A future of ‘gas stations’ without the gas? A Palm Springs clean-energy startup is working on it

California’s decision to phase out new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 has placed renewed urgency and focus on efforts to transition to electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

But how exactly those millions of new vehicles will get the energy they need to keep drivers moving is one of the zero-emission vehicle industry’s thorniest questions.

California currently has less than 80,000 public and shared electric vehicle chargers, according to the California Energy Commission. Energy researchers estimate the state will need roughly 24 times that by 2035 to meet the minimum needs of hybrid and electric vehicles, which typically have less range and take significantly longer to charge than gas vehicles take to refuel.

A Palm Springs-based startup is stepping into this vacuum, aiming to replace gas stations by creating a network of highway-side zero-emission charging and hydrogen refueling stations — starting just off the I-10 in Palm Springs. 

Aptly named ZEV Station, the company also plans to build a fleet of electric vans through a subsidiary to lease to "last-mile" delivery businesses — such as the Amazon delivery facility in Cathedral City, though ZEV Station would not comment on specific clients it's recruiting.

ZEV Station’s founder and local public officials cited several factors that made the area well-suited for ambitious clean-energy ventures, including the availability of local renewable power sources such as wind and affordable zero-carbon energy through Desert Community Energy, a nonprofit public utility in the western Coachella Valley.

Some energy market researchers say ZEV Station’s gas station replacement proposition is likely, in part, a marketing exercise since electric vehicle chargers can often be placed in parking lots as easily as they can in dedicated stations. Despite this, they say the company’s network, if built, might help speed the adoption of zero-carbon vehicles, easing “range anxiety” for drivers used to having ready access to gas stations.

‘A highway environmental oasis’

ZEV Station was founded in April 2021 by Jesse Schneider, a decades-long veteran of the zero-emission vehicle sector and, most recently, head of hydrogen and fuel cell development for electric semitruck maker Nikola Motor Company.

Prior to Nikola, Schneider spent the bulk of his career working for leading German automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Chrysler and BMW, mostly developing hydrogen and fuel cell technologies and setting standards for their use.

“During that time, I kept getting pulled into infrastructure,” Schneider said of his days at Mercedes-Benz. “So I led a lot of the standards on hydrogen infrastructure, even though I worked for an automaker.”

He added that he also spent over a decade working on electric vehicle charging technologies and standards, giving him a broad view of the zero-emission vehicle space — including its key shortcomings.

“Everyone is building a zero-emission vehicle” to meet regulations and consumer demand, Schneider said. “The weak point of that: Everyone is building a ZEV vehicle, but who’s building the ZEV station?”

Schneider said his yearslong inability to answer that question eventually led to his decision to leave Nikola and found ZEV Station in April 2021. The novel concept would marry electric vehicle charging and hydrogen refueling into one-stop stations that would replace gas stations along highways.

Schneider explained that, while some see electric and hydrogen energy as competing forms of clean power, his work led him to view the two as complementary.

“We think that it's very, very similar to the analogy of gasoline and diesel,” he said, noting diesel is mainly used in long-distance trucks while gas powers most passenger cars.

Similarly, the ZEV Station founder said his company is planning for a future where small and mid-sized electric vehicles recharge alongside hydrogen refueling stations for larger vehicles like semitrucks.

ZEV Station was incorporated in Arizona, but quickly set out on a search for a home base in California’s large and growing zero-emission vehicle market. They settled on Palm Springs for a variety of reasons, according to Schneider, including the high volume of both passenger and trucking traffic along the I-10, the availability of relatively affordable zero-carbon energy through Desert Community Energy, year-round sunshine for solar panels at the station and the availability of water to produce hydrogen fuel.

Schneider said the Palm Springs area’s “overflowing” aquifer counterintuitively made obtaining a reliable supply of water easier in the desert than elsewhere in California.

The company set up shop at 500 South Palm Canyon Drive and started planning for its first projects. It purchased 3.5 acres of land on Garnet Avenue just off the I-10 in Palm Springs in December 2021 to serve as the future site of its flagship station — envisioned as a “highway environmental oasis” by the company.

