While there has been a lot of pessimism lately, electric vehicle sales continue to grow, even if not as quickly as many had hoped. That includes commercial vehicles: According to Cox Automotive, 87 percent of fleet operators expect to add electric vehicles in the next five years, and more than half thought they were likely to buy electric vehicles this year. And where and when to plug these EVs in for charging is a potential headache for fleet operators.
The good news is that charging infrastructure is really growing. It doesn't always feel that way: The $7.5 billion allocated for charging infrastructure under the Inflation Reduction Act must be paid for through state departments of transportation, so the process there has been anything but quick. But according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, the total number of public charging plugs has doubled since 2020, to more than 144,000 Level 2 plugs and nearly 49,000 DC fast-charging plugs.
There are ways to throw off a planned timeline when building a multi-charger station. Clearly, you need the money to pay for all this – if it has to come from grants like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, which had to wait until the states each developed their own financing plans, and then open up for submissions, and so on. for example, before approving a project.
Permitting can cause many more delays, and then there is the need to send sufficient power to a location. “The challenge is to get the power to the points that need to be used. The great thing is that the rollout of electric cars does not happen overnight, but is staged. So that does offer some opportunities,” says Amber Putignano, market development leader. at ABB Electrification.
For example, ABB has worked with Greenlane, a $650 million joint venture between Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy Resources and BlackRock, to build a series of loading corridors along freight routes, starting with a 280-mile stretch of I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
