Road, a provider of an electric vehicle (EV) charging transaction management platform which claims to hold a 20% market share in the Netherlands, has entered the UK and Ireland on the back of €20 million (£17.41 million) investment.
The company, which was founded in 2017 in Amsterdam under the name E-Flux before rebranding this year, announced yesterday (23 October) that it is bringing over its “ready-to-go” platform, also called E-Flux, to target commercial fleet customers.
Road said its software platform is agnostic and designed to simplify and streamline payments for EV charging at chargepoint and charge card level, with the company mainly active in its home country as well as Belgium, but with expansion underway into other international markets.
More than 40,000 chargepoints are connected to the platform, while a further 350,000 are onboarded to a network of roaming chargers. Customers include IKEA, photovoltaic (PV) inverter maker SMA and Scania.
With charge point reliability, compatibility and availability a hot topic and often cited as reasons for slow uptake of EVs – the UK government is introducing new standards for rapid EV chargers to achieve 99% reliability, for example – Road claimed its platform makes at least the payment part simple and seamless, achieving 99.9% uptime on charging transaction settlements.
The company’s UK and Ireland market entry comes off the back of €20 million (£17.41 million) investment Road recently raised from VARO Energy, a sole investor in the charger infrastructure platform company’s Series B.
VARO is a manufacturer and distributor of fuels for transportation, including both conventional fossil fuels and their more sustainable low carbon counterparts. An existing investor in Road, the fuel company’s cash is set to drive its expansion into other markets including Germany, Italy, France and Spain.
VARO said in June as it increased its shareholding in Road – then still known as E-Lux – that it identified electric mobility as a pillar of its strategy to further low carbon transport growth while playing to VARO’s own strengths in supplying fuels.
“Our platform connects EV drivers to a secure, seamless charging backend, and helps charge point operators build an infrastructure designed to meet customer needs,” Road’s manager for the UK and Ireland James Chapman said.
Chapman claimed the company’s platform makes it “easy and transparent to access, pay for and manage charging without requiring any additional setup or infrastructure”.
Earlier this month, Current± published ‘The EV Infrastructure Report’, which you can read about here.
