Long Beach, California (ZeroRig.com) –  Today in Long Beach California the nation’s largest public electric truck charging station held its grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony. The station is owned by WattEV, a growing infrastructure and Trucks as a Service (TaaS) company, and operations are set to begin immediately.

WattEV’s ribbon cutting ceremony on July 24th, 2023 was visited by regulators, politicians, and industry leadership.

The station features 5 MW of power along with the infrastructure and installations to support 26 simultaneous trucks charging on 360 kW chargers. Plans are in motion to support megawatt charging stations, which will cut charging times for a Class 8 vehicle from three hours to thirty to forty-five minutes, and allow trucks in high-uptime industries like drayage to see electric vehicles as a viable option for daily operations.  

WattEV’s TaaS business model allows would-be electric truck owner-operators to lease heavy-duty vehicles on a monthly basis for an all-inclusive fee, which includes partial insurance, maintenance, vehicle charging, and route guidance. Many small owner-operators have been hesitant to purchase an electric Class 8 vehicle because they generally cost three to four times as much as a traditional diesel vehicle. However, many sources of funding are available to those buyers in the form of incentives and vouchers, including the California HVIP program. 

WattEV is lowering the risk and overhead costs associated with supporting an electric vehicle fleet by taking ownership of the charging infrastructure and removing obstacles for fleets to get started. Until today, electric vehicles were the domain of large fleets with resources to support dedicated charging depots for their own operations. Now, for perhaps the first time ever, “small time” owner-operators can get involved with electric big-rigs without the impossibility of managing the charging infrastructure alongside the trucks. In short, WattEV is making electric trucking accessible to independent entrepreneurs and self-employed truckers.

The event was hosted by Bob Foster, the former Mayor of Long Beach. Today’s speakers included Congressman Robert Garcia, Patty Monahan of the California Energy Commission, David Chow of CALSTART, Katie Sloan of Southern California Edison, Liane Randolph of California Air Resources Board, and Salim Youssefzadeh of WattEV. 

We look forward to continuing developments from WattEV as they open more truck charging depots, connecting transit corridors from Long Beach to Sacramento and eastward into Arizona.

To put things in perspective, Commissioner Monahan highlighted that California will need approximately 160k DC Fast Chargers to support 180k medium and heavy duty electric trucks by 2030.