Late last month, ZEV Station opened its first four “proof of concept” zero-carbon chargers in the parking lot of the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Mayor Lisa Middleton, who spoke at the opening event, said in an interview that ZEV Station’s decision to establish its hub in Palm Springs validated the city’s efforts to “have an impact with the environment and do something that matters when it comes to climate change.”

“EVs are an incredibly positive step forward, but they are only as good as the energy sources that are used to produce the electricity,” she said.

Middleton said charging an electric vehicle in a place like West Virginia — where nearly all electricity is generated from coal — is better than using a gas car, but falls far short of the net environmental benefits of electric vehicles charged with electricity from non-polluting sources.

Where the power comes from

Desert Community Energy, which will provide zero-carbon power for ZEV Station’s chargers, is a nonprofit public utility that uses Southern California Edison’s existing infrastructure to supply energy to Palm Springs customers. The organization’s default plan supplies zero-carbon electricity from a range of sources such as wind, solar and hydropower. The clean energy is more expensive than Southern California Edison’s standard rates, although customers can opt down to a cheaper plan with fewer clean power sources.

The organization faced financial challenges after it launched in April 2020, although Middleton and Desert Community Energy Chairperson Geoff Kors said long-term contracts with energy providers would continue to help push down rates over time. Kors, who's also an outgoing member of the city council, said Desert Community Energy had recently signed contracts with a geothermal plant, a solar energy supplier and three new Palm Springs wind farms which would save customers millions on zero-carbon energy.

Schneider called the nonprofit's zero-carbon energy rates “probably the lowest in the state,” citing them as a major draw for his company to the area. Desert Community Energy representative Erica Felci said the organization was not able to confirm where its rates ranked among other providers of zero-carbon energy, but noted that they were lower than many other similar nonprofit California utilities, known as community choice aggregators.

Kors said DCE’s work with ZEV Station highlights a broader opportunity for Palm Springs to draw in more businesses focused on helping address climate change.

“I want us to do more to reach out to them and try and draw more businesses of all kinds in knowing that they have the access to a city that does offer 100% carbon-free power, that the majority of customers are on 100% carbon-free power and that we're taking these aggressive actions to make ourselves a green city,” he said.

In addition to natural advantages in wind, solar and — potentially — Salton Sea geothermal power, Kors said the Coachella Valley benefits from a population that intimately understands the impacts of climate change amid creeping temperatures during already-sweltering desert summers, boosting the political will for action.

A station, a fleet and hydrogen aircraft?

Schneider said ZEV Station plans to open its new flagship station off the I-10 in Palm Springs in late 2023. He said the company intends to first build charging stations alone to begin generating revenue, followed shortly by a building with space for a coffee shop, a restaurant and display windows where local zero-carbon-vehicle dealers can show off vehicles.

“Maybe it’ll be charging with a family and you think of a scenario with kids in the backseat saying, ‘Wow! Look at that car! Can we go inside?’” Schneider said.

The CEO said his company was working with a local architect to design the station building with a “Palm Springs-like” look, but declined to name the architect or say if he meant it would have midcentury-modern styling.

Schneider said hydrogen dispensers would be the last addition and “might creep into 2024” since they take longer to install than electric chargers. 

In total, he said the station would have 14 chargers — including both Tesla chargers and the CCS1 chargers that most other EVs use — and four hydrogen dispensers, split between light- and heavy-duty fueling to serve different sizes of vehicles.

“We’re talking about a large station, not something that you see today,” Schneider said. “And the goal of that is because we need to start thinking about demand and we need to start thinking about charging and hydrogen as the (successor) of the gas station. That's really the goal of ZEV Station.”

Schneider said his company plans to use the Coachella Valley as a “springboard” for its 10-year plan of building a network of highway stations throughout California.

“The objective is really to go across the 10 and up the 5, and in that order,” he said.

In the meantime, ZEV Station is also rolling out a secondary business leasing a fleet of electric "step vans" — think UPS-style vehicles — for last-mile delivery services through its subsidiary ZEV Fleet.

