MONTREAL — Electric vehicle charging company Flo has lost access to the biggest EV charging market in North America, The Logic has learned.

Flo’s inability to process credit card and contactless payments at its charging points has made it ineligible for installation in California since July 2023. The payment issue means the state, home to 39.5 million people and 1.1 million electric vehicles, cannot install Flo chargers, Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting spokesperson LaShawn McFadden told The Logic.

Flo chargers installed in California before the rule change remain operational, spokesperson Maude Blouin said. The company’s new generation of chargers are equipped with a credit card reader, she added.

Flo’s problems in the U.S. aren’t confined to California. The company has also been dropped from Charge Ready NY 2.0, a US$12-million New York state program that subsidizes the purchase and installation of public and private charging stations. Flo, Canada’s largest charging company, qualified for the program at its launch in July 2023, but was recently removed from the state’s list of approved vendors.

“Flo’s charging station equipment and network services did not meet the updated rules and so were removed from the eligibility list,” a spokesperson for New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which manages the program, told The Logic. The spokesperson did not specify what rules Flo no longer met. The delisting doesn’t affect the firm’s eligibility for other New York state charging station programs.

The news comes as the Quebec-based company reels from layoffs, first reported Thursday by La Presse, including laying off 80 people and shuttering its manufacturing plant in Shawinigan, about 175 kilometres northeast of Montreal. The company now has 255 employees, according to La Presse, down from roughly 600 in 2023. 

In 2023 General Motors (GM) backed out of a multimillion-dollar contract to purchase Flo’s charging equipment, The Logic has learned. GM’s withdrawal meant Flo was stuck with as much as $10 million in raw materials according to a source, who spoke to The Logic on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the deal.

Founded in 2009, Flo has more than 140,000 charging stations across North America. The firm has raised a total of $471 million in funding and loans since 2021, including a $136-million Series E round led by Export Development Canada, which was meant to “help bolster Flo’s continued expansion of its North American charging network,” according to a June 2024 company financing document obtained by the The Logic.

National Bank Financial Markets, the investment banking arm of the Montreal-based bank, acted as an investment advisor on Flo’s Series E raise. It contacted 185 potential investors in Canada, the U.S. and beyond, according to the document. Of these, 37 met with Flo management. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Investissement Québec, Business Development Bank of Canada, New York-based Energy Impact Partners and Montreal firm MKB were among the investors.

Key to the company’s path to profitability is curbing its cash burn rate and R&D investment, according to the document. Other challenges include lower near-term EV adoption and the company’s capital-intensive manufacturing businesses, which the document claims would appeal to a smaller pool of investors.