Fleet electrification software specialist Flexible Power Systems snags its first external investment round

UK-based electric fleet software specialist, Flexible Power Systems (FPS), has completed a £2.7 million financing round to accelerate commercialisation of its real-time EV and charger management platform for commercial vehicle fleets, FPS Operate.

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

“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,” says Michael Ayres, Managing Director, FPS.

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

“Our 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,” says Scott O’Brien, Chief Investment Officer, Innovate UK.

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

“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,” says Allan Gray, Chief Financial Officer, FPS.

“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.”