Case Study: API dev for Energy costs estimator app.
Future Energy needed a seamless way to associate vehicle-specific energy usage data with individual charging sessions. The challenge? Capturing VIN numbers during EV charging sessions across multiple stations and linking those VINs to charging session data — all while maintaining clean integration with existing infrastructure. Working closely with the Future Energy team, we built a lightweight web-based application that could be invoked directly from within their mobile app. The solution allows drivers to scan or manually input a VIN, verify it through the NHTSA vehicle database, and store all relevant data for later matching via the Ampeco API.
The Challenge
Future Energy needed a fast VIN input flow that could run inside their mobile app, allowing users to scan or enter vehicle information quickly without disrupting the charging experience.
They also required a reliable method to match each captured VIN with charging session data at a later time, ensuring accurate tracking of energy usage by specific vehicle.
A backend structure was essential to store and expose session data via API, enabling both internal tools and external partners to access complete, queryable charging records.
Finally, they needed a flexible tech stack built for growth and integrations, with the ability to scale easily and adapt to new data sources, APIs, or user-facing features over time.
Our Solution
Embedded VIN Capture App: Users can scan or manually enter a VIN directly within the Future Energy mobile app, triggering a lookup via the NHTSA API to capture vehicle make, model, and year.
Session Data Storage: Metadata including userID, chargePointID, evseID, and session start time is stored alongside VIN and vehicle data in a secure Future Energy database.
Automated Session Matching: A scheduled service queries the Ampeco API to find matching completed sessions and appends them to the VIN records for full session context.
API Access + Scalable Infra: A REST API allows external systems to retrieve session data by station ID and timeframe. The app is hosted on AWS with flexibility for future front-end options like Netlify.
Tech Stack:
Results
Seamless VIN capture now embedded directly within the Future Energy mobile experience.
Automatic association of session-level data with vehicle make, model, and year.
Unlocks future capabilities like vehicle-specific energy usage reporting and compliance insights.
Extensible REST API allows other partners and internal tools to query session data at will.