About a year ago, Daimler Trucks North America opened what it refers to as a "heavy-duty electric truck charging site, called 'Electric Island'" in Portland, Ore. The goal of Electric Island is to help accelerate the development, testing and deployment of zero-emissions commercial vehicles. A year later, that hasn't changed, but the team has learned an awful lot about what it takes to successfully run electric vehicles, as well as the necessary EV environment surrounding them.

Located across the street from DTNA headquarters, Electric Island opened with eight vehicle charging stations, the majority of which are now available for public use for the charging of electric cars, buses, box vans and semi-trucks. These charging stations aren't simply DTNA's own Detroit-branded chargers, mind you; the company consciously made the decision to feature chargers from a variety of companies in this space. The site is built to immediately provide charging for EVs of all shapes and sizes, and has allowed DTNA to study energy management, charger use and performance, and, in the case of DTNA, its own vehicles’ charging performance. It's a true proving ground for both the variety of charging stations and the physical space laid out to supply them.

On this episode of The Amped EV Podcast, we wanted to see this island for ourselves. So, we tracked down Nate Hill, DTNA director of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure & econsulting, who we've dubbed our "first on-location correspondent," to give us a little tour and tell us a bit more about what the company has learned with a year of electric island living under its belt.