In 2026, battery-electric vehicle charging opportunities are increasing, both public and private, and technologies, efficiency gains, and smart decisions can help fleets control costs during the transition to electric vehicles. And sure, the move toward electric vehicles will increase energy demand, but not as much as something that is shaping up to be a much larger consumer of electricity.

Commercial Charging Availability

While charging sites for passenger vehicles have grown, is charging availability for commercial vehicles increasing as well? Yes.

There are more and more charging sites breaking ground, according to CALSTART, which tracks public charging availability in California.

“Availability for fleets within their depots is steadily increasing, and many incentives for equipment, as well as new emerging vendors, are decreasing the costs of installations; as far as publicly available sites, this is emerging at the moment. Some sites have broken ground or are about to break ground this year,” said Stacey Simms, CALSTART senior director, clean fuels and infrastructure.

“There’s no doubt the industry has learned a lot about electrification in the past decade. In the early days many, if not most, fleets thought very big,” said Scott Griffith, Workhorse CEO. “They launched aggressive charging infrastructure projects and big bets. We’re now seeing fleets moving more deliberately, strategically, and in phases.”

Griffith said that depot-based charging, in particular, is well understood, widely deployed, and increasingly standardized for medium-duty and return-to-base operations. 

“We believe our space, depot-based Class 4-6, is the sweet spot for electrification. These vehicles can charge off-peak, use Level 2 charging, and optimize routes based on range and charging capability,” Griffith added.

He also pointed out that public charging is expanding, with more DC fast-charging sites coming online that can support commercial use. While availability still varies by region, Griffith called the overall trajectory “positive” and noted that fleets today have far more options than they did even a few years ago.

Growth & Reliability of Private & Public Charging Sites

Reliability has improved significantly for private charging sites, according to Griffith.  He shared that fleets operating today areseeing consistent, dependable performance from well-designed depot charging systems,particularly when paired with monitoring and managed charging software. Plus, hardware costs arecoming down across the board, and smart route planning can optimizecharging levels.

Rick Mihelic, NACFE director of emerging technologies, said there are now more than 3,200 heavy-duty truck charging stations in the United States. In one of NACFE’s recent Run on Less programs, there were some battery-electric trucks running cross-country, including one that traveled from Texas to Sacramento, California.

“What was interesting is that's a heavy-duty Class 8 truck, and they were able to find charging all along that route in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as where you would expect it, in California, but they also found it in Texas,” Mihelic said.

He explained the truck simply used charging sites at places like Walmart, chargers designed for passenger cars, yet they could charge a Class 8 truck. He noted that many car-charging locations now offer Class 2 or higher charging, which he said can be used by light- and medium-duty vehicles.

“So capacity is not really the issue where it was five or six years ago. There's a lot of capacity out there for those light-duty and medium-duty vehicles in the public sector,” Mihelic added.

Simms, however, said private sites are encountering reliability issues, and vendors are looking for ways to improve. 

“There are a lot of avenues emerging to increase reliability,” Simms added. “One key development is that vendors are emerging with dedicated monitoring tools to assess issues; additionally, vendors of infrastructure increasingly feature service guarantees to provide real-time reporting of uptime and availability. As it is usually operated by one fleet, or a small handful of fleets with tight coordination, the variables for operational management are fewer.”

She suggested that fleets plan for hiccups and don’t wait for perfect reliability; instead, go ahead now and lock in vendor agreements. Simms also suggested fleets enter the transition with an understanding of how much downtime they can tolerate and the impact on operations. It is good for fleets to build downtime management services or processes into their risk management plan with the chosen vendor or charging service, she recommended. 

“Plan holistically, and not as if this new technology should perform exactly like previous technology,” Simms said.

Creatively Charging to Extend Range

During NACFE’s recent Run on Less - Messy Middle, one of the fleets was doing long-haul with a Tesla semi-truck during the day. 

The Tesla, operating in California, traveled from Stockton to Bakersfield and back at night, and when it returned to the depot, it connected to a high-rate charger for 30 minutes to an hour. Then the next driver arrived and ran an urban delivery route during the day. After the second route, the truck returned to the depot and was charged for a few hours to prepare for the long-haul run the next day.

Mihelic recalled that the fleet achieved 860 miles in a single day with two drivers in a single electric truck. 

“That's pretty decent miles,” he said.

Fleet BEV Adoption Considerations in 2026 

What should fleets consider before expanding BEV adoption in 2026?

“Hands down, the consideration we see and hear from our top-tier fleets is cost comparability,” Griffith said.

He said the new Workhorse (which combined with Motiv Power Systems, Inc. in December 2025) has delivered more than 60% savings compared with internal combustion engines (ICE) in fuel and maintenance costs. 

“If fleet managers arestrategic about how they build their infrastructure and how they design their routes, the move toelectric makes strong financial sense,” Griffith explained. “As we continue to see the evolution to a hub-and-spokedistribution model, serving the mid- and last-mile routes can be done cost-efficiently byBEV.”

