Rustam Kocher might be described as the elder statesman of electric trucks. Back in 2021, he was the Charging Infrastructure Lead at Daimler Trucks North America, and also the Chair of CharIN’s Megawatt Charging System (MCS) task force. On his watch, Daimler collaborated with utility Portland General Electric (PGE) to build a prototype truck charging station called Electric Island (see our January/February 2021 issue).

Mr. Kocher has retired to a beautiful historic city in Portugal, but he remains quite active as an advocate for electric trucks, and especially for building the charging infrastructure that’s required. Since we last spoke (see our April/June 2023 ish), there are a lot more electric trucks on the roads, and we’ve seen a lot of changes on the EV scene, so we reconnected with Rustam for an update on the latest trends. One thing has not changed: heavy-duty EVs need purpose-built charging stations, and Rustam’s going to keep chanting “Truck Charging Needed” until they get rolled out.

Charged: The last time we spoke, way back in ’23, public charging for heavy-duty EVs was a new thing. Now it seems to be a hot market. You sent me a list of a couple dozen companies that are in the biz, or trying to be—though you did note that the segment is “prone to frequent new market entrants, consolidations and failures.”

Rustam Kocher: That industry has a lot of potential. The two main providers are WattEV —I’m on their Advisory Board—and Terawatt . Right now, not a lot of fleets are spending heavily on electrification, but the providers that are staying alive are offering trucking-as-a-service or charging-as-a-service so that fleets can nibble at it at their own pace.

Source link