RouteEV

Trying to navigate a trip with an electric vehicle can be a nightmare. Between battery, weather, and charging station availability, trips rarely go as originally planned. RouteEV makes that trip easy.

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Inspiration

We've all heard horror stories of people with EVs running out of battery during a trip and not being able to find a charging station. Then, even if they do find one they have to wait so long for their car ot charge it throws off their whole trip. We wanted to make that process better for EV owners.

What it does

RouteEV makes the user experience of owning and routing with an electric vehicle easy. It takes a trip in and based on the user's current battery, weather conditions, and route recommends if their trip is feasible or not. RouteEV then displays and recommends EV charging stations that have free spots near the route and readjusts the route to show whether charging at that station can help the user reach the destination.

How we built it

We built RouteEV as a Javascript web app with React. It acts as a user interface for an electric Ford car that a user would interact with. Under the hood, we use various APIs such as the Google Maps API to display the map, markers, routing, and finding EV charging stations nearby. We also use APIs to collect weather information and provide Spotify integration.

Challenges we ran into

Many members of our team hadn't used React before and we were all relatively experienced with front-end work. Trying to style and layout our application was a big challenge. The Google Maps API was also difficult to use at first and required lots of debugging to get it functional.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main thing that we're proud of is that we were able to complete all the features we set out to complete at the beginning with time to spare. With our extra time we were able to have some fun and add fun integrations like Spotify.

What we learned

We learned a lot about using React as well as using the Google Maps API and more about APIs in general. We also all learned a lot about front-end web development and working with CSS and JSX in React.

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