Einride buying fleet charging management company Flipturn
Key takeaways
- Einride will acquire Flipturn to add EV charging management software to its freight platform.
- Flipturn manages 250 MW of charging capacity used by fleets including Werner and Swift.
- EV charging networks continue expanding as fleets and providers add infrastructure and services.
Autonomous electric truck manufacturer Einride AB has struck a deal to acquire a New York company that has built an electric-vehicle charging management platform used by FleetOwner 500 carriers Werner and Swift, among others.
Einride executives are paying $38.4 million for Flipturn. Flipturn was founded about four years ago by Samsara alumni Katie Siegel and Sashko Stubailo and helps fleets predict charging times, manage costs, and refine their battery use. The company also accepts payments and provides ancillary services. Roozbeh Charli, CEO of Einride, said the acquisition will help the 10-year-old company become the first with “a fully vertically integrated electric freight technology stack.”
“This acquisition is a decisive step in our U.S. scaling strategy,” Charli said in a statement. “Flipturn will further strengthen Einride’s software layer for electric heavy-duty freight optimization and improve our customer offering by adding more cost-efficient, more reliable, and accessible charging to our customers.”
Flipturn’s technology manages more than 250 megawatts of charging capacity, and Siegel said her team “will continue as-is in the new combined organization, now with even more resources to help our customers tackle the challenges of electrification.”
The all-stock acquisition by Einride, which secured a Nasdaq listing last month after merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, is expected to close before month’s end. If Flipturn hits certain milestones, the company’s shareholders—which include investment firms CRV and Accel—are in line to receive up to $33 million more.
Word of Einride’s planned deal comes as other trucking players and stakeholders are moving forward, albeit maybe not at the pace many had expected a few years ago, to build out EV infrastructure. Among them:
- Pilot Flying J, whose leaders recently said they have installed 50 charging sites year to date, growing their network to more than 300 locations
- Orange EV, which has now put into service more than 2,000 electric terminal trucks that have logged more than 33 million miles
- Charging companies Voltera and Revel, which said in late May they would join forces to create a company with operations in 11 large metro areas
Shares of Einride (Ticker: ENRD) fell about 5% on the announcement of the Flipturn plan July 21. But they bounced in a big way the next day, climbing 18% to $5.46. That gave some good news to investors who have seen the stock fall from more than $15 shortly after the completion of the SPAC deal. Einride’s market capitalization, which at one point topped $2.2 billion, is now about $760 million.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.
With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.