Electric transportation developer WattEV announced the construction of its 26-truck charging plaza at the Port of Long Beach – the largest public truck charging station in the nation – is completed and scheduled to open for public electric truck charging use.

WattEV announced the Long Beach station opening during the annual Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo industry conference.

What is WattEV?

The growing population of heavy-duty electric trucks running in and out of the nation's busiest ocean port complex now can charge up at the nation's largest public electric truck charging spot. 

Branded as "WattEV," the depot is located directly adjacent to the Pier-A terminal in the Port of Long Beach (POLB). It will serve heavy-duty electric trucks with routes connecting to inland destinations throughout Southern California.

The WattEV facility will support the first batch of 14 Nikola electric trucks operating on WattEV's zero-emission fleet transportation platform. The fleet is expected to expand to more than 100 electric trucks by the end of 2023, with the opening of additional charging depots in Southern California.

The current WattEV fleet will haul freight daily from the POLB to warehouses as far away as Hesperia, some 94 miles away.

Salim Youssefzadeh, chief executive officer of WattEV, said the POLB charging depot is designed to serve electric truck operations throughout the San Pedro Bay ports complex and is the first of several WattEV electric truck charging depots in the works throughout California, including warehouse districts in nearby Gardena and inland near San Bernardino.

"This charging station is the southern anchor of our planned electric-truck charging freight corridor, which will incrementally connect to all the major freight routes throughout California, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada," Youssefzadeh said.

Charging Up the Future

The new charging depot will serve WattEV's fleet of electric trucks and other fleets electrifying their trucking operations to and from the combined ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which receive some 40% of the nation's containerized imports.

Combined, the ports have some 20,000 trucks in their registries using combustion engines, more than 25% older than 10 years. Both ports have been setting clean air goals for nearly two decades, intending to have 100% zero-emission trucks serving the ports by 2035.

"Our truck-charging depot at the Port of Long Beach is a major step towards enabling transporters to transition to zero-emission trucking," Youssefzadeh said.

On opening, WattEV's POLB e-truck charging plaza will feature 26 charging bays using Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors to provide power at up to 360 kilowatts. The CCS system is the current charging standard for heavy-duty electric trucks, while faster charging systems are under development.

When trucks with megawatt charging capability become available, four 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.