Tesla is pushing ahead with a plan to build an electric big-rig charging corridor stretching from Texas to California, despite being snubbed by a lucrative federal funding program that’s part of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. But the initial scope of the project could change, according to TechCrunch.
The company was seeking nearly $100 million from the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) discretionary grant program. Combined with about $24 million of its own money, Tesla wanted to build nine electric pickup truck charging stations between Laredo, Texas, and Fremont, California.
The corridor, if built, would be a first-of-its-kind charging network that could enable both long-distance and regional electric transportation and help clean up a large chunk of the otherwise dirty transportation sector. Without it, however, Tesla’s promise to electrify heavy-duty trucks could be delayed even further than it already is.
The project as presented to the FHWA was called TESSERACT, which stands for “Transport Electrification Supporting Semis Operating in Arizona, California, and Texas,” according to a slide buried in a 964-page slide. archiving with the South Coast Air Quality Management District. (Tesla partnered with SCAQMD on the app.)
But Tesla was not among the 47 recipients that the Biden administration was announced in January. Collectively, these winners received $623 million to build electric vehicle charging and refueling stations across the country. This is despite Tesla’s victory 13% of all other charge awards so far from the Infrastructure Act, though that has only netted the company about $17 million.
Rohan Patel, who stepped down as vice president at Tesla this week as the company laid off 10% of its workforce, said in a message to TechCrunch that Tesla may turn to government funding opportunities or future rounds of the CFI program . Some of the sites along the route “are pointless even without funding,” he said.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
The 1,800-mile route would theoretically connect Tesla’s two vehicle factories in North America, as well as a planned — but delayed — one in Mexico. Each station was originally planned to be equipped with eight 750 kW chargers for Tesla Semis and four chargers open to other electric trucks. It’s unclear how effective it would be if the company couldn’t build all nine stations, which are roughly equally spaced along the route.
About half of the Biden administration options for financing CFI focused on creating EV charging infrastructure in “urban and rural communities, including in convenient and high-use locations such as schools, parks, libraries, apartment buildings and more.”
The other half was dedicated to funding 11 “corridor” projects, including a number on the same I-10 corridor that is part of Tesla’s proposed route. This includes $70 million to the North Texas Council of Governments to build up to five hydrogen fueling stations for medium- and heavy-duty trucks in the Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio areas.
“The project will help create a hydrogen corridor from southern California to Texas,” the Department of Transportation wrote in a statement in January.
“Hydrogen station funding will be reduced as pure lost money,” Patel told TechCrunch this week.
While he no longer speaks for Tesla, he also criticized hydrogen infrastructure funding when he was still at the company.
“Governments around the world are wasting hydrogen tax dollars on light/heavy infrastructure,” He wrote in X in February. “Like smoking, it’s never too late to quit.”
Funding is not the only challenge for the project. Another complicating factor could be Tesla’s recent restructuring.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is now “balls to the wall for autonomy”, and has reportedly already sacrificed a planned low-cost EV to make a purpose-built robotaxi a company priority. The Semi is years behind schedule and Tesla has only built about 100 to date.
Despite this, the Tesla Semi program is still slowly attracting customers. Just a few days after the restructuring, the head of the Semi program, Dan Priestley, announced via social media a new potential customer for trucks. Priestley also said in March that Tesla is using Semis ship battery packs from Nevada to the Fremont plant.
