WattEV, one of the nation’s leading commercial-truck charging infrastructure developers, has opened the USA’s largest charging station of its kind for electric heavy-duty trucks at the Port of Long Beach.
At a grand opening ceremony July 24 attended by key industry, government and environmental partners and stakeholders, WattEV co-founder and CEO Salim Youssefzadeh credited them all for how quickly the depot came online.
“There was a tremendous amount of effort that went into getting this site operational within 14 months,” said Youssefzadeh.
“WattEV has been working on opening four depots in California for the past few years. The Long Beach depot was actually the last of the four to go under contract and into development, but it’s the first to open!”
Branded simply as “WattEV,” the depot is located directly adjacent to the Pier-A terminal in the Port of Long Beach (POLB) and will serve heavy-duty electric trucks with routes connecting to inland destinations throughout Southern California.
“We are here to celebrate the accomplishment of WattEV’s energization of 13 chargers—the largest public heavy-duty charging depot in the nation,” said Commissioner Patty Monahan of the California Energy Commission.
Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, added: “I’m so proud of the public-private partnership that this project represents. This is a major milestone to that zero-emission future we are building.”
The site features 13 dual-cord CCS 360KW chargers with the ability to charge 26 trucks concurrently with 5MW of power provided by Southern California Edison (SCE).
“We also plan to add megawatt charging at this depot which allows pass-through trucks to be charged in 20 minutes,” Youssefzadeh said.
Also delivering remarks at the WattEV grand opening were U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach; Port of Long Beach board President Sharon Weismann; and Katy Sloan of SCE, among others.
The POLB project is the first of several WattEV electric truck charging depots in the works throughout California, including warehouse districts in nearby Gardena, inland near San Bernardino, and north in Bakersfield. The WattEV POLB Depot will serve as the southern anchor of WattEV’s planned electric-truck charging freight corridor, which will incrementally connect to major freight routes throughout the West.
The new charging depot will serve WattEV’s growing fleet of electric trucks operating on its Truck-as-a-Service platform, hauling freight to and from the combined ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which receive some 40 percent of the nation’s containerized imports.
The depot’s CCS system is the current charging standard for heavy-duty electric trucks, while the new MCS standard for faster charging systems is being finalized.
When trucks with megawatt charging capability become available, more pass-through e-truck bays are planned at the POLB charging plaza, featuring the faster, higher-power Megawatt Charging System (MCS), rated for charging at up to 1.2 megawatts.
