FreshRides

Splash screen
Sign up flow
Destination request
Maps API integration
Riding with Joe

Inspiration

For the past few years, the devastating effects of climate change have become more and more obvious. This was especially true for us since we're all California college students, and the past wildfire season was one of the most vicious in recent memory. Knowing that many people are supportive of environmental friendliness but don't know where to start or how to make an impact, we were inspired to make an app that could address this problem by giving people an easy way to contribute. 14% of all carbon emissions come from transportation, and traditional ridesharing apps such as Uber and Lyft generate 70% more emissions than trips they displace. This is one gas guzzling industry! The ridesharing industry is currently so convenient, yet so unsustainable for our future. Freshride aims to fix that.

What it does

Freshride is a ridesharing app for the environmentally conscious commuter, with a promise of donating to cancel out the carbon emissions of every trip made through our platform. Your environmental goodwill won't go unrewarded; our cutting-edge server-less architecture allows us to offer low fees while simultaneously protecting your personal data. What else makes our platform so environmentally friendly? Rather than providing the type of rideshare that would directly replace a taxi, we connect drivers who are already driving somewhere with passengers along their route. Drivers will never need to deviate much from the route they would have already taken, so the extra carbon emissions are minimal. This allows us to save the Earth whilst creating a burden free experience for the both the rider and driver.

How we built it

Our app is a native Android app written in Java. We use the HyperTrack SDK for matching drivers with ideal passengers for their routes. We use the Google Maps API to display the map our home page and the Places API for the location autocomplete.

We used the starter code provided by HyperTrack, which includes a basic implementation of a rideshare app, then added a custom sign-up flow, an indicator displaying to the user how many trees they have planted, a custom peer-to-peer backend, and a restyling with our custom components for buttons and textfields. Currently, our backend is running on Firebase via serverless Cloud Functions, written in Node.js. Although we weren't able to complete the pivot, we also began to migrate to a truly serverless architecture via The @ Protocol, a platform that allows users' devices to form a peer-to-peer network that replaces the traditional backend.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the starter code set up was a constant fight, and even at the end of coding we still hadn't gotten all of it to work. Through this we all learned how to learn a library quickly and effectively, and to extend and reuse the functionality needed from it. We also learned a lot about Android development, as previously we had only ever had experience with web development. Turns out XML isn't too far from HTML! Additionally, two of our teammates were complete strangers before this project, so becoming familiar with each other and bonding was a big part of this experience. We're closer than we could've imagined by going through this stressful yet insanely rewarding hackathon :). All of us are passionate about sustainability and solving problems for the average person, so it was a natural team fit.