Enlarge / No, not Radiator Springs, but a rendering of Greenlane's electric truck stop. (credit: Greenlane)
There's a new fast-charging network coming to North America. It's called Greenlane, and it's a $650 million joint venture between Daimler, NextEra Energy Resources, and a BlackRock investment fund. But it's unlikely you'll recharge your passenger EV at a Greenlane site any time soon—this new network is being designed specifically for medium- and heavy-duty commercial EVs.
You'd be forgiven for not noticing the expansion of the nation's public charging infrastructure. Unlike gas stations, charging sites don't announce their presence with a fifty-foot illuminated sign—you often need an app to know exactly where they all are—but they're building out to the point where much more long-distance driving is possible on electric power than the EV-curious might think (or worse, than the EV skeptic might claim).
But this public infrastructure is almost entirely designed for light-duty vehicles—sedans, crossovers, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks. The charging spaces are light-vehicle-sized, and the sites are designed to work with vehicles of that size, not several classes higher.
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