Electric Trucks Put to the Test in I-95 Corridor Charger Program

The Biden administration’s plan to invest $250 million to kick-start electric trucking in the Northeast corridor is facing uncertainty with a trucking industry whose needs and desires can be hard to anticipate.

Under the newly funded Clean Corridor Coalition plan, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut will install chargers capable of topping up electric trucks along Interstate 95, one of the nation’s busiest highways. The plan is key to the administration’s climate pollution reduction goals, as it will prevent 18.6 million tons of carbon from being emitted by 2050, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates.

But it’s far from a sure thing that trucking companies will play along. Zero-emission trucks only make up .23% of the nation’s registered trucks, at least partly because battery-electric trucks cost two to three times as much as their diesel equivalents, according to the American Trucking Associations.

The factors that feed into a trucking company’s fleet decisions are so complex that it’s nearly impossible to predict where the industry as a whole will go, said Jacqueline Gelb, ATA’s vice president of energy and environmental affairs.

“Every fleet is a snowflake,” Gelb said. “They’re all different. They’re set up differently, they run different routes, they have different types of customers, they purchase equipment on different timelines, they use different technology. There’s not a clear-cut answer.”

For example, some trucking companies are already committed to advanced diesel technology; some have older fleets than others, meaning they stand to derive more in operational savings; some employ drivers who prefer one type of truck over another; some rely more heavily on freight trucking as their primary source of revenue than others, which only ship products out of necessity; and some simply have more of an appetite for experimentation than others, Gelb said.

Typically in the trucking industry, the larger players lead the way by experimenting in a small way, and “then it trickles down,” Gelb said. “The mid-size fleets and smaller fleets can then get proof points. That’s how technology gets adopted and disseminated.”

That could already be happening. J.B. Hunt, Schneider National, and Old Dominion Freight Line—three of the nation’s biggest trucking companies—have all made electric truck purchases recently. A Schneider spokeswoman said the company now has almost 100 battery electric trucks on the road, and last June built its own charging depot in Southern California.

The Northeast corridor coalition’s funding was announced in late July as part of a $4.3 billion package for climate projects across the nation. The awards, known as Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, were authorized by the 2022 climate law and are politically important to the Biden administration because they let the White House show voters tangible evidence of its accomplishments.

Making the First Move

The Biden administration’s strategy of creating supply and hoping demand will follow is a necessary step, because someone—either the federal government, state governments, the trucking industry, or power distributors—has to make the first move, said Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress.

“Everyone’s looking at each other, saying, ‘OK, you go first,’” DeGood said. “Everyone’s facing the risk of being the first mover. So having the government de-risk that by being the first mover is really important. That’s exactly what you want government to do.”

That’s the way the Biden administration sees it, too.

“A lot of times you see the government taking on incentives,” said Lisa Garcia, regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2, which includes New Jersey, the lead state under the Clean Corridor Coalition. “You saw that with solar panels. Historically you have seen the government saying, ‘We’re going to help you get there, and here are the incentives.’”

In a best-case scenario, electric trucking will prove so popular that more routes will sprout up through the mid-Atlantic and even down to the Southern states, Garcia said.

The new charging stations could even send a signal to private motorists, who will be able to see trucks powering up with plugs instead of tanking up on diesel fuel, she said.

Location a Key Factor

Much of the corridor’s success will hinge on whether the chargers are placed in convenient locations that truckers can easily access, experts said.

Those decisions will be hammered out during a planning process that will include public input and a competitive bidding process, according to a spokesman at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Until then, as a first step it makes sense to consider existing rest stops and truck stops that drivers already know and are comfortable with, Garcia said. But that might not be possible because trucking companies will likely want megawatt chargers to top themselves off quickly, and that kind of power may not be available at existing truck stops, said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

“It has to do with exactly where the circuits are and where the substations are,” Nadel said. “Some have extra capacity, some do not. And the utilities haven’t done that much to prepare in that area.”

As part of the planning process, the coalition will draw on two Department of Energy-funded studies that are evaluating how to site charging stations in the Northeast, given the existing transmission and distribution infrastructure.

On the other hand, not every charging event requires a full megawatt charger, according to Gelb. Sometimes—like when the driver is taking a mandatory eight-hour rest—he or she has time to use a slow charger. A one megawatt charger delivers about 100 times more power than a standard passenger car charger.

Gelb also noted that constant megawatt charging can harm a truck’s battery. Thus a diverse range of charger types at each location is likely the best solution, she said.

Charging stations will ideally have an overabundance of chargers so companies can plan routes without fear that their drivers will have to wait hours for a slot to open up, Gelb said.

“A truck that’s down is a truck that’s not making money,” she said.

For now, the coalition states have started working with local governments to figure out ways of streamlining permitting and zoning issues, the New Jersey DEP spokesman said.

DeGood said he didn’t think permitting would be a serious problem, because most of the chargers are likely to be built within existing power rights-of-way corridors.

Ultimately the corridor’s biggest impact could be to trigger a broader rollout across the nation. Neither the government nor the industry is anywhere close to that point, and full electrification of the commercial vehicle sector would cost $620 billion in charging infrastructure alone, according to a recent report from consulting firm Roland Berger.

“But if we build these ports, the leaders will definitely respond,” Nadel said. “The laggards will not. But it makes it much more likely that those middle people will respond.”