Inspiration
As we delved into the reasons behind the slow adoption of EVs, we identified three key challenges that needed to be overcome: handling concerns, maintenance hurdles, and the prevalent issue of range anxiety. We understood that for EVs to gain traction, a holistic solution was needed, one that integrated technology, infrastructure, and user experience seamlessly. We envisioned a world where people could choose electric vehicles with confidence, knowing that their concerns had been addressed.
While we were developing this solution we noticed that whenever we talk about EVs, what comes to our mind is the two or four wheelers owned by richer sections of the society. While we left the major portion of the EV industry in India and that is the EV rickshaw owners. To be precise, there are about 15lakh+ battery powered EV rickshaws. The chatbot has a simple interface of just being used by numbers like 1 for locating the charging stations and so on, which provides better accessibility to these rickshaw owners. Furthermore, the application offers emergency services by calling a battery swap van in case of an emergency.
What it does
ElectriGo is a one-stop solution for every EV present in the market. It provides the ability to locate nearby both AC/DC private and public charging stations that are fetched using APIs provided by the government. The users can book the charging docks for a specific period of time before they reach there. Furthermore, the application offers emergency services like calling a battery swap van. Once called, users can effortlessly replace the battery of their electric vehicle, ensuring a seamless experience. Our application involves rigorous monitoring and maintaining the SOC of the EV. Using our ML algorithms, with high accuracy, we predict SOC which is used to calculate range estimation, battery health, etc.
We've also pinpointed a segment of significant stakeholders in the Indian EV market which is the rickshaw owners who lack Android devices. Specifically, there's a notable group of over 1.5 million+ battery-powered EV rickshaws. We have finally created a multilingual chatbot that provides support about the nearest charging station, open charging slots, etc. This chatbot has a very simple UI and it enhances accessibility to almost all the left-out audience.
How we built it
Once we had the idea finalized, we started creating wireframes using pen and paper. After continuous design iterations, we finally took the idea present in our brains to the mobile screens using Figma. Our team members based on their skillsets, distributed their work on training the ML model and the development of mobile application in SwiftUI for creating the iOS app for our idea. After the successful completion of our iOS App development, we started moving towards the creation of an Android app using Java and Android Studio. As we discussed and iterated further, we went on to improve the design and overall functioning of the platform.
Challenges we ran into
After spending a long time designing the application, we thought that it was almost impossible to build the ML models and the application simultaneously. However, after taking mentorship from Deepa Nagraj ma'am, a sleepless night, and dedication to the idea, we not only managed to create just an iOS app but also started our work on the Android application of ElectriGo. along with the ML model. We are grateful to the opportunity that was provided to us by RedBricks and Ashoka University.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are extremely proud of participating and completing the project that we started with just an idea. We feel extremely happy of what started as just a thought around 24 hours ago has the potential to impact more than a million lives in the upcoming future. Furthermore, we have developed the confidence that with passion, teamwork, and commitment we can accomplish anything.
What we learned
Based on our overall experience of designing and developing at the Redbrick Hacks 2023 hackathon, our team learned various new skills such as app development, the importance of good design, etc. Apart from this, we learned various other soft skills by participating in events and networking with other students of our age during the course of the hackathon.
What's next for ElectriGo.
Electric vehicles being an emerging market, with ElectriGo, we can dramatically enhance EV Adoptability in the future and aim to bring standardization to the EV industry by affiliating with the government and making it a mandatory thing for electric vehicles in the future.
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