Trust Drive

Inspiration

As students, our cars spend probably 90% of the time idling in a parking lot, just waiting for that one midnight snack trip or weekend adventure. But otherwise, our cars are just collecting dust. But this problem extends beyond just students. Whether it be families might have more than one car or car aficionados with huge car collections, there are hundreds of thousands of cars going unused at any moment - why not use them?

And that's where the idea for TrustDrive was born. But we didn't just want to create another AirBnB for X spinoff, we wanted to keep tailor this product to its market. And when it comes to cars, it turns out there's a big nuance - people who are comfortable renting out there homes are still reluctant to rent out their cars to just any stranger. So, we knew that we needed to not only create a project that allows people to use idle cars, but create the platform in a way that makes renters comfortable.

What it does

TrustDrive is a Web Application that lets users sign up as both Lenders and Riders, and lend cars to their friends / rent cars from their friends. Lenders can also set different tier levels for different cars - for example, a fancy new BMW would be restricted to first order friends but an older car might be made available to 2nd or 3rd order friends.

TrustDrive utilizes the SmartCar API to allow riders to remotely unlock and lock the car, as well as allowing the app to forcibly end a session once a rider's time is up. Additionally, SmartCar's additional features, such as Odometer tracking and GPS location allow us to create robust insights for car lenders to ensure that their car is being treated well.

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for TrustDrive?

In the future, we'd love to add a feature that authenticates the state of a car through photo recognition software, so that riders can take pictures of their rented car before and after their session to ensure that no damage is done to the vehicle. Additionally, we'd love to roll this app to neighborhoods and low-income communities where a car-sharing service could help save lots of money.,