How Terawatt Designs Charging Hubs for Autonomous Fleets

A few weeks after we publicly launched Terawatt, an old colleague now working at an autonomous vehicle (AV) fleet company called me and said “I think we could use your help.” This was early 2021, and while I’d seen the vehicles whizzing past in San Francisco, I’d never seen one with no driver, and they still seemed to be an exotic sight. Fast forward four years and not only are there many more autonomous vehicles all over the city, they are now a way of life for many rideshare users in the city — and those erstwhile drivers are nowhere to be seen. 

When we started Terawatt over four years ago, we had our eye on providing charging solutions for any type of EV fleet that needed turnkey solutions. As Terawatt has grown, serving AV fleets has become an increasing focus for us as a company. AV companies will need significant amounts of support in the form of turnkey charging hubs for the industry to keep on the growth path it is charting — McKinsey & Company predicts that at minimum, 12% of new passenger cars will contain autonomous technology by 2030. 

We have been working closely with AV companies to understand their needs and deliver best in class solutions to keep their fleet charged up and on the road every day. Not to mention we have also grown up alongside the AV industry, which means that building a product line to meet these companies’ needs has led to tons of learnings.

We’re excited to share some of these with you below.

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• Evolving operations means evolving infrastructure requirements. Providing charging solutions for a rapidly growing industry requires us to be nimble. Given the timeframe it takes to put a charging hub together — 1.5+ years — we must anticipate our customers’ changing needs and partner closely with them to plan for the future. As an example, one of our sites, housed in a parking garage, was a no go for these fleets a few years ago due to the complexity of navigating ramps, columns, and other features of a garage. Now it’s a site with 60 ports exclusively serving an autonomous vehicle fleet. 

• When something “unlocks” it can drive demand in multiple markets quickly. Now that AV technology has grown sophisticated enough to operate in increasingly difficult and diverse geographic environments, AV fleets are expanding in new markets — meaning the demand for charging solutions in those markets materializes overnight. Besides technological unlocks, more and more cities are embracing AV technology, and this can also be the source of increasing demand in multiple markets all at once. With each technology breakthrough, more use cases and more markets get unlocked. 

• These companies need a truly turnkey solution. In order to scale, they need trusted partners like Terawatt to help them land in new markets quickly. This means we provide the full stack: 1) the real estate itself (plus all related zoning and permitting); 2) all of the power required, including onsite solutions like solar and battery storage, 3) the charging infrastructure, and of course, important to all fleets, 4) a high level of service level agreement-backed uptime and operations. At Terawatt we are proud to deliver solutions with a track record of 99%+ uptime for the full stack.

• Location matters. A lot. One of Terawatt’s secret sauce ingredients is deep expertise on the zoning requirements and power availability in different cities. Many AV customers have very specific preferences on where they’d like to charge their vehicles, driven by their technology, authorized areas to operate, and where riders are. We must marry both of these to find the sites that fit within this Venn diagram of requirements, which has varying degrees of difficulty in different jurisdictions. 

• Site configuration requires a whole new level of attention to detail. This may come as a surprise, but building site plans still need to factor in human needs. Features like a lounge, which are standard with all Terawatt charging hubs, are still relevant for AV charging hubs, even if the driver has been removed from the equation. Other learnings: things like stall width, turning radius, and stall configuration may need to be tweaked compared to a standard charging site. The ability to move lots of data is also important, so these sites need to be interconnected for data more than most. Terawatt sites always have hardwired internet connections to eliminate the most significant source of charger downtime: Communications issues.   

• Terawatt is team AV! Our AV partners are on the cutting edge of technology and it’s a privilege to be growing alongside them. Just as AI models and solutions need data centers to power them, AVs, the bulk of which are built on EV platforms, will need EV charging hubs to help them scale. We’re excited to continue “driving” progress and enabling scale for these fleets!