Community health and care organisation Provide accelerates electric vehicle fleet adoption with Spark EV

Community Interest Company adopts AI-based technology to remove range anxiety across EV fleet

 Cambridge, UK, 5 March 2018. Demonstrating the growth of electric vehicles (EVs) within business fleets, Spark EV (http://www.spark-technology.com/) today announced that Essex-based health and care organisation Provide (https://www.provide.org.uk/) has adopted its artificial intelligence-based journey prediction solution.

A staff-owned community interest company, Provide delivers health and care services (such as community nursing, physiotherapy and podiatry) to patients across Essex, outer London and East Anglia, covering a population of 1.9 million people. Many of its members of staff are mobile, visiting patients in their own homes, community clinics and community hospitals. It is rolling out EVs across its fleet, with Spark’s simple to install technology allowing vehicles to complete more journeys between charges, remove range anxiety and enable greater fleet utilisation, with up to 20% more journeys completed between charges.

 Spark works by collecting live driver, vehicle and other data sources, such as the weather and congestion, via an in-car sensor and then using its cloud-based machine learning algorithms to provide more accurate journey predictions for electric vehicles.

Fleet managers and drivers simply enter their proposed journey into Spark’s powerful smartphone app and get advice on whether they will be able to complete it - based on live data, previous trips and charge point locations. This delivers reassurance to fleet managers and drivers that they will be able to schedule and complete jobs without running out of charge, removing range anxiety while increasing the amount of potential vehicle journeys by an additional 2.8 per day.

 “We understand the benefits of EVs in terms of increasing efficiency and demonstrating our green credentials to the communities we serve,” said Philip Richards, Executive Finance Director and Company Secretary, Provide. “At the same time our patients rely on us being in the right place at the right time, meaning it is vital that our EV fleet is used efficiently, without staff needing to worry about not being able to complete their schedules due to running out of charge. By quickly providing us with more accurate journey predictions Spark EV removes range anxiety and is therefore accelerating our EV adoption.”

As part of its EV roll out Provide is installing charge points at five of its sites and is planning to expand its fleet of Nissan Leaf EVs. As Spark continually improves its journey predictions based on previous trips, Provide will be able to use these learnings to optimise its EV usage and increase confidence within its workforce.

 “Provide’s adoption of Spark EV demonstrates how our technology can support the move to wide scale electric vehicle adoption,” said Justin Ott, CEO, Spark EV Technology. “Provide is now able to ensure that its mobile workers can operate efficiently and effectively, overcoming range anxiety, while delivering vital services to patients within the community. It is a perfect use case of how we can help EV adoption within any fleet.”

 Delivered through a monthly subscription model, Spark easily integrates with existing fleet management/scheduling systems through its open API, or can be used as a standalone solution for smaller fleets and can be installed with all current EVs.

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About Spark EV Technology

Driven by air quality concerns, global legislation is accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). However, fleet operators face multiple challenges with EVs, including range anxiety, ensuring high utilisation rates and optimising productivity.

Built specifically for fleets, Spark EV Technology (http://www.spark-technology.com/) helps operators overcome these issues. An artificial intelligence-powered journey prediction and route planning solution, it uses machine learning to deliver more accurate range predictions, enabling operators to increase journeys by 20%, removing range anxiety and maximising driver and vehicle time. Research carried out by the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School estimates that the global market for EV prediction solutions will rise to at least £501m by 2022.

Developed in Cambridge, UK, Spark combines the company’s own research with work from the University of Essex. Available now, it is already receiving strong interest across Scandinavia. A regional finalist in the Shell Springboard competition and an alumni member of Accelerate Cambridge, Spark EV Technology has received investment from New Anglia Capital and the Low Carbon Innovation Fund.

About Provide

Provide is a Community Interest Company (social enterprise).  More about the organisation is available from: https://www.provide.org.uk/about-provide/

The Provide website also has information about the services that are available, its locations and performance. https://www.provide.org.uk/

For more information:

Chris Measures (PR for Spark EV Technology)

Measures Consulting

[email protected]

+44 7976 535147