Swedish electric and autonomous transportation company Einride has agreed to acquire electric vehicle charging startup Flipturn in a complete stock transaction worth 38 million dollars.
The acquisition — Einride’s first as a public company — will expand its charging ecosystem for electric vehicles as its electric trucking business expands. The deal is expected to close this month. A company spokesperson confirmed that Flipturn, which employs 17 people, will continue to operate with the same team.
Founded in 2022, Flipturn has raised $15.5 million in venture capital to build an electric vehicle charging software platform that can interface with any electric vehicle charger via the Open Charge Point Protocol, an industry standard for communication between electric vehicle chargers and control systems. The software monitors the health of the charging infrastructure, collects data such as vehicle battery level, driving history and routes to help companies better manage charging, and integrates with solar and on-site energy storage systems.
Einride CEO Rozbech Charlie said “the acquisition is a critical step in our US scaling strategy.” The deal will also make Einride a more vertically integrated company, allowing it to offer customers not only electric trucks, but also the charging software needed to operate more efficiently and reliably.
This is an attractive and potentially influential proposition for prospective customers who want to add large electrical installations to their fleet but may be wary of doing so.
Einride is perhaps best known for its unusual-looking wireless capsule-like autonomous trucks. But its biggest revenue driver is the fleet of 200 heavy-duty electric trucks it uses for companies such as Heineken, PepsiCo and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America and the United Arab Emirates.
The company, which merged with Blank Check and debuted on the Nasdaq in June, recently landed Amazon as a customer. Amazon doesn’t buy Einride trucks; instead, Einride owns and operates the trucks — through its own Saga AI software — that can be used by drivers in Amazon’s trucking network. Relay, which launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers use to book gigs with Amazon.
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