If you live in the US, the stuff you buy—that new dining room table, bag of rice, or pair of pants heading to your home right now—may experience the all-electric future of global transportation before you do.

Tens of millions of tons of goods move through California’s ports each year, proceeding from ship to port and beyond on hulking semitrucks. Forty percent of the nation’s containerized imports move through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach alone, vital links in a global chain of commerce connecting factories all over the world to…