Soft Berry (www.soft-berry.com), a tenant company in KAIST Eco-friendly and Smart Vehicles Research Center, officially released its hydrogen vehicle charging information app “soodal (Run on Hydrogen)” (hereinafter “soodal”) last month. At present, the app is only available on Android, but Soft Berry plans to release it on iOS along with a separate version of the app for hydrogen charging station operators.

Soft Berry entered into a tenancy at the Incubating Center of the JDC Jeju Innovative Growth Center under the KAIST Eco-friendly and Smart Vehicles Research Center in 2019, and has achieved steady expansion in the eco-friendly mobility platform sector, marking remarkable growth each year such as commencing Pre A investment in 2021. The KAIST Eco-friendly and Smart Vehicles Research Center is promoting support programs to ensure the smooth business growth of its tenant companies including Soft Berry.

Soft Berry, which currently provides “EV Infra,” Korea’s number-one electric vehicle charging information app, conducted an open beta service for soodal in September of this year with the aim to create a hydrogen vehicle mobility platform with user contributions. It is currently implementing final updates by actively reflecting various user feedback with the aim to provide swift and accurate information on charging hydrogen vehicles by ensuring a successful release of soodal.

With its official release, soodal will provide various information on hydrogen charging stations such as their locations, opening hours and waiting time. In particular, by utilizing geofencing technology as the first hydrogen vehicle charging information app in Korea to do so, soodal notably allows users to view the number of other soodal users within a virtual radius surrounding each charging station. Furthermore, the app reflects user reports in real time, allowing a more accurate prediction of the waiting order for a charging station.

A Soft Berry staff member commented, “We produced the soodal app based on the knowhow and technical capacity that we built by successfully operating EV Infra in Korea,” further adding, “soodal is a platform that we are creating alongside our users, so we aim to continuously reflect their opinions and ideas in the app, while expanding its functionality to include functions such as a charging station notification service based on the user’s movement routes and booking services for charging stations.”

Meanwhile, Soft Berry also plans to release the iOS version of soodal in the first half of next year. The business version of the app will allow charging station operators to post notices and share charging station information with users easily and in real time through the app. Such information will be linked with an online café by logging in with a Naver account and posted automatically, which is expected to significantly enhance convenience for business operators.