Jonathan Colbert of Voltera is one of the company’s high-capacity chargers at its Lynwood, California facility.
Photo: Chris Brown
EV charging infrastructure is not one size fits all, particularly for truck fleet operators.
When incorporating EVs, truck and trucking fleets face a wider initial cost gap between traditional gas or diesel trucks and electric trucks. Electric trucks also require greater on-site power, requiring a more costly and elaborate charging infrastructure buildout.
But the pressure for electrification is strong, especially in California. On January 13, 2025, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) rescinded its waiver request to the EPA to put into effect its Advanced Clean Fleet (ACT) rule, which required maximum types of advertising cars to be allowed (including drayage fleets) in California. transition to ZEV, with all ZEV purchases through 2036. Hauling fleets will charge only zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) starting in 2024.
However, CARB’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation, which requires manufacturers of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) in California, is still in effect.
According to Matt Schrap, executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association, 75% of heavy-duty truck fleets will have to qualify third-party sites due to financing issues, structure delays and owners’ reluctance to break up concrete in their lots.
As a result, many charging infrastructure corporations have come online. Their fleets comply without needing to invest millions in an on-site warehouse.
With investments from government programs, federal grants, corporate investments, equity funds, and venture capital funds, those infrastructure corporations have innovated in many places over the past four years, primarily in California, and many more will come online in 2025.
Its charging stations have Wi-Fi, food and beverage services, and rest spaces for drivers. They also connect to software so fleet managers and drivers can make charging reservations, monitor charging activity and manage charging schedules.
But beyond the amenities, service models vary. They’re generally divided into two types:
Here’s a look at the corporations they offer in California and beyond:
The style of Voltera, an expansion company, owner and operator of charging infrastructure, founded in Palo Alto, is to expand the sites founded on the desires of the fleets and then dedicate them to charging and other services.
Vice President of Marketing, Jonathan Colbert, described Voltera’s style as infrastructure as a service. “We own the land, we expand it and we put all the infrastructure in place, allowing the fleets to operate,” he said in an on-site interview with Automotive Fleet.
“We offer fleets as a service because we supply vehicles. »
In March 2024, Voltera opened a location in Lynwood, California, to serve drayage fleets at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The site has 65 stands with capacity for Class 8 electric trucks, which charge up to 200 vehicles per day. The 7. 7 megawatt station has the capacity to produce 11 megawatts.
First of all, the site was developed to meet the wishes of the Swedish shipping company Einride, which specializes in sustainable freight transport. Einride ships electric trucks from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for Maersk, the Danish shipping giant.
Voltera recently opened the site’s availability to other fleets, highlighting another facet of their business style they call “co-location. ” Like a residential development, fleets rent one or more booths and a percentage of the on-site amenities. “We are not a public charging network,” Colbert said. “We are committed to building hubs for our fleet consumers closer to ports to meet the drayage use case. ”
In addition to Lynwood, Voltera has a site under development in Wilmington, which also serves the Port of Long Beach, and some others near the Port of West Sacramento. Some 17 sites are in stages of progression in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Georgia. Many of those sites will be online in the first part of 2025.
“The portfolio today is on a two to three-year timeline (bringing sites online along the way),” Colbert said. “We’ll continue to keep buying sites as we’re developing.”
Voltera’s planned charging sites will primarily serve drayage fleets with an infrastructure-as-a-service model.
Source: Voltera
Founded in 2022, Greenlane also uses an infrastructure-as-a-service style to rate medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks, but publicly offers pay-as-you-go raters.
Unlike Voltera at the ports, Greenlane places sites along major freight corridors, such as the 280-mile stretch of Interstate 15 between Long Beach and Las Vegas, to service port cars and long-haul operations. distance. 15 in Colton, Barstow and Baker, California, and the Colton site is expected to be completed during the first quarter of 2025.
Greenlane has done predictive modeling to determine the number of chargers necessary to meet regional demand in the 1-15 corridor.
“Our results indicated that attacking the three stations at a distance of approximately 60 to 90 miles would maximize taxi driver availability during daylight hours by allowing for shorter charging sessions at each stop and ultimately allow consumers to move their products with confidence, without limitations. Patrick Macdonald-King, Greenlane’s chief executive, said in a press release.
The initial WattEV charging room structure will be located along Interstate Five from Southern California to Seattle, Washington.
Source: WattEV
The goal of the TaaS model is to minimize capital investment by providing access to electric trucks at a per-mile or per-route rate nearly on par with diesel, which includes the vehicles and costs around charging infrastructure, installation, and maintenance.
WattEV also provides charging to fleets that bring their electric trucks.
In July 2023, WattEV opened an electric charging depot for medium and heavy-duty trucks at the Port of Long Beach. With 5 megawatts of power, the site’s 13 dual-cord fast chargers can charge 26 trucks concurrently.
In May 2024, WattEV opened its fourth location in Bakersfield, California, with a solar microgrid and battery-powered garage system.
Like Greenlane, WattEV plans to build networks along freight corridors. Its first targets are locations along Interstate 5 from Southern California through Seattle, Washington.
In May, San Francisco-based Forum Mobility broke ground on a charging depot at the Port of Long Beach. Now operational, the 9-megawatt site has 44 charging stalls and can accommodate 200 electric drayage trucks daily for multiple fleet operators.
