Dive Brief:
- TravelCenters of America (TA) broke ground this week on one of the first publicly accessible medium- and heavy-duty truck charging stations in the U.S., according to a Wednesday announcement.
- The charging station, located at TA’s travel center in Ontario, California, will feature four 400 kilowatt chargers and a 1 megawatt charger. The kilowatt chargers are expected to be ready for use in early 2025, with the more powerful option coming in 2026.
- This project is part of parent company BP’s broader $1 billion electric vehicle charging strategy, which includes reaching 100,000 charging stations around the globe by 2030.
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Dive Insight:
TA had ambitious EV charging plans months before the company was acquired by BP last summer. In January 2023, the travel center chain revealed plans to open about 1,000 charging stations across 200 of its TA and Petro Stopping Centers by 2028.
Shortly after the deal with BP closed, the oil giant purchased $100 million worth of ultra-fast charging units from Tesla. At the time, BP said these chargers would be installed at sites across its c-store network, which included TA, Ampm, Thorntons and Amoco.
BP is now broadening the scope of charging solutions offered at its travel centers. This first truck charging station will act as an innovation site for new technologies and future megawatt chargers, according to the announcement.
Designs for the project — which aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of public-access charging for battery-electric heavy-duty trucks — began in 2021 alongside the California Energy Commission and the Electric Power Research Institute. BP and TA are already scoping out other locations in Southern California to build more truck charging stations, according to the announcement.
“This project further demonstrates bp pulse and TA’s commitment to support fleet customers and is just the beginning of our endeavors in truck charging to build fast and reliable charging infrastructure to support our EV drivers,” Sujay Sharma, CEO of BP Pulse Americas, BP’s charging arm in the U.S., said in the announcement.
This new program aligns with what BP initially had in mind when it acquired TA, as it intended to create a “mobility site of the future” through the travel center chain.
“This truck charging station is strategically located at the intersection of two of the nation’s busiest highway interstates and is a prime location to serve early-adopter electric truck fleet operators,” Debi Boffa, TA’s CEO, said in the announcement. “We are proud to take a leading role in bringing this infrastructure to our fleet customers and other professional drivers.”