As a regional electric freight charging network takes shape in Quebec, Canada must tackle long-haul truck corridors next

In the United States, major strides are being made to build electric charging corridors for commercial trucking.

Last March the Biden-Harris Administration released a National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy. Hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded to over a dozen states to set up truck charging sites along major U.S. freight corridors.

Some projects are already underway and others will begin this year.

Meanwhile, despite Canada seeing another increase in zero-emission truck adoption in 2024, there has not been a similar increase in commercial charging opportunities.

“Canada…lacks a national vision ­— especially one that’s data-backed, and provides a vision on infrastructure development,” says Meena Bibra, program manager at Netherlands-based Smart Freight Centre, in an interview with Electric Autonomy

Smart Freight Centre is leading the I-10 corridor project in partnership with charging infrastructure manufacturer Terawatt. The corridor will be ready in 2027 and will span 1,300 km along one of the busiest freight routes from Los Angeles to El Paso.

For Canada to advance long-haul EV trucking, the first step is to gather comprehensive freight movement data to determine where funding priority areas, says Bibra.

“Canada really needs to focus on where a lot of trucking activity is taking place. Once we’re able to identify those key areas, we’re able to start having conversations about where we can start deploying funding and grants to enable pilot projects to move faster in these priority zones.”

Ontario-Quebec corridors

One of the busiest freight corridors in Canada is between Windsor, Ont., and Quebec City.

The 835-kilometre stretch of highway is currently under evaluation for a future electric charging corridor.  The project is led by Propulsion Québec, an industry group representing Quebec’s electric and intelligent transportation sector, in collaboration with last-mile delivery company Intelcom Dragonfly.

Both organizations are remaining tight-lipped on the project, saying it’s too early to share details.

However, Propulsion Québec is also prioritizing the construction of the more localized Quebec-Montreal Corridor Vert.

For the Quebec-Montreal corridor project, Propulsion Québec partnered with Nationex, a Canadian logistics and parcel delivery company. In September, Nationex purchased two electric Volvo trucks and started deploying them daily between Quebec City and Montreal in February.

As part of the project, Nationex is collecting real-time performance data with Attrix, a Quebec-based telematics company.

“We wanted to experiment with such a project to capture data and share this data with the industry, in order to educate transportation companies about the fact that they can do [zero-emission] regional delivery with some adjustment,” says Stephane Pascalon, senior project manager at Propulsion Québec.

“We are expecting to have a lot of conclusions [from this data] by the end of this year.”

Project lessons and charging installations

To support its electric fleet, Nationex partnered with Chargepoly and Fize Électrique.

“At the moment we have only installed our chargers at the Nationex location in St-Hubert. There’s a plan to install other chargers in the spring and summer at their Quebec City location too,” says Jean Nicolas Dupéré, country manager of Chargepoly Canada, in an email to Electric Autonomy.

The St-Hubert station features a 240-kW charger, capable of going up to 480 kW. Additionally, Chargepoly is working on another charging stop along the corridor.

“We can’t disclose anything yet, but it’s coming in the spring,” says Dupéré.

For now, if the Nationex trucks do require a charge enroute, Circuit Electric has deployed one charging station for medium- and heavy-duty trucks north of Drummondville, with another under development in Sainte-Hélène-de-Bagot. These chargers are part of a medium- and heavy-duty truck charging pilot project started by Circuit Electric in 2022. The stations cater specifically for commercial vehicles, considering specialized factors like turning radius and trailer length.

Preparing for long-haul electrification

While Canada’s current progress for electric truck charging corridors is largely on smaller regional routes, Pascalon acknowledges the need to address long-haul trucking corridors.

“We know the next step will be long-haul,” he says. “But it’s a much more complex thing to do.”

Smart Freight Centre’s Bibra notes that while many stakeholders are looking to transition to electric long-haul trucking, there are significant barriers.

“That builds a sense of anxiety amongst people who would be interested in using electric trucks,” she says.

Through learnings from the I-10 electrification project in the U.S., Bibra suggests three factors Canada needs to address to successfully set up electric trucking corridor charging:

1. Shippers and cargo owners need to be the drivers of corridor development since they bring in the demand for electrifying a corridor;
2. Infrastructure providers need to play a key role in providing crucial insights into charging times, operational impacts, cost implications, and grid requirements for the corridor; and
3. There needs to be long-term multi-stakeholder collaboration and cross-sector partnerships to help distribute risks and costs, increasing project feasibility and scalability.

Overall, says Bibra, “I think that step of having a national vision is the most important.”