Electric vehicle charging startup TeraWatt recently raised over $1 billion in funding. TeraWatt CEO Neha Palmer joined Cheddar News to discuss how the company plans to build large-scale charging centers for commercial vehicle fleets.

TeraWatt Aiming to Accelerate All-Electric Transition

Evie charging startup Terawatt infrastructure raising more than a billion dollars from investors, including key frame capital and Cyrus capital Terawatt coming out of stealth in May of last year. And the startup says it acquires properties and locations strategically relevant to commercial tv fleets and develops the energy and charging infrastructure necessary to operate at scale. Well, joining me now is named Palmer Ceo of Terawatt and thanks so much for coming on the show. So talk to me more about how your company is trying to help expand this tradition to every transportation. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. You know, we are seeing once in a generation transition from oil and gas powered fleets to be powered fleets and it's a huge amount of infrastructure required to power that transition. And we are here to provide those solutions for fleets. Looking to make this transition. Uh, you know, we think about this again is once in a century, two centuries ago, railroads last century, the national highway network and this century uh, E V charging infrastructure. We think of this as a new asset class and we're bringing these to market for fleets who don't want to have to invest into this themselves and want to know with certainty that they'll have is charging ready when they're ready to move over. Is it going to take a century to actually build out the infrastructure to make the full transition to electric vehicles happen? I hope not. We certainly think it's gonna happen at a much faster trajectory. We've seen really rapid adoption of passenger vehicles over the last couple of years as oil prices have risen and we're going to see a similar trajectory or even faster for fleets as you look at cost parity, what it costs to have an E. V versus a, you know, oil based, this will be a big rig. We think it'll be cost parity by 2027 for fleets that are really driven by costs, they're gonna want to make that change much quicker than a century. But we'll certainly need a lot of investment and a lot of infrastructure to meet that demand from those big rigs as they convert. So I think for a lot of consumers who have the capacity to charge their vehicle at home and they're just kind of driving their vehicle for everyday use around their neighborhood to work to the grocery store etcetera. It seems to be somewhat seamless. Not too challenging, but of course to power the economy at scale with electric vehicles, you're right, it's gonna take massive infrastructure investments. Talk to me more about what it is going to take and how we can accomplish the ability to power a global economy with electric vehicles. It's gonna require a lot of stakeholders. It's estimated $1 trillion ev charging infrastructure by 2040 across the globe. We actually think that's light. Um, it's going to require many dollars and lots of different efforts, the electricity grid will have to come along. We'll need more generations as more of our goods and services are powered by electricity as opposed to other fuels. It will require lots of real estate. You know, the locations for this charging will be really critical and so we are working to hopefully bring all of those stakeholders together to build that as quick as these athletes want to transition. The president biden of course, making commitments to electric vehicles Nate. I'm just curious how closely you're watching the midterms and what you expect from the administration, How those commitments can boost and benefit your company and global adoption as well. Absolutely. They've already done a lot with uh, you know, the two at big acts that they've passed and we are looking to leverage some of those things and those packages. It'll be really helpful for both fleets and both for providers like ourselves helping those fleets electrify for the midterms. You know, remains to be seen how things shake out. We're certainly watching closely. But really the things that have been passed already are really exciting for us and really tie together this transportation and electric side of the house is which is really exciting for us right now. Palmer Ceo of terawatt, nee Ha, such a pleasure, congratulations and thank you