US Big-Truck Charging Has Private Money’s Attention
The weightiest trucks have been some of the slowest to electrify, despite producing an outsized share of the US transport sector’s emissions. That may be about to change.
A truck charging station located in Long Beach, California. While still a tiny market, medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks have slowly started to get to work in the US, especially as a replacement for diesel drayage freight trucks operating at ports.
Photographer: Bing Guan/BloombergHundreds of millions of dollars in grants awarded by state and federal programs have helped spur an influx of spending to develop EV chargers for the heaviest US trucks, which churn out more than their fair share of emissions but have been some of the slowest to transition away from petroleum-based fuels.
Greenlane Infrastructure LLC — the $675 million joint venture between Daimler Truck North America LLC, NextEra Energy Resources LLC and a BlackRock Inc. fund — just broke ground on the flagship site of the 280-mile commercial charging corridor it’s planning between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Terawatt Infrastructure Inc., which has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Vision Ridge Partners LLC, is building a network of heavy-duty charging stations connecting California’s Port of Long Beach to El Paso, Texas. WattEV, backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and Vitol, already operates several charging depots and has 15 more “grant-funded and shovel-ready covering the entire West Coast,” said Salim Youssefzadeh, WattEV’s chief executive officer.