Transitioning trucking to a zero-emission future is challenging. OEMs are scaling up ZE production and developing new powertrains running on various fuel sources. But building out that fueling infrastructure has lagged and proved to be more difficult than some envisioned.
“There are people investing in the vehicle space ... Find somebody that’s doing something in the distribution space,” Dave Hull, regional VP of Bosch Rexroth, noted at an industry event in April.
It’s that age-old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” In the transportation sector, the question has now become, “Which comes first, the ZEV or the infrastructure?”
When Henry Ford started selling automobiles in the early 1900s, there were no gas stations. Gasoline demand sparked fueling infrastructure that has prospered for more than a century.
While more battery electric vehicles and alternative-fuel vehicles can be seen on the roads today, the vehicles have only been around for a short while. Yet, industry stakeholders are comparing EV and alternative fuel infrastructure to something that has been around longer than anyone alive remembers.
You can't blame fleet owners who are skeptical about keeping ZE equipment running if they don’t know where or how long it will take to refuel because generations of truck drivers have always just been a highway exit away from their next tankful of diesel.
But alternative fuel providers and ZE truck and van options are accelerating. With major OEMs setting a 2040 goal to be net-zero in North America, the traditional/alternative fuel infrastructure imbalance could dissipate within years.
FleetOwner takes a look at where the leading alt-fuel infrastructure for commercial fleets stands in the U.S., starting first with BEV charging infrastructure.
EV charging infrastructure
There are nearly 64,000 level 2 and direct-current, fast-charging public charging stations across the U.S., according to the Department of Energy. While that sounds like a significant number, only about 10,000 of those public charging stations are equipped with DC fast chargers, which are necessary for fleets that need a quick charge. Time is money.
Public fleet charging is less developed, yet, depending on location, fleets might find public charging options—even those that operate heavy-duty Class 7 and 8 vehicles.
Just last month in California, WattEV opened a heavy-duty charging station for public use—its third station in less than one month and fourth in total. The company plans to eventually build 16 charging stations, enabling the electrification of heavy-duty fleets all along the U.S. West Coast.
More organizations and companies are planning heavy-duty EV charging stations, such as Greenlane, a joint venture between Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy Resources, and BlackRock. Greenlane’s initial plans are to build an EV charging network along the highways from Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It also has plans to build more truck charging on the West Coast, Northeast, and Texas.
While there are public fleet charging sites in development, that isn’t enough to support nationwide EV adoption. Beyond the West Coast, public EV truck charging infrastructure development is more conceptual.
See also: What goes into planning an electric truck charging station?
Among the many factors contributing to slow EV charging infrastructure rollouts is cost. To help accelerate EV adoption, the Biden administration allocated $7.5 billion from the 2021 infrastructure law to go toward building a national charging network. But even with the money to fund charging infrastructure projects, other challenges remain.
The White House outlines the lack of EV charger standardization as another challenge. “There are multiple types of chargers and plugs in use, meaning that certain chargers only work with specific EV models,” according to a White House statement. To combat this, the administration established a minimum standard that requires all federally funded EV chargers to accommodate the widely used Combined Charging System and the North American Charging Standard, developed by Tesla.
Going beyond the challenges the White House outlined, EV charging infrastructure challenges persist, particularly with site development. Those challenges even impact fleets that have set aside land for EV charging development.
How fleets can start considering electrification
Fleets considering electrification should start the planning process early and begin by discussing with the utility company, Jason Haines, fleet electrification manager at Duke Energy, said. Building on-site charging infrastructure can take up to several years. During this process, the utility must evaluate a site’s existing electrical infrastructure, consider where the transformer and megawatts are located, and then discover the fleet’s end goal.
See also: NFI opens 'first-of-its-kind' charging depot in SoCal
Once the plans are understood, the fleet—and the utility company—should search for grants and incentives to fund the project. They will also need money to wire chargers, or, if necessary, the utility might upgrade the transformer as well as all the wiring, Mike Straub of Duke Energy said.
“If we have to run extra poles, extra wire, if we're doing some extra construction, then that revenue might not justify,” Straub explained, “and we might need to have that cost in aid of construction where it's that initial payment [from the fleet] to help with the cost of bringing those utilities to your facility.”
Haines said other obstacles include engineering studies and working with area landowners. “What you get into is, nobody wants a substation in their backyard; nobody wants new poles in their backyard,” Haines explained. “And we end up having to extend that line, work with a bunch of other homeowners, and work with other business owners and those types of things. Right away, that can take years.”
EV charging solutions for fleets
If fleets don’t have time to wait on utilities, there are other ways to electrify. Tim Owen, co-founder of Trinity Structures, an off-grid charging infrastructure installation provider, told FleetOwner that his company works with customers that have a much quicker deadline for EV charging infrastructure execution.
Trinity Structures is one of many companies that helps fleets build charging infrastructure via a microgrid. Fleets and even public EV truck charging stations are finding microgrids to be a solution where utilities can’t provide the power necessary for EVs to operate. These microgrids typically work through solar generation and battery storage. Implementing solar panels on-site for one of Trinity’s customers, Costco, allows the generation of up to 100 megawatts of energy annually, providing more than 11,000 hours of fleet charging.
See also: No juice, no EVs: Utilities weak link in fleet transition
Another EV charging solution for fleets is temporary charging infrastructure. There are multiple options for this type of charging offered by various providers in the industry. Some options are completely independent of the utility, and others require some utility involvement.
Mobile charging, temporary and deployed on wheels, is separate from the grid and can be placed anywhere. Yet because this type of charging solution has no grid connection, often its power source is a generator that runs on fossil fuels, although sometimes solar panels can be deployed to supplement some power needs.
Containerized charging, while connected to the grid, can often be deployed in a fraction of the time necessary to deploy full on-site EV charging infrastructure—in as little as six months from contracting to completion. This mobile or semi-permanent charging method places all electrical switchgear inside a container with charging connections placed on the container’s exterior walls. With containerized charging, fleets can scale power needs as the fleet size increases. One 20-ft. container can charge up to 20 vehicles, according to Ideanomics, a company that provides EV charging solutions to fleets. Fleets with more than 20 EVs can simply add another container to their site.
