Chile’s New Electric Truck Route
Chile is known for being a leader on electric buses, which already account for a substantial share of the fleet of the city of Santiago. In other areas though, it has been slower. Fully electric cars were around 2% of sales in 2025 (nearer 3% if we include plug-in hybrids). Trucks are around 1% electric, depending on how we define it.
I saw electric trucks being promoted here in Chile at least as far back as the Fidelmov exhibition of August 2019. Maxus have been selling commercial electric vehicles (vans and small trucks) for some years now. And the distribution company Pipau Transportes has had a significant fleet of electric commercial delivery vehicles (mostly vans) for some years as well. A number of electric pickup trucks have also been offered for sale here, but none have sold large numbers yet.
When it comes to the largest trucks being used across a long distance, Chile, like most places, is right at the start line, however it has been interesting to see the development of a truck charging route heading south from the capital of Santiago.
Enel and other partners have recently opened two charging stations in the area of Maule (km 211 on the route south from Santiago) and Chillan (km 407). The charging power is 600kW, which may make these stations the fastest chargers in the country, and at least one of them (Maule) has 5 double dispensers to supply 10 trucks. Two other stations Los Lagartos (km 61) and La Platina (km 159) are said to be entering service soon.
Santiago, Chile
Chile has some potential for long-haul trucking. It is only a slight exaggeration to say it has one main route from north to south across the entire country, which makes the building of a charging network easier. In addition to that advantage it has some positive experience on electric buses to build on, a grid that is steadily adding solar, wind and batteries, and a mild winter in much of the country meaning slightly smaller batteries can provide the needed winter range. It has a moderate electricity price (residential electricity in Chile of about US $0.30 per kWh, while public fast chargers for cars are about $0.50) which will lead to huge savings vs the imported fossil fuels.
It does currently have a right-wing President and an ever so slightly right-leaning congress that will be in place for several years, but so far there is no sign of significant opposition to electric vehicles, and climate change is less of a partisan issue than some other countries. So, although I do have some uncertainty on this, I don’t expect back and forth swings on policy and development like those seen in the US. But we should certainly not expect big subsidies, meaning progress is unlikely to be very rapid for now.
The centre-south corridor selected is a very sensible choice that connects two of the more popular and developed regions in Chile. Enel, which is providing the chargers, is a very established and recognised player in this area. As an electricity company, it has been supportive of electric vehicles for some time, and for example helped many of its own employees to have EVs from around 8 years ago. Its employee car park in Santiago in 2019 was the only place in Chile at that time where I was able to look around me and see large numbers of electric cars. Enel X chargers are also in use throughout Latin America, including for a famous project where they built 7kW chargers so Ewan McGregor and his team could drive a couple of Rivians and some e-bikes across the continent for an Apple TV show called Long Way Up.
I used a couple of those chargers on a visit to Argentina and one of them hadn’t been used for years and was turned off and covered in dust, but thankfully I managed to get it to work. I haven’t always had good experience using Enel’s chargers with my car in Chile. The software is glitchy and of the six times I tried to use them over the last four years, I failed to get a charge three times, which is why I prefer the more reliable network from Copec. The last time I used an Enel charger this year it worked perfectly, so maybe they are improving. Also, the experiences of using 7kW or 50kW chargers for cars may not be relevant here to these newer truck chargers. Reliability is critical in commercial operations and I hope and believe that they would maintain the chargers better and make getting a charge slicker as doing so would be necessary for success.
A Windrose truck on trial in Chile recently tried out the new charger in the area of Chillan and was able to complete an over 1,300km round trip on this route. Now it will be interesting to see whether these chargers will see regular use over the next 12 months, or whether they will be sat waiting for the market to catch up.