EV charging for the U.S. freight trucking market is starting to scale
The Einride EV freight truck charging station in Lynwood, California, built by Voltera and located close to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Einride
One of the first EV charging stations of scale for freight trucks is opening near the major ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, as the trucking market takes some limited, but significant steps to build the infrastructure required for a long-term transition to EV trucking and net-zero shipping.
Built by Sweden-based freight mobility company Einride and EV charging infrastructure company Voltera, the Lynwood Smartcharger Station along Interstate 710 has 65 chargers and the ability to charge 200 vehicles a day, initially for routes run by global shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, which is also a venture investor in Einride, which was named to the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handles 29% of all ocean cargo container traffic coming into the U.S.
“The launch of Einride’s first Smartcharger station in the U.S. marks a momentous stride in establishing digital, electric freight as an important enabler to a more resilient U.S. freight system,” Robert Falck, CEO and founder of Einride, said in a statement.
Founded in 2016, Einride operates one of the largest fleets of heavy duty electric trucks for large companies, including Pepsi.
Voltera, which develops, owns and operates EV infrastructure, said the site was permitted, built, electrified and operational in under 18 months. “In the world of charging infrastructure, that’s pretty remarkable,” its CEO Matt Horton said in a statement.
Einride plans to open many EV charging stations for freight trucking on the West and East coasts, though California is the only state in which there are any EV freight charging stations of scale today. In addition to the new Lynwood station, logistics company NFI announced a freight EV charging station in February that can handle up to 50 trucks, including from Volvo, in a collaboration with Electrify America and Southern California Edison. The NFI EV charging station for port drayage trucks is located at its warehouse facility in Ontario, California, also a strategic location to serve the major southern California ports.
Due to the limitations that EV truck batteries face in range, trucking companies and EV partners are focusing on drayage transportation, and the movement of goods across short distances, for use at ports and intermodal logistics facilities.
Erik Neandross, CEO of transportation consultant GNA, which works with clients on low-carbon and zero-emissions freight, said servicing 50 trucks or more is a different level of magnitude than what’s been done to date in the freight market, but he added that it is still early in the development of EV charging at scale for trucks. “We’re super early. It’s fair to say we’re in the first half of the first inning. California really is the epicenter of activity at this scale and magnitude,” he said.
California’s government has been aggressive in offering grants and incentives to build EV infrastructure, and also approved its utilities to spend $750 million on the development, which makes a significant difference in a market where there are still few EV trucks on the road or charging stations in operation, making it difficult to prove the cost competitiveness versus diesel fuel.
Government and utility spending, combined with regulations to reach net zero by 2040 — and the need among major shippers such as consumer products companies and big-box retailers, from Pepsi to Walmart, to meet their own carbon goals — create an environment in which more investment across the U.S. freight market will be occurring.
The California Air Resources Board is requiring truck manufacturers to begin phasing in available heavy-duty EV technology this year, with expectations to have all zero-emission short-haul drayage fleets by 2035. Medium and heavy trucks make up only about 4% of vehicles in the U.S., but consume more than 25% of total highway fuel and represent nearly 30% of highway carbon emissions, according to the Department of Energy.
Additional EV charging projects at ports in New York and New Jersey, as well as the Pacific Northwest, are planned.
“Now is the time to test it before the next few fleet buying cycles,” Neandross said. “There is nothing like building the infrastructure to go out and see, learn. That’s where we are today.”
The entire supply chain, from the manufacturing of products, to a container being shipped all the way from Shanghai to Chicago, will require a complex net zero equation, and shippers and freight companies are targeting everything from energy use at plants to source materials, packaging and logistics. “To get to net zero, you have to do all of it,” Neandross said. “A lot of the companies we work with have been hard at work on the non-transport side. Take Pepsi, they’ve done all they can do to put in LED lights and buy renewable energy and maximize the efficiency of production. Now it’s time to get to work on trucks and the logistics side. It’s hard, but it has to be done.”
