Charging infrastructure tries to catch up with electric truck demand – Marketplace

California recently withdrew its request to the federal government for a waiver that would have required trucks serving the nation’s busiest ports to electrify or be hydrogen-powered by 2035. Plenty of companies, though, are still investing in the future of electric trucking.

But building the right infrastructure to charge big rigs at scale requires a lot of the right pieces to fall into place.

In a concrete lot that’s less than an acre in size, dozens of clean, white rectangular truck chargers are lined up in rows. This is one of the largest electric semitruck charging depots in North America. The south Los Angeles County site is just down the road from the nation’s busiest ports.

“For fleets that want to electrify, this is literally the silver bullet of what they’ve been asking for,” says Jonathan Colbert with Voltera, the company that built the charging station in the city of Lynwood. He said these 65 chargers can power up to 200 trucks without trailers at a time. 

Big rig trucks that serve the ports typically travel less than 250 miles, bringing cargo from the ships to relatively nearby distribution centers. This charging station, for example, primarily serves shipping giant Maersk, says Colbert. 

And Voltera’s not the only provider. Charging infrastructure near the ports is growing right now, says Bruce Tuter with the California Air Resources Board. 

“That’s the thing — it wasn’t around. I mean, there was no need for it two years ago. Now, there’s a huge need, especially in areas such as where we are now, around the port,” Tuter says.

But the pace of building out the grid and connecting truck charging infrastructure to it is still too slow to meet the rising demand.

This project was completed in 18 months, which is a pretty fast timeline. The real estate was in a perfect location in an industrial-zoned area. The utility, Southern California Edison, already had the necessary power lines to connect the site.

But that’s not the norm, says Colbert. 

“We’re asking for, in some situations, more than a skyscraper’s worth of power in an acre or two-acre footprint, so they’re not really accustomed to being able to bring this amount of power online and quickly,” he says.  

Colbert adds that infrastructure is the first step in getting more fleets to electrify.