Ford is well known for providing vehicles for both personal and commercial use. Keeping up with current vehicle trends, it’s got some electric offerings in both realms. And it has now acquired Electriphi, a startup that created some handy software for EV battery and management and fleet monitoring.
Ford’s EV plans are Electriphi-ing
Ford picked up Eletriphi specifically in light of its commercial EV plans. The electric F-150 Lighting Pro (a commercial variant of the standard Lightning EV) was revealed last month and the automaker plans to aim it, along with an electric E-transit cargo van, at commercial customers looking to purchase fleets of these vehicles for commercial use. This would be like construction companies and courier services.
Electriphi will be put to work as part of Ford’s new Pro business unit, reports TechCrunch. The Pro business unit is centred around serving commercial F-150 Lighting Pro and E-transit customers, with Ford telling TechCrunch that it predicts it will make $45 billion in hardware and services by 2025.
It’s a harmonic situation for both companies. Ford gets Electriphi’s software to enhance its commercial EV department and accelerate its growth, and Electriphi gets access to the automaker’s vast customer base.
Electriphi CEO Muffi Ghadiali told TechCrunch that increasingly common zero-emission mandates are a concern for fleet operators. “If you just think about what’s going to happen in the next 10 years — it’s a massive transformation in mobility for energy and software,” he said. “To turn over your entire fleet in 10 years, you have to start now; [fleet operators are] going, ‘I have to make sure that my fleet operations don’t skip a heartbeat, while this transition is happening.’”