WattEV will work with local government partners to build two depots along the I-5 corridor in California’s Central Valley and another in the city of Blythe on the California–Arizona border, with a combined total of 258 charging points. All three depots will include megawatts of solar panels and battery storage to provide clean power and reduce their hefty draw on power grids.
The depots will also feature the first rollout of WattEV’s megawatt charging stations, built to provide even faster charging speeds than today’s direct-current fast chargers. Its two Central Valley sites in Gustine and Taft will have 17 megawatt chargers alongside 175 standard DC fast chargers capable of delivering 350 kilowatts.
To be clear, the technology standards for megawatt charging systems are still in development, and no electric trucks on the road are capable of using them today. (Tesla has built its own proprietary fast-charging system now delivering 750 kilowatts of charging to its Tesla Semi electric trucks in early deployment in California.)
But WattEV CEO Salim Youssefzadeh said that planning ahead to support megawatt-scale charging is an important step in expanding the range of electric trucks. Today’s still-rare electric big rigs mainly run daily routes between ports and warehouses and delivery points.
Successive real-world test drives have shown that electric trucks can handle the sub-100-mile routes that make up the majority of freight-hauling trips today, and that the latest heavy-duty electric trucks can go hundreds of miles between charges.