WattEV Doubles San Bernardino Depot to 11.5 MW With Megawatt…
- EVs Fleet & Depot Charging News
Marin Holt
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- 6 minutes read
- WattEV expanded San Bernardino depot to 11.5 MW total charging capacity in February 2026
- Six new MCS connectors at 1.2 MW each and 30 new CCS connectors at 250 kW added to the site
- Facility handles up to 200 electric heavy-duty Class 8 trucks per day on the I-215/port freight corridor
- Depot consumes approximately 700 MWh of electricity per month at current utilization
- WattEV operates 5 depots in California and targets 100 operational sites and 12,000 electric trucks by 2030
WattEV more than doubled charging capacity at its San Bernardino, California depot to 11.5 MW in February 2026, adding six Megawatt Charging System (MCS) connectors rated at 1.2 MW each alongside 30 new CCS connectors at 250 kW. The facility now handles up to 200 electric heavy-duty trucks per day on the freight corridor linking the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to Inland Empire distribution centers.
Critical Perspective
WattEV’s expanded San Bernardino depot delivers 11.5 MW across 36 connectors rated to handle 200 electric trucks per day on the Inland Empire corridor. At that throughput, full utilization requires each MCS charger to turn over a truck every 30 to 45 minutes continuously — a rate no heavy-duty charging depot in Europe has sustained in its first two years, where comparable MCS-capable facilities in the Netherlands and Germany ran 15 to 25 percent utilization after opening. Traton’s Munich depot, launched in 2023 with similar capacity claims, required a utility infrastructure upgrade that added 14 months to its original timeline and raised the effective cost per charging bay by 35 percent. The question fleet operators are not asking: what is Southern California Edison’s interconnection cost estimate for WattEV’s planned 100th station, and is that number reflected in the company’s current financial model?
What Is Being Built
The expanded depot sits adjacent to Interstate 215 and consumes approximately 700 MWh of electricity per month. MCS connectors deliver enough power to fully charge a Class 8 electric truck in 30 to 45 minutes, compared to four to six hours on a 250 kW CCS charger. That speed difference determines whether a fleet operator runs two shifts per truck or three.
WattEV operates five charging depots in California and has 15 additional sites under development. The company plans to reach 100 operational stations by 2035, building a West Coast network from Long Beach through Bakersfield with a new facility in Oakland and sites along California State Route 99. The target: 12,000 heavy-duty electric trucks on California roads by 2030.
Solving the Grid Connection Bottleneck
A single truck charging at 1.2 MW pulls as much electricity as roughly 1,000 households. A 50-truck depot requires grid connections that most commercial sites lack without major utility upgrades, and those upgrades take 12 to 24 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
WattEV developed a proprietary solid-state transformer (SST) to address this constraint. The liquid-cooled cabinet converts 12 kV to 15 kV medium-voltage utility power directly to variable DC output at 1.2 MW to 3.8 MW, replacing separate step-down transformers, switchgear, and low-voltage rectifiers with a single unit. The California Energy Commission partially funded the development. Production-ready units ship in 2026.
The modular SST design allows operators to add capacity as truck traffic grows, avoiding the costly up-front overbuilds that stall depot projects during permitting.
Why This Matters for Fleet Electrification
California’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule requires manufacturers to sell only zero-emission trucks starting in 2036 and mandates that large fleets begin transitioning as early as 2024. The regulation creates demand for depot-scale charging that does not yet exist at the density freight operators need.
WattEV’s charging-as-a-service model shifts the infrastructure burden from fleet operators to a dedicated provider. Trucking companies pay per kilowatt-hour dispensed rather than financing their own transformer upgrades, electrical panels, and utility interconnections. That structure mirrors the diesel fueling model truckers already understand: pull in, charge, leave.
The San Bernardino expansion demonstrates that megawatt-class depot charging works at commercial scale. The question now is whether the utility interconnection pipeline and transformer supply chain keep pace with the 15 depots WattEV has in development and the dozens more that competitors plan along the same corridors.
