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Where will all the strength come from to qualify the electric trucks that are expected to one day dominate the industry?Zeem Solutions, an early leader in the development of power infrastructure, sees decommissioned power plants that once distributed megawatt loads as a target-rich environment.
It turns out that Zeem’s CEO, Paul Gioupis, is doing everything temporarily. Think temporarily. Speak fast. And its strategy to offer charging for electric cars, from passenger cars to Class 8 trucks, was temporarily maintained.
Gioupis founded Zeem — a name that combines the first two letters of zero and emissions — seven years ago. It was a jumping-off point from a career as an investment banker to United Kingdom-based Smith Electric Vehicles. He helped that company build its electric component stack for Class 4-6 vehicles.
After a failed public registry, he gained comprehensive education on electrification: vehicles, batteries, charging, and interaction with utilities. Smith EV suspended all operations in 2017.
“Simply put, I failed,” he told me in an interview this week.
“From day one, we built these [Zeem] depots to be able to accommodate everything from light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty,” Gioupis said.
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is a strategic choice. Gioupis knew that the airport had to face many problems in decarbonizing shipping until 2027. Zeem owns and charges dozens of electric shuttles that transport passengers and flight crews between the airport’s sprawling terminals and hotels. and back to the terminals. Commercial electric cars account for about 40% of its fleet-as-a-service business.
Hertz battery electric passenger cars qualify on two Zeem services near LAX spanning 3. 1 acres with a total capacity of 10 megawatts less than a quarter mile away. Electric vans from BrightDrop, a subsidiary of General Motors, and Ford’s Transit electric vans are taking the spot. more capacity as they grow in popularity.
16- and 18-foot electrified bed trucks from Kuehne Nagel and BMC, as well as Class 8 tractors from Volvo and Nikola serving LAX, the nation’s 11th largest port, drink at Zeem’s direct cargo (DC) ports. Anheuser-Busch also parks and charges for electric trucks as part of a delivery agreement.
Zeem also offers an appraisal and movement option; a parking, charging, maintenance and washing service; and a shuttle service package that adds transportation, freight, and return for an all-inclusive monthly price.
Zeem’s charging includes a diversity ranging from 53 AC chargers, known as Level 2 charging, to 78 ABB DC fast chargers. Together, they distributed more than one million kilowatt-hours of electrical power last year. Zeem’s 25,000 charging sessions for 7,700 cars at LAX are at one gigawatt of electrical power, enough to power 50,000 homes in California on a typical day.
The company plans to distribute four GW of electric power this year. This means four times more pressure on the power grid, resulting in higher “demand rates” for fleets trading at peak times. Zeem seeks to compensate for this effect in bi-directional tracking: it employs its testers to direct electrical energy to a vehicle that wishes to be re-rated from an unused rated truck.
Over time, Zeem will purchase power on-site as an option to further bill consumers during peak hours. The company has taken an “in-depth” look at those available, from desktop fuel cells to turbines, even diesel-powered ones, to buying power at its sites.
There are many barriers holding back infrastructure progress, from allowing bottlenecks to be chained to communication with utilities.
“When you’re looking to dig up the floor and install the ducts that bring the right pipes to the infrastructure, you start running into a lot of problems. It’s incredibly complicated from start to finish,” Gioupis said.
Despite the challenges, he credits Southern California Edison as “the most forward-leaning” utility when it comes to understanding the difference between a construction company presenting site plans for a warehouse or a gas station from infrastructure developers who want to know how much power they can get and when they can get it.
In Washington state, Zeem waited four months to find out how much strength he has.
“You have to know how to temporarily navigate the app and know when you’ll be able to get actual capacity. They’re not used to this demand,” Gioupis said. We’re building mid- and heavy-duty truck infrastructure for fleets. This category wants to be clearer for the application because the power consumption is huge.
Boston-based ArcLight Capital Partners invested $50 million in Zeem in July to expand itsArray’s structure. The personal equity firm also identifies brownfield sites, such as decommissioned power plants, such as a 20-acre one in Long Beach, California, where 252 MW of electric power is stored. once it flowed. Another is waiting in New Jersey.
And I called my spouse and said, “You see, I just found out exactly what we were for. We can’t locate power, [and] we just figure it out. “
“We’ve been looking at how to solve this problem. We did it. It took a lot of money, a lot of time. You’ll see them quite temporarily on our end.
The risk of insolvency seemed imminent for Lightning eMotors for at least the past two years. December, after all, is the end. The designer and manufacturer of electric shuttles and small school buses agreed on Dec. 15 to go into receivership, waiving repayment of its loans and financing. The settlement has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cupola Infrastructure Income Fund filed a complaint Dec. 13 in Larimer County (Colorado) District Court asking a receiver be appointed over Lightning and its wholly owned subsidiary Lightning Systems Inc. The company agreed to the appointment of Cordes & Co. as the receiver.
Cordes sells Lightning’s assets to pay creditors, adding $3 million to Cupola. The company’s shareholders get any money. The New York Stock Exchange delisted Lightning on Tuesday because its shares had traded below the required $1 threshold for more than 30 consecutive days.
CEO and founder Tim Reeser maintained a courageous attitude during a June media field trip and corporate product campaign in Detroit, but he acknowledges the company’s precarious financial situation.
He expressed no regrets taking the company public via special purpose acquisition company GigCapital3 Inc., which valued the company at $586 million and raised $268 million that Lightning was promised at closing.
With 29% of shareholders in GigCapital3’s IPO3 buying back their shares early, Lightning made approximately $230 million.
“At the time, we needed a few hundred million dollars to scale,” Reeser said in June. “We were in COVID. The markets were very challenging. The capital markets were willing to give us a fair valuation. And we had to raise $230 million. ” We couldn’t have done it any other way. “
Separately, Lightning agreed Jan. 12 to settle a pending shareholder derivative action for $1.85 million plus $500,000 in plaintiff’s legal fees. A settlement hearing is scheduled for March 8 in federal court in Colorado.
IMC, the nation’s shipping company, has ordered 50 Nikola mobile fuel trucks for its operations in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Love’s Travel Stops and Daimler Truck North America have completed the rollout of Freightliner ExpressPoint at more Love’s Truck Care and Speedco locations.
Eaton Cummins Automated Transmission Technologies is offering the Endurant XD series automated transmission in International LT and HX models with the Cummins X15 engine.
That’s it for this week. Click here to get Truck Tech via email on Fridays. And catch the latest in major events and hear from the top players on Truck Tech at 3 p.m. Wednesdays on the FreightWaves YouTube channel. Your feedback counts. Please write to [email protected] with suggestions and comments on Truck Tech.
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