Electric transportation developer WattEV has announced that construction of its 26-truck charging plaza at the Port of Long Beach is completed and is scheduled to open for public use the week of May 15. Branded simply as “WattEV,” the depot is located directly adjacent to the Pier-A terminal in the Port of Long Beach (POLB) and 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 that will operate 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 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, WattEV says.

According to WattEV, combined the ports have some 20,000 trucks in their registries using combustion engines, more than 25% of which are older than 10 years. Both ports have been setting clean air goals for nearly two decades with a goal of having 1005 zero-emission trucks serving the ports by 2035.

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

Upon 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.

The truck charging plaza’s public opening will follow a charging infrastructure event – the VOLTS conference – which took place May 9-10 in Long Beach sponsored by the California Energy Commission, hosted by Charging Interface Initiative North America (CharIN Inc.), with testing provided by WattEV.