battery. The same distance up and over a ridge is a different animal entirely, and a steep pitch costs disproportionately more than a gentle one, so the app weights climbs by how sharp they are rather than treating every metre of ascent the same. Then it does the same trick with the wind, adding the cost of a headwind according to how hard it's blowing, because a breeze in your face is a tax you pay the whole way out. Two vehicles that weigh the same can have very different appetites, so a scooter, a wheel and an e-bike each carry their own consumption and their own limit on how steep a slope they'll take before you're better off pushing.
03It assumes you want to get home
Every calculation the app makes is built around one quiet assumption: this is a round trip, and you'd like to still have battery when you're back on your doorstep. So it keeps a reserve and plans for a turn-around at roughly 40% of the pack, rather than promising you the absolute farthest point you could crawl to before dying by the roadside.
Around wherever you start, it draws the zone you can comfortably reach and return from. Places well inside that zone are a safe yes. Places right on the edge, where a rough estimate isn't good enough, get a proper route calculated before the app commits to an answer. And if you'd rather stick to the RAVeL and the canal paths, flat, quiet and kind to the battery, it will lean the route that way when you ask it to.
FAQ
Why doesn't it just match my scooter's display?
Because they're doing different jobs. Your display reads the battery right now. WattAround plans a whole outing before you leave, with the hills, the wind and a safety margin baked in. Use the app to plan the day and the display to watch it unfold. They're a team, not rivals.
What's this “turn back at 40%” business?
It's the reserve. You spend roughly the first 60% getting somewhere and keep the last 40% for coming home. That cushion is what absorbs the headwind on the return, the cold you didn't expect, and the climb you'd forgotten about.
Does it really account for hills and wind, or is that marketing?
It really does, and it's the whole point. The elevation is weighted so a steep slope hurts more than a gentle one, and the headwind is added by strength. Strip those out and you've got a plain distance calculator, which is exactly the thing that leaves people stranded.
Try it from your own doorstep
Drop your start, pick somewhere you've been curious about, and see if it's a yes. The map does the rest.
Open the app