Business
California still bullish on EV trucks, despite industry opposition and setbacks in Washington
It seemed like the death knell. The state of California failed to get required federal permission from the Biden administration — the Biden administration — to enforce new regulations that would phase out sales of diesel big-rig trucks to fleet operators at the state’s seaports, forcing them to buy zero-emission vehicles instead.
The regulations, known as Advanced Clean Fleets, faced pitched opposition from the trucking industry. But California plans to carry on anyway, hoping the carrot of subsidy money and the stick of other state regulations will accomplish its goals.
Infrastructure improvements will help. Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, was among officials on hand at the Port of Long Beach recently for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new electric truck charging depot — 25 chargers and 44 dispensers to serve up to 200 trucks a day.
“We are committed in California to continuing this process,” she said.
The $10-million-plus depot, funded through a mix of private investment and state, local and federal tax credits, subsidies and grants, will be run by a San Francisco startup called Forum Mobility, one of several heavy-duty truck charging companies seeking a foothold in a new business category called TaaS, or trucking as a service.
Forum charges truck fleet operators monthly “subscriptions” to use its charging depots. It also buys or leases electric trucks, in turn leasing them to truck fleet owners as part of a subscription package.
The success (or not) of companies such as Forum could determine whether California achieves its ambitious quest to slash local pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions by converting the state’s massive population of diesel trucks to zero-emission versions.
By January, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency had not acted on California’s 15-month-old request for a waiver to federal rules that would allow Advanced Clean Trucks rules to move forward. CARB withdrew its waiver request in January for fear the Trump administration would turn it down. Biden’s EPA never explained what was taking so long to reach a decision.
The rule would have applied to drayage trucks — semitrucks that haul shipping containers into and out of seaports. The goods are carried to nearby distribution centers, most of which are then transported by long-distance trucks and trains.
Because drayage trucks concentrate fume-pumping diesel engines in a tight location, the air quality in residential areas adjacent to ports suffers. To combat this pollution and global warming, the state is pushing for electric vehicle transport.
The rules would have applied to any truck operator who owned or leased between one and 50 trucks, if annual revenue topped $50 million, or to any truck fleet larger than 50 vehicles.
Forum Mobility electric trucks from Volvo, charging up.
(Kevin Krause / Forum Mobility)
Forum and other electric truck service providers aren’t panicking. While the state cannot now force fleet operators to buy electric trucks, it can still require truck manufacturers to sell them through its Advanced Clean Trucks regulations.
It’s similar to California’s Advanced Clean Cars program, which doesn’t require consumers to buy electric vehicles, but penalizes manufacturers if they don’t phase out sales of gasoline and diesel cars and light trucks by 2035. Truck manufacturers have until 2036 to fully convert to zero-emission sales of new trucks.
Most major U.S. big-rig truck and engine manufacturers signed a deal with the state in 2023, agreeing to go along with the plan and not file lawsuits against it, in return for more regulatory certainty — at least at the state level — and flexibility in meeting the state’s strict diesel pollution rule. That deal could protect the program from any action against it from the Trump administration. Signers include Ford, GM, Navistar, Volvo, Paccar, Cummins and others.
But with no state rules forcing zero-emission trucks on truck buyers, the budding electric truck industry will have to rely more on salesmanship — operating costs are cheaper for electric trucks — and more on government subsidy money to pay for the currently enormous costs of electric trucks.
“We’ll move forward with more carrots than sticks,” said Adam Browning, policy chief at Forum Mobility.
Truckloads of carrots will be required, and they’ll have to come from state and local governments, because federal support for electric trucks appears doubtful in the Trump administration.
By far the biggest barrier to diesel-to-electric conversion is the cost of electric trucks. Few electric big-rig assembly lines yet exist and an electric big-rig cab can cost up to three times as much as a diesel version — around $450,000.
Scaling up production — in a big way — could result in great cost reductions. State officials thought a diesel ban combined with state subsidies would sufficiently boost demand. Now it’ll have to rely mostly on subsidies.
How much the state will pay out is unclear, hinging partly on demand and partly on how much state revenue is available. CARB said it has paid $1.5 billion to subsidize purchase of commercial electric trucks, nearly $200 million last year alone.
Buyers can qualify for subsidies worth from 40% to 90% of the cost of an electric big-rig cab.
The state believes the cost is worth it in the long run, with reduced pollution improving public health and lowering medical costs, and greenhouse gas reduction helping to address hazards partly attributable to global warming. If left purely to the marketplace, any shift to zero-emission vehicles would take much longer than the state believes is necessary.
There are many sources of subsidy money in California for trucks and truck charging, including two carbon cap-and-trade programs, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Money is also available from CARB, from state air quality districts, from cities and from container fees levied by port operators.
