TeraWatt announces first interstate EV charging network for trucks

San Francisco startup TeraWatt Infrastructure on Thursday announced it’s developing the first network of electric vehicle-charging centers for heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks along the Interstate 10 highway, stretching from Long Beach, California, to the El Paso, Texas, area.

The company, which raised more than $1 billion this year to build charging infrastructure, said the facilities will be located about 150 miles apart and less than one mile from the nearest highway exits across California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Medium and heavy trucks make up only about 4% of vehicles in the U.S., but because of their larger size and greater travel distances the vehicles consume more than 25% of total highway fuel and represent nearly 30% of highway carbon emissions, according to the Department of Energy.

“While there is a limited number of electric long-haul trucks on the road today, these vehicles are coming sooner than we think and we need the charging infrastructure to be ready,” TeraWatt CEO Neha Palmer told CNBC.

TeraWatt’s charging centers will feature dozens of direct current fast chargers, pull-through charging stalls and on-site driver amenities for long-haul and local electric-trucking operations, the company said. The first sites are set to come online in 2023.

The announcement comes after the Biden administration this year rolled out a plan to allocate $5 billion to states to fund EV chargers along interstate highways as part of the bipartisan infrastructure package.

In September, the Department of Transportation approved EV-charging station plans for all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico covering about 75,000 miles of highways. States also have access to more than $1.5 billion to help construct the chargers.

The Biden administration has set a target for EVs to make up half of all new vehicle sales by 2030 and has pledged to replace its federal fleet with electric power by 2035.