As the California Energy Commission (CEC), together with other state-level agencies, continues to charge full speed ahead with statewide plans to eventually replace fossil-fueled medium- and heavy-duty (MDHD) vehicles with zero-emission vehicles. It has now unveiled a new charging station interactive dashboard that showcases 16,237 battery and hydrogen fueling points throughout the state.
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Developed with mapping software provider ArcGIS, the system tracks the state's progress toward setting up charging ports and hydrogen fueling nozzles for those commercial vehicles. Users are not only able to see where publicly accessible MDHD ZEV stations are being developed, but also vital data fields such as the address of existing stations, port and/or nozzle counts, and more information like charging and refueling specifications for vehicle classes.
For clarification, a "charging point" is defined as a single electric charging port, and a "fueling point" signifies one hydrogen fuel nozzle.
Additionally, the CEC says the dashboard will provide valuable data that'll aid in deciding how funding will be used on greater infrastructure deployment.
At present, a majority of the charging points are found at private fleet depots that have their own dedicated infrastructure for local and regional needs.
“This new dashboard will be an invaluable tool in creating transparency, showing the ongoing progress in deploying infrastructure, and evaluating MDHD ZEV infrastructure needs across the state,” said Hannon Rasool, director of the CEC’s Fuels and Transportation Division. “Transitioning California’s critical freight corridors to zero-emission is crucial to meeting California’s climate goals and making the air cleaner in vulnerable population centers.”
The CEC points out to California Air Resources Board (CARB) data that sales of new MDHD ZEVs doubled in 2023 over the previous year. Today, one out of every six new freight and/or transportation vehicles sold are ZEVs. A new statewide funding program was unveiled last summer that aims to have 1,000 new zero-emission school buses on the road.
[Related: California considering used truck voucher program to meet emissions]
Commercial trucks consist of just 6% of vehicles on California's roads but account for over 35% of transportation emissions.
