Bakersfield, California (ZeroRig.com) – WattEV joined forces with the Central California Asthma Collaborative on July 5th at an event hosted at WattEV’s Bakersfield location. WattEV’s Bakersfield charing depot will act to provide electric truck charging and a service branch for their truck-as-a-service (TaaS) truck leasing business.
WattEV’s CEO’s Vision for the Future
WattEV’s CEO Salim Youssefzadeh was present at the event. He gave a ceremonial speech and answered questions regarding WattEV and their plans for the future.
Youssefzadeh eloquently simplified WattEV’s core business to a single idea: “A way to get electrification without the hassle”. WattEV’s CEO explained their goal to “build out electric charging infrastructure along strategic corridors starting in Southern California … but also looking at other sites in other locations going all the way up to Sacramento and electrifying the I-5 corridor as well as the I-10 corridor and then eventually going nationwide.”
“What’s unique about this site compared to the other ones is that this is a greenfield site. We started from bare dirt and we’re building it out to something much larger than what you see in a traditional charging rest area”, said Salim Youssefzadeh. “At our Bakersfield location we actually have 115 acres to work with. Of that 115 acres, about 100 acres will be dedicated to solar. So that means we’ll be able to charge trucks without being tied to the grid … We’ll be able to go fully zero-emissions, with the source of energy as well, charging trucks with solar.”
The site will launch its initial stage with five megawatts of solar power, three megawatt-hours of battery storage, 16 dual-cord CCS chargers, and 15 240kW chargers. As demand grows the site will scale upwards in capability and power.
Right now the site will launch with CCS charging stations, which allow a class 8 truck to charge in two to three hours. However, Salim Youssefzadeh believes the future is with megawatt charging, where the same class 8 truck could charge to full in 30 to 45 minutes. “So that allows you to have something that’s nearly equivalent to a traditional rest area, where a trucker pulls in, does a fuel stop, has a quick break, and gets on the road again.”
Salim Youssefzadeh went on to discuss what makes WattEV’s truck-as-a-service offering different from existing TaaS providers: “Ours is focused exclusively on zero-emission trucks. Our offering is access to an electric truck all-inclusive of the vehicle, maintenance, partial insurance, and the charging all for a fixed price per month. Now the carriers don’t have to worry about how much the cost of the truck is to them, where they’re going to charge, how often they need to charge – all of those unknowns are now bundled up into our TaaS solution and guaranteed to them through our all-inclusive solution.”
The Impact on Local Asthma Cases
ZeroRig spoke with Jennelle Spannel of the Central California Asthma Collaborative regarding their participation in yesterday’s event at WattEV.
“We reach out to those in the community who are on Medi-Cal and have an asthma diagnosis”, said Jenelle. “We’re here to promote avenues of awareness on asthma.”
When asked about what excites her about the electric trucking future, Jennelle has the following to say: “I think cleaner air is going to help us. I’ve seen what the air quality is doing to people with asthma, COPD, and other respiratory issues, and for them to breathe better would be a really great goal”.
Central California Asthma Collaborative hosts and runs EVequity.org, a website dedicated to electric vehicle education, rebates, incentives, and infrastructure work. “We work with counties and cities across the San Joaquin Valley to get them up to par on streamlining and permitting electric vehicle infrastructure”, said Gustavo with the Central California Asthma Collaborative during his opening remarks.