New EV Platform Delivers Knowledge Wanted to Handle Electrical Truck Fleets – Gas Smarts
4Gen Logistics is utilizing Flipturn to handle its rising fleet of electrical vehicles and charger.
Picture: 4Gen Logistics
Flipturn, an electric-vehicle operations startup, introduced $4.5 million in seed funding to assist it increase its new platform that makes it simpler for corporations to handle fleets of electrical business autos.
“This can be a much-needed piece to the brand new EV equation to convey all the info to 1 place and make issues a lot simpler to handle fleets,” Brad Bayne, vp of strategic initiatives at 4 Gen Logistics and an HDT Truck Innovator, informed Heavy Obligation Trucking.
Bayne is among the fleet managers Flipturn has been working with to develop and take a look at its Flipturn Join platform.
Fleets that undertake electrical autos, akin to 4Gen Logistics, face operational challenges involving automobile vary, charging infrastructure, and vitality prices. Dispatchers now want visibility into vary when sending autos out on routes and have to account for fueling that takes hours, not minutes.
Flipturn might help fleets decrease their EV price per mile by permitting issues to be noticed rapidly, robotically choosing optimum charging occasions and energy ranges, enhancing driving effectivity and maximizing automobile utilization.
Picture: Flipturn
Flipturn stated these challenges are simpler to deal with utilizing its new Flipturn Join. This can be a unified EV fleet operations platform offering cross-system visibility throughout fleets’ autos, chargers, and associated methods. With Flipturn, fleet operators can:
- Monitor location and state-of-charge for all autos, observe the provision and standing of all chargers, and keep conscious of essential points, all from a central dashboard.
- Set charging schedules robotically to ensure autos are able to go for his or her subsequent journey, whereas additionally minimizing electrical energy prices by charger energy administration.
- Analyze kWh per mile and value per mile throughout autos and journeys, coach drivers on methods to extend effectivity utilizing historic knowledge, and establish methods to lower vitality utilization.
- Configure customized alerts for when a automobile is low on vitality, when a charging session has ended, and extra.
Flipturn is commercially accessible at present. Bayne informed HDT 4Gen has been utilizing the platform for a number of months after working with Flipturn throughout its improvement.
4 Gen, the sister firm of Arizona-based Duncan and Son Strains, drays containers from the Ports of Lengthy Seaside and Los Angeles to Arizona and different southwestern states. The corporate has pledged to grow to be the primary North American motor provider to personal an all-zero-emission drayage fleet by 2025. That’s 10 years earlier than the laws would require it.
It began out with three battery-electric BYD vehicles. Late final yr, 4 Gen added a Volvo VNR Electrical as a part of the Volvo LIGHTS demonstration challenge. In March, its 20 battery-electric Kenworth T680E began to reach, and this summer time, 40 extra Volvo VNR Electrics are being added to the fleet, for a complete of 64.
Actual-World Growth and Testing
Bayne informed HDT he’s been impressed by how nimble Flipturn is within the product improvement and has loved offering them suggestions from an EV fleet perspective.
“I see this being an incredible platform for all EV fleet managers,” he stated.
The info Flipturn gives will probably be essential to handle the day in actual time, Bayne defined, and can assist drive extra environment friendly operation of its new fleet of battery-electric vehicles. Key efficiency indicator knowledge offered by the platform helps the corporate scale back prices whereas enhancing operations.
“Their platform brings a great portion of the telematics knowledge, real-time state of cost knowledge as vehicles are working, real-time charger/charging knowledge as vehicles are plugged in, together with some nice operational and monetary reporting.”
Flipturn has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by enterprise capital agency Accel with assist from Comma Capital, Background Capital, and over 30 extra angel buyers. With the brand new funds, the corporate stated, it can construct out its product and go-to-market staff, in order that it may increase entry to Flipturn Join and speed up product improvement.
Daniel Levine, accomplice with Accel, stated in an announcement: “Flipturn has the staff, product, and imaginative and prescient essential to convey EV fleets into the mainstream. As companies adapt to regulatory necessities and search cost-efficient alternate options in the long run that do not depend on fossil gasoline, Flipturn is poised to be the spine of this transformation and endlessly change the century-old trucking trade.”
