Officials with the EV charging company Greenlane Infrastructure cut the ribbon Thursday on the company’s first advanced charging facility in Colton, Californiaβanother step toward developing the infrastructure needed to shift the trucking fleet to electric drive and reduce a major source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
President Donald Trump is moving to undo many Biden-era regulations on diesel truck emissions and incentives meant to encourage an EV transition, and his tariff policies are likely to depress the freight industry. But Greenlane CEO Patrick Macdonald-King said companies like his are in it for the long haul.
“Some slowdowns have occurred in the last six months or so, and some headwinds,” Macdonald-King told Newsweek. “But we’re feeling pretty optimistic about where the industry is going.”
Southern California is the main driver for EV trucking in the U.S., with aggressive policies to reduce air pollution from vehicle exhaust and to clean up the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest container port in North America.
Macdonald-King said the new charging facility is designed to serve as a transfer point between the specialized trucks that carry freight from the port and other trucks that ply the interstate highways to the east and north.
“It’s a very strategic location for us,” he said. “The ports have great funding in place to help clean up, so it’s a good use case for electrification today.”
The facility includes 40 high-speed chargers and a full-service area for drivers. Greenlane plans three such charging facilities along the Interstate-15 corridor.
Greenlane Infrastructure is a joint venture among Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy Resources and Global Infrastructure Partners, a part of BlackRock. On Thursday Greenlane also announced its first commercial fleet customer, electric freight startup Nevoya.
John Verdon, chief commercial officer for Nevoya, said the partnership with Greenlane helps the company make its business case for zero-emissions trucking at a cost that is on par with diesel. The company can’t depend solely on its clients’ desire to reduce their environmental impact.
“Unfortunately, altruism doesn’t scale,” Verdon told Newsweek. Nor can the company depend too much on climate policies set in Washington, he said. “We can’t be reliant upon the administration that is in power at a particular point in time.”
Verdon said he expects the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks and the elimination of some federal support for EVs will have an impact on the pace of electrification. But Nevoya is still planning to expand to other locations, including Texas and Arizona, where he said market conditions favor EV freight.
High Stakes for Climate and Clean Air
Electric trucks are still a small fraction of the overall U.S. fleet, according to Ray Minjares, the heavy-duty vehicles program director at the International Council on Clean Transportation. But Minjares said sales of heavy EV trucks are growing, even as sales of conventional trucks have slowed.
“Electric trucks aren’t like unicorns,” Minjares told Newsweek. “We can see them driving on the road every single day, particularly in places that have a combination of very high truck volumes and where you have public policy that is creating the right market incentives.”
State policies can be a bigger factor than federal ones when it comes to building the EV charging infrastructure, he said, because many key decisions rest with state bodies, such as public utility commissions.
There’s a lot riding on the success of zero-emission trucks, Minjares said. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to government data, and medium and heavy trucks account for roughly a quarter of the sector’s emissions.
Despite improvements in emissions controls, diesel exhaust contributes anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent of the total air pollution health impacts in the country, he said.
“We’re still talking about thousands of people dying prematurely every year, whether that’s from lung cancer, stroke, heart attacksβand that’s just the premature deaths,” Minjares said. Diesel exhaust also contributes to asthma and other respiratory ailments.
Climate policy changes aren’t the only acts by the Trump administration that could create speed bumps for the EV transition, he said. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on trading partners, especially China, will likely add costs to EV manufacturing as well as have a profound effect on the entire shipping industry.
“My sense is that this trade war that we’re now in with China is going to significantly depress freight activity,” Minjares said. “Whether you’re driving an electric truck or a diesel truck, you should be concerned.”
Tariff Trouble Ahead for Freight
Recent data show that Trump’s tariffs are beginning to depress shipping volume. The industry publication from the price reporting agency FreightWaves reported this week that ship container bookings from China to the United States have dropped by 20 percent compared to the same period last year, and some analysts foresee a slowdown on par with what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. Heavy truck maker Mack cited the impact of tariffs as a reason for recent layoffs at its Pennsylvania manufacturing site, where the company is cutting 10 percent of the workforce.
The upcoming Advanced Clean Transportation Expo beginning April 28 in Anaheim, California, will be an indicator of how clean truck manufacturers are responding to the new political and economic landscape. Industry leaders often use the expo to announce new models and new production targets, and such announcementsβor the lack of themβwould be a good barometer of the EV truck industry’s momentum.
Michael Barnard is chief strategist and founder of the research company TFIE, which stands for “the future is electric.” Barnard provides analysis of various climate solutions, and he is generally bullish on the prospects for electrified trucking in the U.S.
“This is a beginning of a 20-year transformation,” Barnard told Newsweek.
In the near term, he said, Trump’s tariffs will likely present major hurdles to companies developing EV charging infrastructure as large transformers and other imported equipment necessary to connect to the grid become pricier and harder to source.
Barnard’s recent work lays out a strategy for solar microgrids with battery storage to power truck charging stations, a system he said could help companies avoid the delays and extra cost of grid interconnection.
Barnard is fond of a quote from science fiction author William Gibson, who said, “The future has arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” It’s a concept visible in a map Barnard produced that shows the states and regions in the country where electric trucking is already taking hold and where political and market conditions are best for expansion.
That map shows EV trucking first gaining toeholds in urban coastal areas with busy ports, then gradually developing a few cross-country long-haul routes.
In the long run, he said, the economic and environmental advantages of electric freight will win out.
“The economy that electrifies its logistics will have a strong competitive advantage in the future,” Barnard said, adding that India, China and Europe are already gaining a head start. “If the United States doesn’t electrify its logistics, it will be just another competitive burden the country faces.”
