A new heavy-duty electric truck charging station is opening near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in southern California, but the electricity powering it isn’t as new-age as the vehicles it charges. Though capable of charging up to 96 trucks at a time, the station is backed by natural gas, which is cleaner than dozens of trucks burning diesel but not the green solution many had probably hoped for.
The two companies behind the effort, Performance Team (Maersk) and Prologis, have said the station would eventually become hydrogen-powered, removing the fossil fuel element from the equation, but Electrek reported that there is no timeline in place for that conversion. Solar isn’t an option because there isn’t enough real estate for the panels.
Despite its old-school fuel-burning power source, the charging station will work during power outages, keeping logistics flowing out of some of America’s busiest ports. Electric big rigs are still a rarity on our roads today, but their number will grow as more players jump into the game.
It’s hard to knock the charging station too much, but it would be nice to know when the hydrogen changeover will happen. Diesel semi-trucks are loud, and a fleet of electric trucks could remove thousands of tons of carbon and diesel particulates from the air each year. The charging station located near major port access could play a significant role in that effort, as the shorter-range, “last-mile” logistics would be a perfect use case for electrification.
[Image: ADLC via Shutterstock]
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