A new charge point management system designed to maximise the value of EV pilots is now available for UK fleets.

Flexible Power Systems (FPS), an e-fleet and charge point management system vendor, has released a new variant of its FPS Operate platform to meet the needs of fleets that are undertaking first trials of electric vehicles.

FPS Operate is already used by fleets such as Wincanton, John Lewis and Welch Group to automatically manage their EV charging and vehicle operations in real-time, with advanced features such as infrastructure sharing available alongside route and charge schedule optimisation.

The new platform takes the core data aggregation and analytics features of the enterprise system and packages them in a streamlined variant for fleets at the start of their EV transition.

FPS says typical charge point management systems on their own do not solve the problems fleets face when trialling EVs.

So far this year, more than 24,000 electric vans have been sold in the UK. Whilst a proportion of these sales are to large established electric fleets, many of them are being sold to fleets that are taking their first steps with electrification.

Michael Ayres, managing director at FPS, said: “Whilst there are areas of fleet operations where vehicle-level EV business cases are strong, this is not always the case. EV pilots are often in lower risk and utilisation parts of the operation where annual vehicle mileages will be low and business cases weaker.”

Henry Clarke, head of platforms at FPS, continued: “When you’re delivering your first EV deployment, you need to learn as much as possible, and everything has to go smoothly for site personnel and drivers to build support for the transition and for the overall pilot business case to stack up.

“Our experience of working with fleets at the start of their journey tells us that traditional charge point management systems only reflect what the chargers did. They do not provide a complete solution. So that’s why we have now released FPS Operate Core – to provide the whole picture.”

FPS Operate Core combines all vehicle, charger and e-fuel card data into a single platform with inbuilt analytics, giving fleet managers ready access to the information they need to plan the next steps of their transition.

With real-time alerts, proactive issue detection and control tower views, fleets can spot problems early and resolve them before they impact performance, thereby ensuring drivers and operational staff experience a successful trial.

With a streamlined onboarding process, the Core system can be commissioned in hours, with minimal effort from customers. It can then be extended through a range of advanced modules as the scale and complexity of EV operations increases.

The platform has been undergoing beta testing and has now been released for sale to fleet customers in the UK and EU.