Electric trucking business WattEV has opened its most northern charging depot, located in Fresno, as part of an expansion that includes future sites in Northern California.
An opening ceremony on June 30 marked the addition to WattEV’s network, activating the site while awaiting future upgrades in grid capacity, according to a news release last week.
“This project is a milestone for us," Salim Youssefzadeh, CEO and co-founder of WattEV, said in the news announcement. "Northern California is now poised to benefit from the expansion of electrified freight hauling we’ve helped build up in Southern California.”
Headquartered in Long Beach, WattEV operates five charging sites in Southern California and another just north of Bakersfield.
WattEV expands electric charging network
WattEV plans open additional charging depots in Northern California, including locations in Oakland and Stockton and near the Sacramento International Airport. Further expansions include Salem, Oregon, and Nevada.
A $13.2 million grant is helping that northward expansion. The California Energy Commission awarded the money in 2024 for the Fresno, Oakland and Stockton sites. WattEV’s plan called for adding 70 combined charging system chargers and 14 megawatt chargers. The chargers will be open to the public.
In Fresno, the charging depot has half of those megawatt chargers of the grant project and 15 fast-charging direct current stalls. Dwell times with the megawatt chargers are 30 minutes or less, the company noted.
The deployment comes through the help of Pacific Gas & Electric’s Flex Connect program, allowing the site to be active two years earlier than a traditional rollout, the company said in its announcement. Infrastructure upgrades are scheduled for mid-2028.
WattEV’s business model allows customers to lease electric trucks that are bundled with related services. A company spokesperson wrote in an email to Trucking Dive that the carrier has 75 electric Class 8 trucks in its fleet and has been running two preproduction Tesla Semis for a year.
WattEV expects to receive an order of 50 Tesla Semis later this year, the company said. That’s part of a 370 unit addition with Tesla that’s expected to come online next year.
