Matt LeDucq, CEO of Oakland, Calif.–based startup Forum Mobility, thinks that California can meet its highly ambitious planned target to switch every truck serving its busy seaports from diesel-fueled to electric by 2035.
But he also believes that the state’s drayage trucking industry — the roughly 33,000 heavy trucks, many of them owned by independent operators, that shuttle cargo containers from ports to inland distribution centers on a daily basis — can’t affordably meet that goal without a company like his to shepherd the transition.
“We’re going to need billions and billions of dollars in California” to reach that target, LeDucq said — money for the electric trucks themselves, for high-powered chargers and electric-grid interconnections to keep them running on their daily routes, and for the hard-to-secure parcels of land to house this new fleet and fueling infrastructure.
