Renewable power group Good Energy has invested £1.7m in its electric vehicle mapping subsidiary ZapMap to accelerate its expansion into the business-to-business market.
The funding from Chippenham-headquartered Good Energy will be put into its Zapmap Spark and Zapmap Insights offerings, which complement its consumer app.
While the fast-growing firm plans to continue its focus on the UK market, it will also expand its operations in the US and European markets.
Bristol-based ZapMap originally launched as nextgreencar.com with the aim of becoming the UK’s No.1 green car website to help car buyers find, compare and buy a greener, more economical car.
It went on to develop an app for electric vehicles owners that searched, planned and paid for charging points – part of the business which has now become its main offering and has established itself as the leading app of its kind.
It now has more than 1.54m downloads and 860,000 registered users, giving it a significant market share of the UK's 1m battery electric vehicle drivers.
It also has the UK's most comprehensive database of public EV charging, including live data feeds from more than 75% of public charge points. 
Alongside its consumer offering it has developed Zapmap Spark, an API (application programming interface) product launched in last October to offer other organisations the ability to embed ZapMap data in their own digital products.
Its Zapmap Insights product is marketed as the go-to source for businesses and other organisations, including the Department for Transport, with up-to-date data on the UK’s crucial EV charger roll-out.
Good Energy holds 49.9% of ZapMap’s issued share capital. The new investment has been made through a secured convertible loan note which has now been fully drawn down.
Including this loan, Good Energy has provided funding totalling around £7.5m to ZapMap since its initial investment in 2019, when it acquired a 12.9% stake in Next Green Car Ltd. 
Good Energy CEO and chair of ZapMap, Nigel Pocklington, pictured, said: “ZapMap is playing a critical role not only to hundreds of thousands of EV drivers, but to the UK's decarbonisation pathway through the data and technology it has built.
“We are proud to have supported the company in building a significant userbase, maintaining share in the rapidly growing EV driver market.
“We are confident that their burgeoning offerings to businesses and other organisations in Spark and Insights will see similar success.”
He said ZapMap aimed to reach breakeven point during 2025.
Good Energy, which employs more than 250 people in Chippenham, has been supplying renewable electricity for almost 25 years, sourced from a UK network of 2,000 solar farms, wind farms, hydroelectric schemes and other projects.
Its ambition is to support 1m homes and businesses to cut carbon from their energy and transport used by next year.
It has completed a number of deals in recent years to broaden its offering away from just power generation and supply, including acquiring several solar installation businesses.
