West Coast Electric Highway Project Charges Ahead as EVCS Adds Stations

Zac Estrada

Zac Estrada is a reporter covering transportation, technology and policy. A former reporter for The Verge and Jalopnik, his work has also appeared in Automobile Magazine, Autoweek, Pacific Standard, Boston.com and BLAC Detroit. A native of Southern California, he is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston. You can find him on Twitter at @zacestrada.

West Coast Electric Highway Project Charges Ahead as EVCS Adds Stations

The road to EV adoption is getting a supercharge — quite literally.

Arcadia-based charging company EVCS announced Wednesday plans to revamp nearly four dozen stations along the so-called West Coast Electric Highway corridor, which runs along the West Coast and into Canada, in a bid to boost long-range electric vehicle driving.


The project consists of 44 existing charging station upgrades and the addition of three new stations in Oregon along Highway 101 and Interstate 5, affecting about 100 EV charging spaces. The Oregon upgrades are mostly funded by a $4 million grant from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT).

"Our goal is to create the most reliable and accessible EV charging infrastructure in the nation," EVCS CEO Gustavo Occhiuzzo said in a statement Wednesday. "EVCS's collaboration with ODOT to upgrade the West Coast Electric Highway will help increase driver confidence in going electric as we seek to combat climate change through our sustainable charging stations."

The Oregon station upgrades will include new hardware for the Level 2 chargers and will add 110-volt, household-style outlets for e-bikes and e-scooters. Higher-power DC Fast Charging stations will incorporate Combined Charging System (CCS) capability — used by most newer EVs — as well as existing CHAdeMO-type chargers that cars like the Nissan Leaf use. An adapter for Tesla cars will also be added at each station.

With fast charging, most compatible EVs can have the battery pack replenished in 30 to 40 minutes.

Opened in 2011, the West Coast Electric Highway project is a public-private network of charging stations developed out of the 2008 Alternative Fuels Corridor Project between California, Oregon and Washington, as well as an independent agreement with British Columbia and Washington. It spans more than 1,300 miles stretching from the Mexico border through British Columbia, along the 101, the 5, and Highway 99 with thousands of Level 2 and DC fast chargers dotted along those roads.

EVCS, which was founded in 2018, also owns and operates the Washington state portion of the electric highway.

Courtesy EVCS

Upgrades to the network began last year with the goal of providing as much as 100-kilowatts of charging power at certain stations to meet the needs of more powerful EVs with larger battery packs.

Locally, EVCS partnered with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation in 2019 to install charging stations in 57 city parking lots. As of May, the project was about 30% complete, with the addition of four DC fast-charging stations in Lot 656 near the 405 and 10 freeways in West L.A.

This story has been updated.

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Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX
Photo by Samson Amore

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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