Schneider said the company has four vans and plans to buy more, but that it will remain a relatively limited offering aimed primarily at allowing last-mile delivery operators — which ferry orders from transportation hubs to their final destinations — to “kick the tires” on electric delivery fleets.

If delivery companies are impressed enough with electric vans to buy their own, Schneider said, it could build a reliable customer base for ZEV Station's primary recharging business.

“Because it's sometimes hard to say, ‘Okay, we're going to be building this large station next to you with charging and fueling. Why don't you come over and bring your vehicles that don't exist yet?’” he said.

Besides the station and delivery fleet, Schneider said ZEV Station also has a tentative deal to provide hydrogen to ZeroAvia, a hydrogen-electric aircraft firm, at airports near its stations.

That could potentially mean the beginnings of a zero-carbon road and airway transportation network branching out from Palm Springs, although Schneider said those plans were several years off and secondary to ZEV Station’s primary highway station-building goals.

A zero-carbon energy hub?

To date, ZEV Station has raised $2.7 million in funding through a series of three grants from the State of California. Schneider said the company is preparing to raise additional funds through StartEngine, a platform that allows the public to invest in startups and early-stage companies. He said ZEV Station was also raising private funding from undisclosed businesses.

Hovig Tchalian, a USC business professor who has studied the emergence and development of electric vehicle markets, said there was an obvious need for EV infrastructure in California and that ZEV Station’s highway-side gas station-replacement concept appeared to be a relatively novel proposition.

He questioned, however, the necessity of having full zero-carbon energy stations analogous to traditional gas stations.

“I would argue that gas stations work differently than charging stations,” Tchalian said, “because you can have a standalone charging station — the equivalent of a gas pump — that is in a parking lot, somewhere that's very different, from a structural perspective and just the practical operational perspective, than setting up a whole gas station.”

The professor said the transition to zero-carbon energy sources — like the adoption of all new technologies — would require a behavior shift among consumers. 

Charging stations, he said, may never be as obviously visible from the road as traditional gas stations, causing discomfort among some drivers worried about running out of charge — a phenomenon known as “range anxiety.” But commonly used technologies such as digital maps could make them easy to find regardless, he said.

Despite this, Tchalian said there may be a practical utility in ZEV Station’s gas-station analog approach. 

“All of us, no matter how much we say we love new technologies, are comfortable with the familiar. We're all, to a degree, habit and routine-based,” Tchalian said. “So when you introduce something new, most people's reaction is I don't want to spend the effort or the time or the energy to learn that.”

The professor raised several examples of this phenomenon, such as the staying power of the QWERTY keyboard despite its unnecessarily convoluted layout. He said many new products, such as plant-based meats, are often packaged and presented in ways similar to their traditional counterparts to ease consumer concerns about their unfamiliarity — even when doing so is not practically necessary. He noted this was already the case with electric vehicle charging plugs and sockets, which are designed to mimic the look and placement of gas pumps and fuel cover doors.

Similarly, he suggested that ZEV Station’s gas-station replacements could help some consumers overcome range anxiety by providing obvious locations to recharge and refuel their vehicles.

“Making things look familiar and comfortable at least gets people over that initial hump and increases the possibility or the chance that people will adopt it, feel comfortable with it and use it to a greater degree than they do today,” he said.

If Schneider’s bet is correct and ZEV Station takes off, the founder said he doesn’t plan to relocate the company to a larger market like Los Angeles. Instead, Schneider said he plans to build an engineering team in Palm Springs to further experiment, innovate and support ZEV Station as it expands throughout California.

“We're not just people that buy things through a catalog and put them in,” he said. “We're also ones that help co-develop them and make them work.”

The ZEV Station founder said that, through the work of his company and possible others to come, his team sees the Coachella Valley turning into a hub for zero-carbon energy.

“That is actually a belief of ours,” he said. “Because of the really great ideal location for renewables, there's going to be a lot of energy plays here.”

James B. Cutchin covers business in the Coachella Valley. Reach him at james.cutchin@desertsun.com.