With enough demand, truck manufacturers will scale up and add production lines, sending costs down. If the cost ever becomes competitive with diesel trucks, truck fleet owners, especially those with short- to medium-haul routes, may well find electric trucks more appealing.
Rudy Diaz is an early adopter. He owns Hight Logistics, a medium-size fleet operator for trucks that transfer freight in and out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. His drayage trucks are natural candidates for electric early adoption. With a typical range around 200 miles, heavy truck batteries don’t yet have the range to meet the demands of long-haul transport. But it’s plenty for most drayage jobs.
Rudy Diaz, chief executive at Hight Logistics, with an electric truck at Hight headquarters in Long Beach.
(William Liang / For The Times)
Diaz grew up in Watts and worked in freight logistics before launching Hight from his house with a small fleet of diesel cabs. Hight now operates a warehouse and truck yard near the Long Beach airport, with 70 trucks — 50 diesel, 20 electric. He’s hoping to grow the electric share.
He’s been a customer of Forum Mobility since December 2021.
“Forum reached out to me saying they were a startup company and wanted to start a program with turnkey solutions” — truck leasing, maintenance and charging, including chargers installed at the Hight truck yard.
“At the time I had no idea what a battery-electric truck was or even how you’d charge one,” he said.
But he’s an outdoors lover, a bicyclist, trim and fit, with a personal dedication to improving air quality.
“I genuinely do care about the environment,” he said. “If the environment is not considered, our survival is in question.”
Subsidies from state, local and federal sources flow through to Forum and Hight, allowing Diaz’s electric trucks — from Volvo, Daimler and BYD — to make a profit. But no question, he said, the electric truck market will have to stand on its own at some point to attract sufficient private capital and grow big enough to displace diesel technology.
Hight carries everything from clothes to car parts to consumer electronics, but the electric trucks are allowing it to branch out. The EV component was key to Hight’s getting a freight contract with Lime Micromobility, the electric scooter company.
“Decarbonization of the economy underpins everything we do,” said Lime co-founder Adam Savage. “We want to go carbon free as fast and aggressively as we can, whether producing our own vehicles our moving freight.”
One of Hight’s drivers, Marco Garrido of Anaheim, recently shifted from diesel to electric, and became an instant convert.
“I love it, I love it,” he said. The trucks are quiet, no exhaust, no cumbersome gear shifting, and the new models are fitted with the latest safety equipment, including backup sensors. It adds up, he said, to less stress.
Although it’s highly questionable whether federal money makes its way to the nascent electric truck market over the next four years, a nonprofit financial group called Climate United last August locked in nearly $7 billion in funding from the EPA to help for clean energy projects, part of which will be spent to boost truck maker production and pave the way for private lenders now stuck in neutral.
One way to do that: create a market in used electric trucks. Not only are electric trucks expensive, no one knows how much they’ll be worth once their leases run out.
“Traditional lessors are not set up to take risk on what that amount will be,” said Jacqueline Torres, head of finance at Forum.
That can scare private finance away, said Brooke Durham, the organization’s communications director. With the EPA money, it will buy trucks and lease them to Forum and other trucking-as-service companies, taking on the risk of creating a used truck market. As used truck prices become clearer, private lenders and investors will have hard data on which to base their financial decisions.
“This will be catalytic to have private capital step in,” said Forum Mobility Chief Executive Matt LeDucq.
The company is hoping that’ll help spark big new orders.
“Something needs to break the chicken or the egg loose,” said Forum’s Browning. “Once a 500-truck order comes in, the flywheel really gets going.”
California’s clean transportation goals depend on that happening.
For the trendiest tenants in Hollywood office buildings, it’s the latest fad that goes way beyond designer furniture and art: mini studios
To capitalize on the never-ending flow of stars and influencers who come through Los Angeles, a growing number of companies are building bright little corners for content creators to try products and shoot short videos. Athletic apparel maker Puma, Kim Kardashian’s Skims and cheeky cosmetics retailer e.l.f. have spaces specifically designed to give people a place to experience and broadcast about their brands.
Hollywood, which hasn’t historically been home to apparel companies, is now attracting the offices of fashion retailers, says CIM Group, one of the neighborhood’s largest commercial property landlords.
“When we’re touring a space, one of the first items they bring up is, ‘Where can I build a studio?’” said Blake Eckert, who leases CIM offices in L.A.
Their studio offices also serve as marketing centers, with showrooms and meeting spaces where brands can host proprietary events not open to the public.
“For companies where brand visibility is really important, there is a trend of creating spaces that don’t just function as offices,” said real estate broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE, who puts together entertainment property leases and sales.
Puma’s global entertainment marketing team is based in its new Hollywood offices, which works with such musical celebrity partners as Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, Dua Lipa, Skepta and Rosé, said Allyssa Rapp, head of Puma Studio L.A.
