Electric vehicles are consistently growing in popularity among consumers and manufacturers. However, until battery technology improves, those seeking to go on long excursions can be faced with range anxiety.
Planning one’s journey plays a key role for those seeking to do cross-country drives or for fleet managers who are looking to make the transition toward an all-electric fleet.
To understand how consumers and companies can use technology to help ease the transition toward electric vehicles, TotallyEV reached out to Cnaan Aviv, CTO, Business, and Product owner at Make My Day, a startup company that uses algorithms to help intelligently plan and plot the best route for drivers.
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Could you tell us a little more about your solution?
We optimize, simplify, and manage Electrical Vehicle (EV) charging for both drivers and fleet managers. Make My Day’s solution provides the optimal route for drivers by using a unique decision-making algorithm to help drivers find their nearest charger all from their vehicle’s infotainment system and our app.
We are achieving this by:
- Utilizing a system of hierarchical algorithms for battery predictions, driving behaviour and data analysis.
- Connect to the driver’s calendar or the fleet’s CRM, where we can understand the daily needs of drivers and fleets.
- Connect to the car itself to retrieve key information, such as the vehicle’s battery status in real-time.
- Collect and use important data concerning the location of the driver and charging stations, and any impediments on the driver’s route.
By combining all this data in real-time via our unique proprietary algorithm, we can create an optimal route, both for drivers and fleet managers all while recommending an optimal fast-charging time for the end-user.
For example, if we take a regular EV consumer who doesn’t have access to private parking or a charging station, this consumer will naturally start their day with a low charge – presuming they didn’t charge before parking. Similarly, if they have a long route ahead of them. In both scenarios, they’ll need to charge at a public charging station, which involves knowing how far they can get on their current state of charge, which charging stations are available and further, which ones are available for them to utilise. This all takes careful planning, but our solution does all of this automatically in real-time; meaning drivers can concentrate on driving, rather than planning.
For a fleet manager, which has numerous electric vehicles under their responsibility, they have a further challenge in balancing the most cost-efficient time and place to charge. Public fast-chargers are more expensive than private overnight charges and further, by exposing batteries to lower currents (slower charging), it can also help preserve the overall battery health. Here, Make My Day connects to the fleet calendar/CRM in order to understand the daily needs of both the company and its drivers. Given our solution also integrates with the vehicle itself, extracting data is also simplified.
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Who are your clients and which market are you aiming for?
We are working with a B2B business model, which means we are not working directly with consumers/drivers as we are working with two types of large enterprises: EV fleet operators and public charging station operators, who serve private EV owners and fleets.
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What made you develop a solution for the EV market?
At the beginning, our company developed an optimization solution for all drivers, where drivers were then given the choice of having different routes depending on their preference. However, upon having meetings with customers and attending conferences around the world, we realized that our solution is strongly needed in the electric vehicles industry, where it can not only help manufacturers but the end-user, too.
In your opinion, what are the biggest stumbling blocks for aspiring EV drivers?
In our opinion, the biggest problem is the issue of charging and it is also what causes drivers and fleets not to switch to fully electric fleets; from battery range and charging time to the lack of infrastructure in various parts of the world. That’s why have created a solution to help the industry make a quicker transition to a greener solution.
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How quickly can your algorithm detect changes in the route (say if an accident occurs in front of the driver)?
We are currently working in what is known in the industry as “online” which is quasi-real-time. Hence, the route and plan updates at set intervals, be it every few seconds or every minute.
Which models in the Daimler & Volkswagen group do your solutions work with? Are their particular infotainment systems that it’s compatible with?
As we are work in a B2B model, our solution can connect to existing systems that the driver and fleets use – it can be the phone, navigation system, fleet management software and the vehicle’s infotainment system.
As long as the system allows a connection, we can connect and provide the solution to the driver and a fleet manager.
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Does your app require data to work or is it pre-loaded within the app? Say a user is in an area with poor internet connectivity?
Most of our features also work offline but there are a few that need to have online connectivity for immediate updates. Those features are usually synchronized once the user reaches an area with better reception.
A demo of Make My Day’s solution can be found, below:
