FPS to commercialise electric fleet management platform

Flexible Power Systems (FPS) has received £2.7 million in funding to accelerate commercialisation of its real-time electric vehicle (EV) and charger management platform for commercial vehicle fleets.

Originally developed for the John Lewis Partnership but expanded to address the needs of all commercial vehicle fleets, ‘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. 

“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,” said Michael Ayres, managing director of FPS. 

The financing is supported by a combination of equity investment and a £1.49m innovation loan from Innovate UK to support industrialisation of the platform and its application to an expanding range of commercial vehicle use cases. 

“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,” said Scott O’Brien, chief investment officer at Innovate UK. 

FPS has previously invested more than £4m in technical development of its software platforms. 

Allan Gray, chief financial officer at FPS, said: “Many fleets are only now getting to grips with significant challenges like power availability, variable range and increased scheduling complexity that can come with an EV transition.

“We foresaw many of these issues several years ago and began investing in FPS Operate to provide fleet operators with the solution to address them. 

“As the market matures, we have decided that the time is right to enter debt and equity markets to fund commercialisation.”

The platform couples with EV charge points, vehicle telematics, building metering and a range of transport management systems to provide a ‘whole system’ solution. 

FPS says that it 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. 

Justin Laney, partner and general manager for central transport at the John Lewis Partnership, said: “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.”