The funding, which will be utilised for the development and construction of two new heavy-duty charging sites in New Mexico, will come via the US Department of Transportation's Charging and Fuelling Infrastructure (CFI) grant program. The NMDOT grant is one of the largest grant awards announced in the first round of CFI funding.
TeraWatt announced plans to build heavy-duty shared charging infrastructure along the I-10 corridor in 2022, cementing the company's commitment to enabling and accelerating the electrification of fleets. The company was competitively selected by NMDOT last year to design, build, operate, and own the two charging centres.
TeraWatt's I-10 electric corridor project is one of the nation's first networks of high-powered charging centres for heavy-duty trucks and the first in the southwest, running from the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles, California to El Paso, Texas. As the selected contractor for the project, TeraWatt will construct two EV charging centres for medium and heavy-duty commercial electric vehicles in Lordsburg and Vado, New Mexico. Each site will have nine pull-through stalls and will serve as crucial links within TeraWatt's I-10 corridor project. Once completed, the sites will be able to provide about 300 truck charges per day.
"We are grateful for our strong partnership with the New Mexico Department of Transportation who selected TeraWatt as its project partner to deliver this key infrastructure project,” said Neha Palmer, TeraWatt's CEO and co-founder. “Together, we are leveraging combined public-private expertise and federal funding to accelerate the development of heavy-duty charging infrastructure along the I-10 corridor. This grant award is one of many actions taken by the Biden Administration to accelerate the transition to zero-emission transportation and will enable an accelerated buildout of the I-10 corridor to meet growing demand for charging."
The CFI grant program is a new initiative created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by the US Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). While TeraWatt's award is specific to the New Mexico region, the FHWA announced awards to a total of 47 projects nationwide, with approximately US$623 million awarded in total grant funding to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles across light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicle segments.
