Abstract
To meet goals for air quality improvement and greenhouse gas reduction, California aims to expand both light-duty and heavy-duty zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). To support these aims, the State has set targets for the number of electric charging and hydrogen fueling stations, but deployment is falling short of these targets. For example, there were only 50 hydrogen stations and just over 200,000 chargers as of September 2025, as compared to the goals for this year, set in 2018, of 200 hydrogen stations and 250,000 electric vehicle chargers. Building a large, reliable, equitable network in a short time presents challenges of scale, reliability, and resiliency. One possible way to address these challenges is to combine light-and heavy-duty vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure, given the overlap of these vehicles’ travel patterns and of the respective charging and fueling technologies used. The research investigates how this strategy could support robust charging and refueling networks for projected ZEV growth. To that end, the research also developed a “conservative” and an “optimistic” scenario to simulate charging and hydrogen fueling station deployment across California for 2025, 2035, and 2045.