Forum Mobility offers a flexible style of service in which operators can qualify their vehicles, such as a truck rental option combined with freight services.
“If bundling a truck with cargo, like you get a cell phone with your cell phone plan, is easy for you, great,” said Matt LeDucq, CEO of Forum Mobility, in an interview with Automotive Fleet at the ceremony. inauguration of the site. in May 2024. “You can decide what works. »
The company is opening new sites in Compton, Inland Empire, Oakland, and Stockon to serve drayage routes.
Forum Mobility executives, fleet executives, and politicians inaugurate the Forum Mobility Charging Station at the Port of Long Beach, California, in May 2024.
Photo: Chris Brown
Zeem Solutions, one of the “grandfathers” of truck charging, opened its first EV charging depots near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in 2021. The adjacent tanks have a total of 10 megawatts for 78 DC fast charging ports, 53 Level 2 qualifiers. and the ability to qualify and purchase on site more than two hundred medium and heavy vehicles.
Zeem, which targets transportation hubs, ports, airports and distribution centers, is lately setting up depots at the ports of Long Beach, Newark, New Jersey and Savannah, Georgia. The Long Beach project will include 84 DC fast-charging ports with a capacity of 15 megawatts that can service 500 trucks per day.
Zeem Solutions’ CEO Paul Gioupis calls the model Transportation-as-a-Service or E-Fleet-as-a-Service.
Fleets can rent electric trucks, park and charge day and night at Zeem depots and get regime maintenance, inspection and cleaning facilities for a monthly fee. Drivers are also provided with secure parking for personal vehicles and a lounge area.
Zeem also offers CaaS for fleets requiring rental-free charging infrastructure, such as ride-sharing, last-mile delivery, and rental car operations.
James T. Butts, mayor of Inglewood, Calif. , cuts the ribbon at the opening of Zeem Solutions’ warehouse at LAX. Paul Gioupis, CEO and co-founder of Zeem, is to the right of Butts.
Photo by: ZeemSolutions
The power demands of Level 2 depot or home charging are trifling compared to the needs of larger truck fleets, which require enough juice to power a skyscraper or a small town. How much power can be delivered to a site depends on substation capacity, grid upgrades, utility approval processes, environmental permits, and lead time for equipment such as switchgear.
Existing charging companies have first-mover advantages: While Voltera’s Lynwood site was up and running in 18 months, and WattEV’s Bakersfield depot took only 16 months, new players — whether public or behind the fence — may face much longer timelines.
“Some Los Angeles fleets are waiting up to five years to receive mandatory force upgrades,” said Michelle Brown of Pioneer eMobility at a freight seminar at the 2024 Fleet Forward Conference (FFC).
“It’s like a gold rush right now, looking to get in line as temporarily as possible,” Colbert said of Voltera. “No two public facilities operate the same way. It’s hard to put that (power) online.
This raises the opportunity for these companies to arbitrage energy to newcomers. “We will be entering a phase where those with a substantial amount of power will have a wonderful asset,” said LeDucq of Forum Mobility.
Voltera hopes the Lynwood site will provide electric power to public charging network providers.
During elongated timelines, temporary charging infrastructure can bridge the gap.
Pioneer eMobility’s natural gas-powered “sliding microgrids” can be deployed until the power grid can be established, or they can remain in place to deal with outages.
Solar is another off-grid option. WattEV’s Bakersfield depot features a solar-powered microgrid with a battery energy storage system. Zeem is planning on solar for its LAX depot. Out of the site’s 10 megawatts of available grid power, an array of solar canopies could provide half to three-quarters of a megawatt of juice to charge vehicles.
“Temporary charging products may become permanent answers as the market matures,” Zeem’s Gioupis said at the FFC seminar.
In some applications, such as explained sales and service routes and last-mile deliveries in electric advertising vans and smaller mid-size trucks, electrification makes monetary sense.
But with present battery technology, the current crop of electric Class 8 trucks must charge about every 200 miles to operate within a 10% to 80% battery capacity band. That makes drayage’s shorter duty cycle the least disruptive from an operational standpoint.
As battery generation develops, megawatt fast charging (MCS) can help. The MCS can reduce truck downtime from hours to less than 30 minutes for a full charge.
The WattEV in Bakersfield gives MCS charging with 3 1,200 kW rapid chargers that draw force from the ‘s sun array. When operational, Greenlane’s Colton Station will host the MCS.
Greenlane’s Allen Nielsen told the FFC seminar that the company plans to integrate more MCS through 2027 or 2028, although he noted that existing generation still limits fast, high-capacity charging.
Even with MCS, avoiding each and every 200-mile long-haul cycle doesn’t make sense.
“Over time, we’re moving toward wanting a big technological change to accommodate longer routes,” Colbert told AF. “We’re moving to get closer and closer. This will move from hauling to mid-mile, and then we’ll start to see more using long-term instances. It’ll be a five- to 10-year timeline for it to make sense.
The need for power is increasing. According to the California Energy Commission, California will need about 157,000 chargers for medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks to meet CARB’s advanced clean fleet mandate through 2030.
However, while the fleet and transportation industries require a great deal of power, they have a huge festival of knowledge farms coming online to serve e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies.
“People think that we (infrastructure companies) are going to take a lot of things off the grid,” LeDucq said. “We’re just a ‘side chip’ of what Meta is building. “
Related: Why Reliable EV Charging Requires Massive New Resources
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