Allyssa Rapp, director of entertainment marketing at Puma, is shown in the Puma Studio L.A. The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Hollywood is a central location, she said, for meeting with celebrities, stylists and outside designers, most of whom are based in Los Angeles.
The office is a “creation hub,” she said, where influencers can record Puma’s design prototyping lab supported by libraries of materials and equipment used to create Puma apparel. The company, founded in 1948, is known for its emblematic sneakers such as the Speedcat and its lunging feline logo, and makes athletic wear, accessories and equipment.
Puma’s entertainment marketing team also occupies the office and sometimes uses it for exclusive events.
“We use the space as a showroom, as a social space that transforms from a traditional workplace into more of an experiential space,” Rapp said.
Nontraditional uses include content creation, sit-down dinners, product launches, album listening parties and workshops.
“Inviting people into our space and being able to give them high-touch brand experiences is something tangible and important for them,” she said. “The cultural layer is really important for us.”
The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though. There’s no retail portal to the exclusive Hollywood offices.
Puma shoes are on display in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Puma is also positioning its L.A studio as a connection point for major upcoming sporting events coming to Los Angeles, including the World Cup this summer, the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics.
In-office studios don’t need to be big to be impactful, Mihalka said. “These are smaller stages, closer to green screen than a massive soundstage.”
Social media is the key driver of content created by most businesses, which may set up small booth-like stages where influencers can hawk hot products while offering discounts to people watching them perform.
Bigger, elevated stages can accommodate multiple performers for extended discussions in front of small audiences, with towering screens behind them to set the mood or illustrate products.
Among the tricked-out offices, she said, is Skims. The company, which is valued at $5 billion, is based in a glass-and-steel office building near the fabled intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
The fashion retailer declined to comment on the studio uses in its headquarters, but according to architecture firm Odaa, it has open and private offices, meeting rooms, collaboration zones, photo studios, sample libraries, prototype showrooms, an executive lounge and a commissary for 400 people.
Pieces of a shoe sit on a workbench in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The brands building studios typically want to find the darkest spot on the premises to put their content creation or podcast spaces, Eckert said, where they can limit outside light and sound. That’s commonly near the center of the office floor, far from windows and close to permanent shear walls that limit sound intrusion.
They also need space for green rooms and restrooms dedicated to the talent.
Spotify recently built a fancy podcast studio in a CIM office building on trendy Sycamore Avenue that is open by invitation-only to video creators in Spotify’s partner program.
“Ambitious shows need spaces that support big ideas,” Bill Simmons, head of talk strategy at Spotify, said in a statement. “These studios give teams room to experiment and keep pushing what’s possible.”
The rolling robots that deliver groceries and hot meals across Los Angeles are getting an upgrade.
Coco Robotics, a UCLA-born startup that’s deployed more than 1,000 bots across the country, unveiled its next-generation machines on Thursday.
The new robots are bigger, tougher and better equipped for autonomy than their predecessors. The company will use them to expand into new markets and increase its presence in Los Angeles, where it makes deliveries through a partnership with DoorDash.
Dubbed Coco 2, the next-gen bots have upgraded cameras and front-facing lidar, a laser-based sensor used in self-driving cars. They will use hardware built by Nvidia, the Santa Clara-based artificial intelligence chip giant.
Coco co-founder and chief executive Zach Rash said Coco 2 will be able to make deliveries even in conditions unsafe for human drivers. The robot is fully submersible in case of flooding and is compatible with special snow tires.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco, opens the top of the new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Early this month, a cute Coco was recorded struggling through flooded roads in L.A.
“She’s doing her best!” said the person recording the video. “She is doing her best, you guys.”
Instagram followers cheered the bot on, with one posting, “Go coco, go,” and others calling for someone to help the robot.
“We want it to have a lot more reliability in the most extreme conditions where it’s either unsafe or uncomfortable for human drivers to be on the road,” Rash said. “Those are the exact times where everyone wants to order.”
The company will ramp up mass production of Coco 2 this summer, Rash said, aiming to produce 1,000 bots each month.
The design is sleek and simple, with a pink-and-white ombré paint job, the company’s name printed in lowercase, and a keypad for loading and unloading the cargo area. The robots have four wheels and a bigger internal compartment for carrying food and goods .
Many of the bots will be used for expansion into new markets across Europe and Asia, but they will also hit the streets in Los Angeles and operate alongside the older Coco bots.
Coco has about 300 bots in Los Angeles already, serving customers from Santa Monica and Venice to Westwood, Mid-City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Koreatown and the USC area.
The new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) drives along the sidewalk at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
The company is in discussion with officials in Culver City, Long Beach and Pasadena about bringing autonomous delivery to those communities.
There’s also been demand for the bots in Studio City, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, according to Rash.