Griffith offered 12 considerations for fleets to weigh over the next two years to move from early adoption to what he termed confident scaling. Those considerations are:

• Operational alignment

• Matching vehicles to routes where electrification delivers immediate value

• Understanding seasonal energy use and dwell time

• Training drivers and operations teams for consistency and efficiency

• Infrastructure planning

• Engaging utilities early and designing sites with growth in mind

• Building infrastructure that supports phased expansion

• Implementing managed charging from the outset

• Economics and strategy

• Evaluating the total cost of ownership with improving vehicle performance and incentive stability

• Standardizing deployments across sites to reduce complexity

• Integrating vehicles, chargers, and energy management into a single operational view

CALSTART’s Simms suggested fleets moving toward electrification should:

• Talk to cargo owners: Understand cargo owners’ appetite for electric transport services and their future needs. Specifically, understand if there is more business to be gained by switching to BEVs, and whether this would offset any headaches involved in transitioning part of your operations.

• Think long-term: Plan beyond next year—map out multi-year service strategies. Don’t just stick with technology readiness questions, but look more holistically into the issue, also with your customers.

• Stay flexible: Charging-as-a-service or shared sites can reduce infrastructure headaches and operationally absorb technology transition issues, or issues faced by upgrading a facility and owning/operating technology by yourself. 

• Do the math: Weigh route changes, reliability, and other technology questions against potential new business opportunities and efficiencies. 

• Be proactive: Identify risks early so you can negotiate confidently with your customers and your technology vendors. 

Growing Energy Demand & Fleet Electrification

How is the growing energy demand expected to affect fleet electrification?

According to GridStrategies1, forecasts indicate that total electricity use will increase by 32% by 2030. Griffith pointed out that this may lead to increased rates, thereby possibly making charging more expensive.

“Thatsaid, the cost savings of using electrons versus liquid fuels is so significant we believe electrictrucks will still be able to offer fleet operators significant operational savings,” Griffith said. “On top of that, weexpect to see the cost of batteries continue to drop and charging management systems andother software to continually improve, offering fleets other ways to reduce overall costs. Last,each generation of truck that companies like Workhorse make is more efficient in terms ofbattery usage and range than the previous.”

He also noted that rising demand encourages smarter charging strategies, such as shifting load to off-peak hours, smoothing demand, and improving overall grid efficiency.

“Fleet charging is a tiny slice of overall grid growth if utilities are bringing power to data centers; utilities should be able to handle charging sites,” Simms said. “Utilities are increasingly planning in advance. We also see that investments for the overall growth of the grid in certain areas (as with data centers) can spill over to address huge logistics sector growth in major clusters and new energy-land real estate bundles.“

Mihelic also pointed to data centers as a major driver of electricity demand. 

“When it comes to demand, as more electric vehicles come on the market, it's not going to have a huge impact on electricity demand,” Mihelic said. “The bigger demand increase is coming out of a huge growth in data centers in the United States. They're projecting demand for data center power going up by 35% over the next few years, with gigawatts of capacity that have to be added to the network.”

Simms also noted that short-term fixes such as battery storage, mobile charging, and charger management systems can provide fleets with flexibility to build timelines or insulate operations from buildout challenges. Charging-as-a-service providers can also absorb fleet operations during the buildout of a charging system or even become an alternative to near-term facility upgrades. 

One of the fleets that participated in NACFE’s Run on Less - Electric Depot in 2023 was waiting to get its permanent charging installation in place, and the timing just wasn't right for them to have permanent charging during Run-On-Less. 

“So, they brought in mobile charging capabilities, and they were able to charge their trucks, their heavy-duty Class 8 trucks, using mobile chargers that were connected to their building. It worked out well,” Mihelic said.  “They found out that they could actually charge more vehicles per day than they were expecting, and so it helped increase the capacity of trucks that they were going to be able to service when they got their permanent charging facility in.”

“I've seen multiple times that fleets are starting to realize that they can get their trucks rolling a lot faster if they bring in mobile charging systems,” he added. “They can get their charging in place and start using the trucks while they're waiting for the utilities and the city planners and everything to work the details out on their long-term charging capacity.”

Cost: Electricity as a Fuel

Mihelic expects the cost of electricity, and thereby charging rates, will probably increase over the next few years because of pressure on the demand side. 

“It takes several years for the generation of power to increase significantly. You have to build power plants, you have to build solar farms, you have to build battery capacity for the utilities, and you have to build transmission lines,” he explained.

He said that over time, maybe in 2030 or 2040 or somewhere in between, the instability in pricing will go down and drive rates down. 

“If you put in an electric vehicle now, your rates may go up a little bit over the next few years, and then they'll go down, probably. You can offset that by being smarter about how you use your energy through things like managing charging software that looks at when you charge your vehicles versus when you use your vehicles,” he added.