Electric vehicle (EV) fleet and energy management startup Electriphi announced that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding, in a round led by Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund and Blackhorn Ventures, including participation from Acario Innovation and Lemnos Labs.
Electriphi provides solutions and services for vehicle electrification. It has developed a charging and operations management platform that is built over open standards, helping save energy costs and simplifying the transition from conventional to electric powertrains.
“Electriphi’s solutions are designed to meet the needs of public and private commercial fleets. We take an end-to-end approach right from initial transition planning to daily operations as it relates to energy and fleet management,” Muffi Ghadiali, the co-founder and CEO of Electriphi, told FreightWaves. “We help our customers solve two primary problems, make sure every fleet vehicle is charged and ready before pull out, and help reduce energy and operational costs on a daily basis.”
Deploying a solution that is based on open standards is highly utilitarian, because it allows enterprise customers to work across any charging infrastructure or vehicle, without compatibility issues.
Electriphi’s flexibility has led customers across a variety of industry segments, including transit, municipal and school buses, and private fleet vehicles to sign on. Ghadiali explained that the startup has also demonstrated the scalability of its platform across different vehicle classes, applications and charging infrastructure.
One of the notable success stories of Electriphi’s deployment is with the Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento, California, which is the first school district in the U.S. to deploy zero-emission electric school buses. The district, which runs the largest fleet of electric school buses in North America, partnered with Electriphi to enable state-of-the-art charging management and simplify the process of data collection and reporting.
“Our customers have been clear – the transition to clean transportation is inevitable and they need fleet and energy management solutions to keep their vehicles charged and ready, while keeping operational costs in check,” said Ghadiali. “Our open architecture and standards-based approach has demonstrated scalability by signing customers across various industry segments, and deploying across a variety of charging infrastructure and vehicle original equipment manufacturers.”
Initially, while designing its platform, Electriphi geared it towards managing large-scale fleets with a high amount of sophistication. However, the startup realized over time that its customers were battling with more immediate concerns – primarily around managing high energy costs and tracking fleet readiness. Electriphi quickly fine-tuned its offering to manage charging and fleet operations, which led to the creation of a free electrification planning tool.
With the newly raised funding, Ghadiali mentioned that the company would focus on scaling its customer base across more industry segments, while working towards a selective geographic expansion. “We are also building new platform capabilities and features based on customer feedback and also guided by our outlook on industry trends as this segment further evolves,” he said.