“A lot of the markets that we go into have been telling us they can’t hire enough people to do the deliveries and to continue to grow at the pace that customers want,” Rash said. “There’s quite a lot of area in Los Angeles that we can still cover.”
The bots already operate in Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, Finland. Last month, they arrived in Jersey City, N.J.
Late last year, Coco announced a partnership with DashMart, DoorDash’s delivery-only online store. The partnership allows Coco bots to deliver fresh groceries, electronics and household essentials as well as hot prepared meals.
With the release of Coco 2, the company is eyeing faster deliveries using bike lanes and road shoulders as opposed to just sidewalks, in cities where it’s safe to do so. Coco 2 can adapt more quickly to new environments and physical obstacles, the company said.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Coco 2 is designed to operate autonomously, but there will still be human oversight in case the robot runs into trouble, Rash said. Damaged sidewalks or unexpected construction can stop a bot in its tracks.
The need for human supervision has created a new field of jobs for Angelenos.
Though there have been reports of pedestrians bullying the robots by knocking them over or blocking their path, Rash said the community response has been overall positive. The bots are meant to inspire affection.
“One of the design principles on the color and the name and a lot of the branding was to feel warm and friendly to people,” Rash said.
Coco plans to add thousands of bots to its fleet this year. The delivery service got its start as a dorm room project in 2020, when Rash was a student at UCLA. He co-founded the company with fellow student Brad Squicciarini.
The Santa Monica-based company has completed more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its bots have collectively traveled around 1 million miles.
Coco chooses neighborhoods to deploy its bots based on density, prioritizing areas with restaurants clustered together and short delivery distances as well as places where parking is difficult.
The robots can relieve congestion by taking cars and motorbikes off the roads. Rash said there is so much demand for delivery services that the company’s bots are not taking jobs from human drivers.
Instead, Coco can fill gaps in the delivery market while saving merchants money and improving the safety of city streets.
“This vehicle is inherently a lot safer for communities than a car,” Rash said. “We believe our vehicles can operate the highest quality of service and we can do it at the lowest price point.”
President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using technology from San Francisco artificial intelligence company Anthropic, escalating a high-profile clash between the AI startup and the Pentagon over safety.
In a Friday post on the social media site Truth Social, Trump described the company as “radical left” and “woke.”
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said.
The president’s harsh words mark a major escalation in the ongoing battle between some in the Trump administration and several technology companies over the use of artificial intelligence in defense tech.
Anthropic has been sparring with the Pentagon, which had threatened to end its $200-million contract with the company on Friday if it didn’t loosen restrictions on its AI model so it could be used for more military purposes. Anthropic had been asking for more guarantees that its tech wouldn’t be used for surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.
The tussle could hobble Anthropic’s business with the government. The Trump administration said the company was added to a sweeping national security blacklist, ordering federal agencies to immediately discontinue use of its products and barring any government contractors from maintaining ties with it.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who met with Anthropic’s Chief Executive Dario Amodei this week, criticized the tech company after Trump’s Truth Social post.
“Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon,” he wrote Friday on social media site X.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic announced a two-year agreement with the Department of Defense in July to “prototype frontier AI capabilities that advance U.S. national security.”
The company has an AI chatbot called Claude, but it also built a custom AI system for U.S. national security customers.
On Thursday, Amodei signaled the company wouldn’t cave to the Department of Defense’s demands to loosen safety restrictions on its AI models.
The government has emphasized in negotiations that it wants to use Anthropic’s technology only for legal purposes, and the safeguards Anthropic wants are already covered by the law.
Still, Amodei was worried about Washington’s commitment.
“We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” he said in a blog post. “However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
Tech workers have backed Anthropic’s stance.
Unions and worker groups representing 700,000 employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft said this week in a joint statement that they’re urging their employers to reject these demands as well if they have additional contracts with the Pentagon.
“Our employers are already complicit in providing their technologies to power mass atrocities and war crimes; capitulating to the Pentagon’s intimidation will only further implicate our labor in violence and repression,” the statement said.
Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. government could benefit its competitors, such as Elon Musk’s xAI or OpenAI.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and one of Anthropic’s biggest competitors, told CNBC in an interview that he trusts Anthropic.
“I think they really do care about safety, and I’ve been happy that they’ve been supporting our war fighters,” he said. “I’m not sure where this is going to go.”
Anthropic has distinguished itself from its rivals by touting its concern about AI safety.
The company, valued at roughly $380 billion, is legally required to balance making money with advancing the company’s public benefit of “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.”
Developers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations use Anthropic’s tools. Its chatbot can generate code, write text and perform other tasks. Anthropic also offers an AI assistant for consumers and makes money from paid subscriptions as well as contracts. Unlike OpenAI, which is testing ads in ChatGPT, Anthropic has pledged not to show ads in its chatbot Claude.
The company has roughly 2,000 employees and has revenue equivalent to about $14 billion a year.
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