[ad_1]
A new name in electric car charging and infrastructure broke cover this week with $1 billion or more in private equity funding. With federal funding prospects and extensive experience in electrification, Volterra may be a name to watch.
New kid in town
There’s a new kid in town helping build the infrastructure for electric cars. His name is Volterra. The conductors are experienced in electric charging. Best of all, he can get funding. Lots of funding.
The exact figure is unclear. But Volterra CEO Matt Horton uses the word billions. The funding comes from Stockholm-based EQT Infrastructure, a 77 billion euro ($79.5 billion) fund under management. EQT is a long-term patient investor, Horton told me.
It’s unclear what Horton expects EQT to do and how the money will flow to the Herndon, Virginia-based startup. Volterra has been working undercover for the last year. It’s a spin-off from EQT-owned data center company EdgeConneX.
“It’s open from EQT’s capital,” Horton said. “For our program, the commitments they’re making, even in the billions, are a very small part of their overall investment program into infrastructure.”
Integrating payments with data centers and downloading data from autonomous cars are likely future projects, according to a report on Data Center Dynamics.com.
“Volterra will advance the transportation industry as EdgeConneX’s digital infrastructure,” said Randy Brookman, CEO of EdgeConneX.
Filling as a service
At its core, Volterra operates a business payment-as-a-service model that covers the upfront capital costs and complexity of charging. That means buying the land, designing and building the charging stations, buying the power as needed, deploying and installing the chargers, and running the facilities.
That could be on a shared site or a single client environment.
“We’re looking to find good matches between different charging uses so we can drive more leverage by mixing fleets that charge overnight with those that have faster charging needs during the day,” Horton said.
For chargers, Volterra — in tune with Proterra — works with existing suppliers to source chargers. Proterra can be in the mix.
“I was part of those programs, so I know the product very well,” said Horton, who was Proterra’s chief commercial officer during six years at the electric bus and infrastructure company. “Proterra can definitely be in the partner category for us.”
Other Volterra team members have worked for Shell Recharge Solutions, Electrify America, EVgo, Proterra, Arrival and Ford Mobility.
Volterra will not be in the hardware business, Horton said.
Green shoots
Volterra isn’t ready to name customers, but Class 8 is a trucking focus.
That’s helpful because heavy-duty vehicle charging follows the infrastructure deployment of light-duty electric vehicles. None of the bipartisan infrastructure law’s $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula (NEVI) program is earmarked for trucks.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico submitted plans for the first $1 billion share of tax dollars in early August. An additional $2.5 billion is earmarked for uncapped competitive community-based aid.
A July announcement by General Motors and Pilot Co. to build high-speed charging islands at 500 pilot parking lots and transit plazas will focus on light-duty EVs. Such efforts will help. But it won’t reach the estimated $40 billion in passenger EV demand by 2030.
EV fleets in the US and Europe will need 150 gigawatts of power by the end of the decade. That’s equal to the annual energy consumption of all American households.
Truck turn
Britta Gross, director of transportation programs at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), said the feds could soon lay down a vision and provide truck-focused infrastructure.
“They haven’t defined a program like the light duty program yet,” Gross told me. “I’m hearing it’s probably coming by the end of the year or the first quarter. [of 2023]He said.
A new acronym with the Joint Office of Energy and Transport – JOET. But the feds aren’t footing the entire bill for the industry, and they shouldn’t be, Gross said.
“It’s really important to leverage private equity and meet industry and government where they are,” she said. “That’s the only way it works in America. It’s incredibly promising that three stakeholders who need to be involved the most are doing this.”
Daimler Trucks North America, BlackRock Renewable Power and NextEra Energy Resources plan a $650 million joint venture to build charging infrastructure for electric and hydrogen fuel cell medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
Duke Energy’s private utility side, eTransEnergy, launched an end-to-end services business in 2021 to help logistics and last-mile service businesses and institutions electrify their vehicle fleets.
“This investment is going to be critical, just like what Volterra is doing,” Gross said.
Partial truth?
Forgive the skepticism of Wednesday’s announcement on Twitter that the long-awaited battery-electric Tesla Semi will ship before the end of the year. According to the source, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, cannot be dismissed. But the adage of believing and proving comes to mind.
Tesla himself won’t say, so we don’t have any details. On a smaller scale, the semi could be headed to the Frito-Lay plant complex in Modesto, California. A subsidiary of PepsiCo. It expects the 15 trucks to arrive by the end of 2021. All he got was to install a Tesla Mega Charger, Electric said.
Before his latest tweet, Musk’s latest estimate for Semi, originally in 2019, was as late as 2023. His reasoning made sense. The use of battery cells, which were banned in the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, resulted in greater gains from the heavier and more powerful Semi.
Using them in Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Fewer cells were needed.
Tesla won’t say how many partial orders it has. But he recently opened his order book, requiring a $20,000 deposit per truckload.
Briefly stated…
The Volkswagen “Dieselgate” emissions scandal is the gift that keeps on giving for electrification. of Volkswagen environmental protection California allocated $90 million of the $423 million in rebates for zero-emission Class 8 trucks used for freight and port freight. Additional information from the California Air Resources Board reported by CleanTechnica.
of Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association OEMs are dropping charges against the CRB over hasty regulations to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. The war of words between the EMA and environmental groups played out in the pages of quotes.
Perhaps some EMA members pressured the trade group to back off after being called out for hypocrisy in favor of clean freight, but it halted progress. EMA saved face by saying the Environmental Protection Agency’s review of the four-year lead-time requirement from CARB was sufficient.
Wabash is investing $20 million in a factory in Minnesota to expand its Econex technology for refrigerated trailers. The Lafayette, Indiana-based trailer maker uses environmentally friendly materials in its molded structural composite to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on non-renewable energy. Wabash is converting its old-tech reefer plant to dry vans with plans to create more than 200 jobs in Little Falls, Minnesota, by the end of 2023.
New York, New York
The offenses continue to come forward for prosecution. Nikola Corp founder Trevor Milton. After the federal government won a bid to keep Milton’s fraud case in the Southern District of New York, another federal judge this week said “no” to moving Milton’s civil trial before the Securities and Exchange Commission to Arizona or Utah. And U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, scheduled for Sept. 12, agreed to the feds’ request to put the civil trial on hold until the end of the criminal case.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. Click here to receive the Freight Technique by email on Fridays.
Alan
[ad_2]
Source link
