This New Mobile App Offers Rewards for Giving Up on Cars

The whole idea is to encourage people out there to use what is bring described as soft mobility for everyday activities, all in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions.

To do this, Manual Lonfat, atmospheric physicist, environmentalist, and cyclist, teamed up with insurance companies and a series of other partners to offer discounts and promos in exchange for reducing the CO2 emissions. The way the application is supposed to work is quite simple.

“The actions completed by the users are converted into impact, of the order of 250g of emission reduction per kilometer covered with soft mobility. We convert that impact into what we call Quambio cubes. One cube in the platform is earned every time a user logs about 10km of action in the platform, whether it is commute, grocery trip, etc.,” Lonfat explains on the Indiegogo project page.

So theoretically, Quambio cubes are more like a virtual currency that you can earn by completing various tasks and then spend at partners. One cube is said to be worth more than 1 Swiss franc or dollar, according to Lonfat, and several retailers are already involved in the project.

The target right now is to bring a more polished app to the market in February next year, and the money raised as part of the Indiegogo campaign would be used specifically for the development process.

“We have a working prototype, which is capable of recording trips and converting the information into a CO2 impact. The App is not yet very pretty though. We will spend the money we raise on funding professional development of our user interface and to make your experience in the platform as cool as possible. If we achieve partial funding, we will put all of it towards the goal of bringing the App to market. This may result in narrowing down somewhat the number of features we can deliver at first, however,” Lonfat explains.

You can support the project on the Indiegogo page linked to above, and each donation is rewarded with Quambio cubes that can then be used for rewards in the app.