GreenRoad gets green light for $15m in fresh funding

US start-up GreenRoad could soon accelerate the rollout of its fuel-saving dashboard traffic light technology after the company secured $15m (£9.4m) in additional investment to help fund its growth plans.

The firm has developed a driver warning device that measures the G-force in a vehicle and immediately notifies motorists if they are not driving smoothly enough, using a traffic light-style dashboard interface.

Tests have shown that the system can help cut accidents by up to 50 per cent and reduce fuel use by 10 per cent, and after securing a number of high-profile customers in the form of London bus operator Metroline and coach operator Stagecoach, the company is now planning to use the new funding to help expand its customer base among fleet operators.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Eric Weiss, senior vice president for worldwide marketing at the company, said that the new funding would be used to add new features to the product, set up operations in new markets, and accelerate its push into fleet customers.

"We already have over 60 fleet customers, but we want to support a wider range of vehicles and are targetting a number of new vehicle types and different types of fleets," he said. "We also support a number of multinational customers and that is pushing us to have local support in different countries."

The latest funding round was led by DAG Ventures and also included previous investors Benchmark Capital, Virgin Green Fund, Amadeus Capital Partners and Balderton Capital.

Nick Pianim, DAG Ventures' managing director, who will now take a place on GreenRoad's board, said the company's technology would appeal to a wide range of commercial fleet customers "looking to mitigate risk, offset volatile insurance and fuel costs and affect their bottom line immediately".

"We were encouraged by the company's successive quarters of revenue growth, despite the current economic climate," he said, adding that the company's technology had a "broad appeal to insurers and enterprise fleets across several industries".