A general rate case proceeding for Southern California Edison illustrates this well. Southern California Edison serves the region that’ll have the highest demand for truck charging of any in the United States by 2030, according to the ICCT’s estimates. State policy requires state and local fleets to purchase 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2027, transit agencies to purchase 100% zero-emission buses by 2029, and as much as 75% zero-emission truck sales by 2035, depending on the vehicle group. The utility has proposed that it proactively invest in the grid to serve these future transportation electrification loads, but consumer advocates represented by the Public Advocates Office of the California Public Utilities Commission and The Utility Reform Network (TURN) oppose the proposal. These groups question the methodology used to estimate heavy-duty vehicle charging needs and call on the California Public Utilities Commission to reject spending proposals related to truck electrification.

We think common ground exists between those who need truck charging infrastructure and those who want to keep utility rates down. It lives at the intersection of information that both groups need to achieve their goals. This is information about the costs of truck charging infrastructure, the options that exist to lower those costs, and the kinds of commitments utilities can make to energize the most charging infrastructure at the lowest cost.

​​​To explore this, the ICCT contracted with Black & Veatch (BV), an electric vehicle charging and utility engineering and construction firm. The company developed a prototype public corridor charging facility based on its industry knowledge and estimated the costs of designing and constructing truck charging facilities. For example, BV provided costs for a prototypical public corridor charging facility and Figure 1 is a schematic of the site design. This approximately 8-acre facility with a combined nameplate capacity of 15.6 MW has thirty pull-in spots served by twenty 240-kW dual-port chargers and ten 480-kW single-port chargers, as well as five pull-through stalls each served by a 1 MW charger.

Figure 1. Layout of corridor charging facility prototype by Black & Veatch

Figure 2. Distinction between front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter infrastructure and scope of analysis

Major distribution grid upgrades cost more than $10 ​​million—that alone is the cost of a 115 kV greenfield substation—and take years to build. That’s a large front-of-the-meter cost and it’s much different in a project that only requires adding a substation bank to an existing substation, as that costs the utility only around $1.5 million. For sites like the prototype in Figure 1, if they can access existing substation capacity, that’s a clear opportunity for lower costs. Utilities can facilitate buildout in these locations by proactively communicating to potential commercial charging customers where substation capacity already exists and easing the process for them to utilize it.

This is important because the truck industry is investing in electrification. Daimler, Volvo, and Cummins are constructing a 21 GWh battery production facility in Mississippi (launch date in 2027) and Tesla is building a 50,000-unit Semi tractor factory in Nevada (to come online in 2026). New businesses providing charging services to electric trucks that have launched in just the last 5 years include WattEV, Forum Mobility, Terawatt Infrastructure, Greenlane, Voltera, EV Realty, and Zeem Solutions. And public policies at the local, state, and federal levels are providing incentives and setting requirements for fleets to transition to zero-emission technologies.

Utility regulators can help meet the needs of both truck charging developers and utility ratepayers by establishing common ground for a discussion about what it takes to meet the needs of truck charging facilities, and that requires transparency and data about ​​costs. By engaging with data showing what these facilities would likely cost, options for minimizing the costs ultimately shouldered by ratepayers, and actions that streamline the deployment of least-cost solutions, all stakeholders can come away confident that their interests have been served.

While there remains great momentum behind developing domestic supply chains to produce electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States, any new steps to roll back supporting policies risk forfeiting the thousands of jobs that could be gained. As just one example, we estimate that if funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program is eliminated (it was paused earlier this month), 13,000 charging infrastructure jobs could fail to materialize. That’s based on announced NEVI charging deployment and the ratio of jobs per charger.

For U.S. officials wanting to increase auto manufacturing jobs, following through on policies that incentivize investment in the United States, like those in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is the best way to achieve it. Together with the billions of dollars of new investment in clean energy projects across the United States, these policies are expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Like many new technologies, EVs are vulnerable to being smeared as “job killers.” Don’t believe it. Multiple studies have found that EVs require more labor hours to build than internal combustion engine vehicles, primarily due to battery assembly and production. Right now, most automakers in the United States outsource production of EV powertrain components like high-voltage batteries to foreign suppliers; this is what’s behind claims that EVs could require approximately 30% fewer hours and to build. However, if automakers bring that battery production in house and onshore the production of EV powertrain components, the EV transition could lead to more auto manufacturing jobs than there are today.

Analysis from FEV Consulting found that with high levels of vertical integration, EVs would mean more labor in auto manufacturing. Additionally, research from the Economic Policy Institute put things in sharp relief by highlighting two distinctly different futures: It estimated an increase of more than 150,000 jobs in the United States by 2030 as the auto industry transitions toward EVs if there is greater domestic manufacturing of vehicles and EV parts and if sales of American-made vehicles increase. In an alternate future of policy inaction where EV parts and sales are increasingly reliant on imports, however, the study projected job losses in the tens of thousands as EV sales continue to grow.

Indeed, there’s a big opportunity for new domestic industries in battery production and charging infrastructure. Demand for EVs will drive demand for batteries, and ICCT research estimated that this could create up to 125,000 new jobs in the United States in battery manufacturing, battery component manufacturing, and battery recycling by 2032. This is a conservative estimate that does not account for any jobs upstream of battery production and assembly, such as in construction, mining, material extraction, and refining. As of September 2023, we had already identified 15 lithium-ion battery material production plants that extract or process raw materials in Michigan, 11 in Tennessee, seven in Indiana, seven in Texas, six in Kentucky, six in Ohio, and many more across the country. More facilities that extract or process lithium and other raw battery materials can be expected to open if the industry continues to expand, and jobs in such plants are over and above the jobs estimated for battery manufacture and recycling.

Beyond this, EVs will require building a nationwide network of charging infrastructure at homes, workplaces, and various public locations. This will create new jobs in charger assembly, electrical installation, charging software maintenance and repair, and planning and design related to siting chargers. ICCT research estimated that demand for light-duty EV charging infrastructure could create about 140,000 jobs by 2032, with potentially more jobs to come after that.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provides incentives for domestic production of EV components by offering tax credits for consumers who purchase and automakers that build EVs in the United States. With these in place, automakers are indeed making steps to vertically integrate EV production. Additionally, in September 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy announced more than $3 billion in federal investment in this sector that could create over 12,000 jobs. We’re already seeing signs of these jobs as private companies have announced more than 230,000 EV-related jobs as of February 2025.

We’re talking about a lot of good jobs—potentially. Thousands of positions are only likely to materialize if existing policies are brought to fruition. If policies are instead weakened or eliminated, there’s a very real risk that job gains will not be realized.