{"id":8428,"date":"2025-05-30T11:50:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=8428"},"modified":"2026-06-29T19:47:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T23:47:49","slug":"california-texas-connected-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/california-texas-connected-highway\/8428\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla applied for $100 million in federal funding to build 9 truck-charging stations from California to Texas and got rejected every time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electric vehicles are being adopted by a large portion of the world’s population, especially in the United States, where more than 4 million electric cars were sold in the first quarter of 2025. California is the state with the most electric cars on the road, with over 1.3 million. The sale grew 35% in comparison with the same time span from last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Now, Elon Musk intends to connect Texas to California<\/strong> through a charging corridor, but it’s not happening anytime soon.<\/p>\n

California and Texas to have ‘special charging corridor’<\/h2>\n

Elon Musk’s Tesla is one of the strongest brands in the electric vehicles market, and with California being the state where most EVs are sold, a connection between states would benefit commerce, since the Tesla Gigafactory is in Austin, Texas. Another state that also has a strong market for electric vehicles is Arizona, where a considerable part of the population uses solar panels to generate energy.<\/p>\n

The corridor would interconnect these three states, but the distance between California and Arizona is considerably shorter (both on<\/span> the West Coast) than it is to Texas (on the Gulf Coast). Tesla itself would have to spend billions of dollars on the project, and for that reason, it would need the help of the government to fund the project to create 9 charging stations across 1,800 miles.<\/p>\n

Tesla applied for $100 million in federal funding to create the TESSERACT project – which stands for “Transport Electrification Supporting Semis Operating in Arizona, California, and Texas” – through the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, but got rejected in multiple rounds<\/strong>, including the most recent one, when the Department of Transportation gave $636 million to 49 applicants, but not Tesla.<\/p>\n

In contrast to Tesla’s failure to get funding, Texas-based projects have been approved frequently, including a $70 million grant to build five hydrogen fueling stations for trucks.<\/p>\n

Tesla applied for funding multiple times<\/h2>\n

The company applied for funding for the first time in 2023 in order to build nine semi-truck charging stations between Northern California and the southern border of Texas<\/a>, and would still use $24 million of its own money to finish the project. After the first try, Tesla went on to apply multiple times for funding.<\/p>\n

The specific reasons why the project keeps getting rejected aren’t detailed, but it can be due to concerns about the viability of the project after Elon Musk laid off the entire Tesla Supercharging team in 2024, cutting around 500 people at once. A former employee stated that nothing was wrong with the project, and the team was working on the update of the network when it happened.<\/p>\n

The reason why the project is constantly rejected<\/h3>\n

In the United States, there are over 200,000 public charging ports. According to TechCrunch, an insider informed that by the time the massive lay-off happened, there were dozens of Supercharging sites in the planning and construction phase \u2013 some were even about to open and start supplying renewable solar energy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another reason why Tesla still didn’t get funding for the project is the political dynamics and the presence of Elon Musk’s role as a key advisor for President Donald Trump. The billionaire expressed his frustration on social media after once again not getting the funds, posting “here we go again”. Despite the setbacks, Tesla plans to look for other alternative funding sources or scale the project differently. Meanwhile, the focus will be on the launch of the robotaxi in Austin, Texas – 10 cars should be hitting the road by the end of June if Tesla manages to meet the requirements from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Electric vehicles are being adopted by a large portion of the world’s population, especially in the United States, where more than 4 million electric cars were sold in the first quarter of 2025. California is the state with the most electric cars on the road, with over 1.3 million. The sale grew 35% in comparison … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":8431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"California","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"California leads in electric vehicle sales, while Texas is home to the Tesla Gigafactory and other company projects. Both can be connected in the future.","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}