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The basics:

• Zeem Solutions, a leading EV charging infrastructure and fleet management provider, is making a major investment in a large-scale truck depot development near Port Newark.
• The facility will be a game-changer for efforts to expand transportation electrification in the freight logistics and drayage industry.
• The mega-depot will serve regional fleet operators with electric trucks, offering parking and charging overnight and during the day.

A major project at Port Newark will be a gamechanger for efforts to expand transportation electrification in the freight logistics and drayage industry. In May, Zeem Solutions, a leading EV charging infrastructure and fleet management provider, announced a large-scale truck depot development near Port Newark, aimed at facilitating a significant shift to electric Class 8 trucks.

The mega-depot will be the largest electric charging facility near Port Newark. The 3.5-acre site is located at a former power generating station in Newark’s Doremus Avenue industrial area, which is classified as an overburdened community in terms of air quality.

The facility will serve regional fleet operators with electric trucks, overnight parking and charging for 200 trucks, with additional charging for up to 300 trucks during the day. It will feature a more than 30-megawatt interconnect to PSEG, 84 ports of DC fast charging and other amenities.

In addition, the depot will assist customers in selecting and financing Class 8 electric truck models. That will enable drayage operators to access zero-emission vehicles, charging infrastructure and related services without the substantial upfront capital investment. Valets will rotate and check-in vehicles around the clock.

Additional services will include on-site charging, parking, security, maintenance and cleaning for a wide range of EV fleets, such as cars, vans, buses and trucks from Class 1 through 8.

“By bringing the electric charging depot to Port Newark, Zeem is energizing New Jersey’s commitment to pioneering responsible, clean energy solutions,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in May when the project was announced. “Switching to zero-emission vehicles in one of the nation’s busiest freight corridors reinforces New Jersey’s priority to reduce emissions in overburdened communities and showcases how environmentally conscious innovation goes hand-in-hand with economic growth.”

Zeem will use funding from the NJ Zero Emission Incentive Program to deploy vehicles at the Port Newark facility.

“Zeem’s commercial electric vehicle charging depot at Port Newark marks a pivotal moment in our state’s clean transportation evolution,” said New Jersey Economic Development Authority CEO Tim Sullivan.

“The Port of New York and New Jersey links New Jersey to the world as the centerpiece of regional trade and a key economic driver for our state,” said Wesley Mathews, president and CEO, Choose New Jersey. “Zeem’s state-of-the-art electric fleet depot not only supports our environmental and climate goals – but also highlights New Jersey’s standing as a hub for commerce, innovation, and an electrification leader.”

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said the Brick City enthusiastically welcomes Zeem.

“As our missions coincide in many ways,” said Baraka. “This project simultaneously addresses our city’s commitment to creating a cleaner environment, increasing commerce for economic growth and expanding job opportunities for our residents. Newark is a hotbed of cutting-edge innovation and next level solutions. This large-scale EV charging hub improves New Jersey and impacts the nation.”

“PSEG is proud to support Zeem on the development of the Port electric truck depot,” said Mike Schmid, vice president of asset management and planning at PSEG.

The Port Newark work is the latest significant project for Zeem, which is developing a large capacity depot for electric drayage trucks in Port of Long Beach, Calif., and opened a charging depot near LAX. The effort supports the Port 500 Coalition, aimed at facilitating and accelerating the transition to transportation electrification at every major port in the country.

“Port 500 is a coalition of transportation electrification and supply chain stakeholders with Zeem, committed to deploying 500 electric Class 8 trucks at several strategic port gateways over the next three years, starting with this landmark location at Port Newark,” said Paul Gioupis, Zeem co-founder and CEO. “It’s an ambitious target and fleets can now leverage our charging infrastructure and electric trucks, making the transition to zero emissions faster and easier – with significantly less upfront capital.”

Port24, a leading transportation and logistics company, announced it would operate out of the Newark facility as soon it is operational. “We’re thrilled to welcome and work with Zeem at their Port Newark EV fleet depot, marking a significant step in decarbonizing port drayage and supporting our sustainability goals,” said Port 24 co-founder David Dvinov.

Eye on the East Coast

NJBIZ recently caught up with Zeem’s CEO to discuss the project, the company, next steps here in New Jersey, and more.

“At Zeem, what we do is we design, construct and operate EV infrastructure for light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty fleets,” Gioupis said. “But we mainly skew toward medium- and heavy-duty fleets. We are doing this out of ports, airports and directly out of customer yards.”

