Flexible Power Systems (FPS) has completed a £2.7m financing round to accelerate commercialisation of its e-fleet management platform.
The UK-based electric fleet software specialist originally developed its FPS Operate real-time EV and charger management platform for the John Lewis Partnership.
The new funding will help roll out the solution to address EV adoption challenges in both the UK and EU.
FPS Operate integrates and operationalises charge points, vehicles, building energy management and logistics software systems. The data is used for automated vehicle-task matching, smart charging, reporting and managing uptime, improving EV ROI.
Michael Ayres, managing director, FPS, said: “Every day there are press stories about EV range variability or charge point failures disrupting commercial vehicle operations. FPS Operate has been developed over the last four years to allow fleets to cope with this variability, dynamically and in real-time, to get-on with the day job.”
The financing is supported by a combination of equity investment and a £1.49m innovation loan from InnovateUK to support industrialisation of the FPS Operate Platform and its application to an expanding range of commercial vehicle use cases.
Scott O’Brien, chief investment officer, Innovate UK, commented: “Innovate UK innovation loans help to deliver growth and scale of businesses through innovation and we are pleased to make this funding available to a business with high growth potential in the net zero economy of the future.”
FPS has previously invested more than £4m in technical development of its software platforms.
The platform has been built bottom-up for commercial vehicle operations, ensuring in-dept integration with the systems that fleets use to manage their vehicles. The platform couples with EV charge points, vehicle telematics, building metering and a range of Transport Management Systems to provide a ‘whole system’ solution. Benefits include clarity, efficiency and resilience.
The platform has been applied successfully to van and transport refrigeration fleets starting with the John Lewis Partnership and Waitrose with first truck deployments expected by summer 2024.
“We have been working with FPS since 2020 on a range of electrification topics, from our van fleets to transport refrigeration unit hook-ups. Currently, nearly all of our commercial vehicle EVs and the majority of our transport refrigeration hook-ups are on their FPS Operate platform and FPS has become a key part of our transport decarbonisation journey,” said Justin Laney, partner & general manager central transport, John Lewis Partnership.
