This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Enterprise Fleet Summit on Wednesday.

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Electrifying your fleet through innovative finance models.

DETAILS: Charging for electric trucks trails the availability of battery-powered equipment. Startups like Gage Zero have the investor backing to buy the real estate and develop the large-scale sites. But will they be enough to support the transition to electrification?

KEY QUOTES FROM SAM ARONS, vice president of business development at Gage Zero:

“It’s important to take a step back and think about how big this problem is. The rough number we’re talking about is like $100 billion of investment in charging infrastructure that’s needed over the next 10 to 20 years.”

“Even in a state like Texas, which doesn’t have nearly as many incentives as California does, we are seeing today that TCO (total cost of ownership) is roughly even with a diesel truck but over the next 10 years, that’s going to come down quite dramatically.”

“You need to find the perfect nexus of a good location from a trucking route perspective. … You also need to find a place that has a pretty decent amount of power that’s available now and a clear path to a much larger amount of power a couple of years down the road as this industry grows.”