Gioupis launched Zeem in 2017, bringing more than 20 years of experience in investment banking and financial services to this sector. “The reason why I started the company was in my previous life, I was an investment banker – and I heavily invested in truck OEMs, charger companies, software companies and kind of everything in between,” he explained. “I had a good understanding of where the status of the market was. Literally since 2000, I’ve been around the industry.”

In 2017, he said he realized that EVs and chargers were starting to commoditize – and technology was maturing and getting better. “And really, it was going to be more about the services,” Gioupis explained. “So, we started Zeem back in 2017, understanding that we were going to get this swell around: Where do you park? Where do you charge these? Where can you get access to power? That was the foundation for Zeem.”

Gioupis, a native New Yorker, said that while the company began in Los Angeles, New Jersey and the East Coast was always a target for its expansion.

“I knew this [California] was ground zero for electric trucks. Took all the learnings, everything that we’ve been doing here from all the innovative policymakers, utilities, government entities – that are trying to push the initiative,” he said. “And then trying to adopt and bring that over to the East Coast. Being a New Yorker and understanding how congested the area is and then realizing that EV is relevant, and you have a huge port that’s doing a lot of routes that are 200 miles or less – we knew it was important to be able to get into that territory.”

Another unique aspect of the Newark project is that it will repurpose a decommissioned power plant.

“Our investors, ArcLight Capital Partners, they’re the largest owner of utility assets across the country that is not a utility,” said Gioupis. “As a private equity firm, they are out there buying a lot of the decommissioned stuff. And they are very smart about stretching and sweating the assets – and then getting to a point where they need to actually pull them offline.”

“What’s interesting is you have transmission and distribution lines that are huge – that are already in place. And it doesn’t make sense when you decommission these sites to go and remove them,” he continued. “You just kind of keep them in place. And they don’t know what to do going forward with these types of power plants. What you see at the Newark site is the very first time that we have somebody – for example, like PSEG – who has been willing to go to a fully decommissioned site and re-energize a transformer.”

A first in the EV industry

He stressed that the 33-MW interconnection at the site is a big deal.

“What we are doing there is something not done yet in the EV industry,” said Gioupis. “And what’s great is it is going to put Newark on the map and allow us to provide significant amounts of power for fleets to meet their EV goals.”

The Zeem CEO noted and applauded the process of dealing with the different stakeholders and officials so far in Newark, especially given the complexity of the project.

As for its capacity at completion, Gioupis again pointed to the rarity of being able to repurpose the site with that aforementioned power interconnection. “What’s great there is it allows us to scale up and we can actually go up to as much as 80 or 90 MW out of that site — which is unheard of, to be frank with you,” he explained.

“Having that capacity, that capability allows us to do quite a bit. Our overnight charging, because we are real estate constrained – we can park overnight about 200 tractors,” Gioupis continued. “Then, throughout the day – and we call it ‘opportunity charging’ – so they come in for a period of time, charge and then leave. And we will have facilities there where they can use restrooms, connect to a Wi-Fi and take a load off while they are charging. And so, we can do about 300 vehicles throughout the day there.”

Beyond capacity, Gioupis believes where Zeem stands out is the operation side, with its turnkey approach.

“It’s not enough to just build the depot – construct it and then drop all the infrastructure. If you leave it on its own devices, there’s still a lot of failure points and execution risks,” said Gioupis. “We make sure we come in and our offering encompasses taking [care of] all of it. For the truck, we are going to make sure that it’s operating and starting, doing what it needs to do. To the charger – same thing. And then we’re a de facto fleet manager.”

“Thinking about everything a fleet has to try to think about in electrification and trying to turn it into a positive as opposed to a negative,” he added.

The conversation shifted to the timeline of the project. Gioupis again noted the complexities and challenge of this undertaking. “There’s a lot of different regulatory bodies that govern the power plant. So, getting through a lot of that was complicated,” he explained. “This is a very toxic site – lots of environmental problems. That’s highly challenging. We need to build the earth up in order to comply there. You’re in the sandy zone. There are so many complicated things that go on at that site. But the good news is, we’ve got our process streamlined. We should have it up, running and customers charging hopefully, by this time next year. With a bit of luck and weather – we never can predict weather on the East Coast – possibly sooner would be the timetable.”

And this project is just the beginning for Zeem’s presence in New Jersey. The company had targeted Port Newark for a bit and previously had a deal with Ørsted related to the now-scrapped Ocean Wind 1 and 2 projects.

“What is good is – even putting that project aside. The overwhelming response we had from fleets, right away that fills that site in Newark,” said Gioupis. “We have four other sites that we are targeting in PSEG territory that service the New Jersey market. Many fleets want to be in New Jersey. What’s happening is we’re capturing a very large portion of those transportation fleets.”

“This is just scratching the surface.”