Chargebuddy

The problem

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You got yourself a brand new all electric car.
First business trip, you drive a couple of hundred kilometers for an important meeting.
Everything is planned perfectly and your cars range estimation tells you it's easily gonna reach your destination.

However you underestimated outside temperature and your range is declining at rapid pace.
Darn, you have 50km left but your car is at only 3% range, thank god there is a charger nearby, so you stop.

Then it happens.
Another car is occupying the charging station, you check it and it appears to be already fully charged, but the driver is missing in action.

Sounds familiar?

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The Solution

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Aaron Pieler and Michael Kapfer had the following initial idea:
An anonymized way to get in touch with e-car owners who currently occupy an e-charging station that is desperately needed because one is very low on power with his car.

The idea was to offer a QR-Code sticker that one can put on his car and bundle it with an app, that allows to connect a note for that sticker.
Futhermore allowing other people to scan the code and allow a direct channel of communication via instant messaging.

The two approached us to jointly realize the app and plan the technical implementation.

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We developed an app including a digital ecosystem that makes it possible to get in touch using personalized QR codes.
To give others an idea about your reasoning and charging time, you can configure your code with a timer and a note.
Others can simply scan your code with the Chargebuddy app, see your timer and note and open an instant message interface to get in touch with you.
Chats are automatically deleted after a certain period of time. Chargebuddy thus guarantees privacy while offering many practical features.

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Technological Approach

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The app itself was originally developed by FSS in React-Native. When it came time to update the app, we decided against continuing to use React-Native and switched completely to Flutter as we had major issues updating React-Native, and Flutter seemed to be the better choice for our app.

In order to save time and costs, this project uses Firebase as the backend, which is very easy and fast to adopt.

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Future Outlook

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Chargebuddy is used by a couple of thousand electric car enthusiasts. Users particularly appreciate the fact that Chargebuddy is completely free and ad-free. Precisely because of the many advantages that Chargebuddy offers users, we think that it will continue to be a popular tool in the future.