Suggested Citation:
Wang, Guihua, Marshall Miller, Lewis Fulton (2025)

The Infrastructure Cost for Depot Charging of Battery Electric Trucks

Electric vehicle (EV) depot charging is critical for truck fleet operators to convert their conventional vehicles to zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). This study uses California as the context and considers two example fleets: a fleet of medium-duty delivery trucks and a fleet of heavy-duty short-haul trucks. Assuming trucks are charged at a depot by direct current (DC) fast chargers (50 kW, 150 kW, or 350 kW) or high-power level 2 chargers, we estimate charging infrastructure cost as a function of the EV fleet size. Results indicate that per-vehicle infrastructure cost would decrease substantially as the fleet size increases, though infrastructure cost is very sensitive to charger utilization rates. The higher the charger utilization, the lower the infrastructure cost would be, as the depot would need fewer chargers installed. Therefore, one cost reduction strategy is to improve daily utilization rates to reduce the charger count demand and thus reduce the infrastructure cost.