The Environmental Protection Agency released new emissions mandates for cars and pickups this week, and the EPA is expected to soon issue new emissions requirements for medium and heavy-duty trucks, which will make alternatives to diesel engines more competitive, including both compressed natural gas-powered trucks and zero-emission EV trucks.
Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch.
For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June.
We have extensively reported that this launch is disappointing compared to what Tesla promised for years: that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 are capable of self-driving.
Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now.
Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal.
That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data.
Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin.
However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report:
Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can launch the pilot service for customers.
For comparison, before launching its paid ride service in Austin, Waymo tested its vehicles with safety drivers in the area for 6 months and then without safety drivers for another 6 months.
Waymo has now taken over a significant market share of ride-hailing rides in the Texas capital, but it still has limitations; for example, it doesn’t drive on the interstate.
The report also mentions that Tesla has been working with local emergency services in Austin to develop intervention plans in order to avoid causing issues if its autonomous vehicles fail.
Electrek’s Take
This is the biggest softball goal. It’s a fraction of what was promised, it’s something that others have achieved before. It’s a punt created for Tesla to finally get a “win” in self-driving.
If they can’t even make it, it would be disastrous, but at least, I hope that it will finally open the eyes of many Tesla shareholders to the reality that Tesla is actually behind in autonomous driving and that Musk’s latest claims that Tesla will have “millions of robotaxi on the road” in 2026 are just the same as when he claimed it would happen in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019: corporate puffery.
My main concern now is for public safety. I have little hope of US regulators being able to stop Tesla considering Trump is firing anyone who got in Musk’s way after he gave him over $250 million.
If Tesla brings its cowboy approach to this, it could get bad quickly.
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The development of Rivian’s R2 validation builds continues to progress. We know so because the American automaker’s founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, continues to pepper us with welcome updates with plenty of fantastic images. The latest post features the inner workings of Rivian’s Maximus drive unit, which will propel the upcoming R2 EVs when they hit the market next year.
Another day, another exciting social media update from RJ Scaringe. Nine days ago, the Rivian CEO shared a peek at the company’s new Maximus drive unit, designed to be more compact and efficiently built to help reduce cost-per-unit production.
Our only look was from outside the drive unit’s casing at the time, but it was exciting news nonetheless. As an encore, Scaringe posted photos of the R2 validation builds on a pilot line at the automaker’s facility in Normal, Illinois.
This evening, Scaringe took to Instagram and X once again to share a better look at the inner workings of the Rivian Maximus drive unit. Check it out:
RJ shares more images of Rivian’s Maximus development
Rivian’s CEO posted the three images above, which showcase some interesting perspectives of the developing drive unit. As previously shared by Rivian, Maximus uses a new continuous winding technique that reduces the total welds per stator and thus the total overall cost of building each one.
For comparison, Rivian’s current Enduro drive unit requires 264 stator welds, while Maximus only needs 24. You can see the stator windings in the image above to the left. Scaringe shared excitement in the progress of the Rivian team’s Maximus drive unit as well as some insight in his post:
I love the packaging on Maximus — the drive unit for R2. It has a side mounted inverter that utilizes flat area at the end of the motor to minimize the length of bus bars, keeping them light and efficient. The large planar shape also allows all processing and power electronics to exist on a single printed circuit board.
The inverter chassis closes out the oil cooled motor cavity and seamlessly routes coolant from the power modules to the drive unit’s heat exchanger with no extra parts.
Overall, the inverter part count is reduced by 41% relative to Enduro and structural inverter lid saves more parts and fasteners by also serving as the drive unit mount. I love this design efficiency. (heart emoji)
Looks fantastic, RJ. We can’t wait to see the visual progress of the R2 you share next!
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On today’s thrilling episode of Quick Charge, we’ve a huge spike in global EV sales and a huge dip in Tesla deliveries. Plus a whole bunch of news from Toyota, including an updated bZ that’s just a bit better than before … but is a bit better going to make a big difference?
We’re also on track for more than 1 in 4 new cars sold this year to be electric, with a whole lot more hybrids coming in to make up the difference and drive fuel demand down to a new yearly low. All this, plus the top 5 cheapest EVs to insure when you hit the play button.
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