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The U.S., despite decades of research and studies, remains without authentic high-speed rail options.

Since 1987, investors have attempted to introduce bullet train service to Texas. In 2014, a group organized under the name Texas Central launched the most recent attempt to connect Dallas to Houston with a bullet train that travels more than 200 miles per hour, shortening a three and a half hour drive to a 90-minute train ride.

“You cannot do that in a car,” said Andy Byford, senior vice president of high-speed rail programs at Amtrak. “You cannot do that if you fly, if you factor in going to the airport, going through security, getting back in from the airport at the other end.”

Byford is the latest in a long line of U.S. policy experts to call for more high-speed rail connections in the U.S. In 2023, Amtrak revived hopes for the bullet train in the Texas Triangle, when it announced its intention to broaden its partnership with Texas Central.

The fast-growing region contains both the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and Houston, two of the largest population centers in the country.

“If you don’t build high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston, then you only have two options,” said Congressman Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a former managing director at Texas Central. “You can either expand the airport or expand the highway. It’s not going to decrease the travel time between those cities. It’s still going to take at least three hours to get between Dallas and Houston”

Local experts told CNBC that the swelling population of Texas drivers has taken a toll on roads in the area, leading to traffic congestion and safety issues.

“Our transportation system is just really trying to keep up with our population growth” said Brianne Glover, senior research scientist at Texas A&M University’s Transportation Institute. “Commuters experience somewhere around 40 hours of delay each year.”

The Texas Central project has been repeatedly delayed as its backers navigate various regulatory hurdles, including environmental reviews and disputes over property rights. In 2022, the Texas Supreme Court declared that Texas Central, a private entity, met the legal definition of a public interurban electric railway company, giving it the power of eminent domain.

“When I was notified by my nephew through an article about eminent domain, I was absolutely shocked,” said Jody Berry, a Dallas-based farmer who has opposed the Texas Central initiative. The proposed alignment for the Texas high-speed rail project crosses Morney-Berry Farm, which Berry’s family has cultivated for generations.

“Finding out that the high-speed rail could potentially go through our property has made it very difficult for me to sleep,” Berry said.

The project is expected to cost at least $33.6 billion dollars, according to a March 2023 estimate from the Reason Foundation. Similar high-speed rail projects around the world have faced substantial cost overruns in development, including Japan’s Tokaido Shinkansen system. The route in Texas is designed to leverage N700 cars found on the Shinkansen system.

The Texas effort has received substantial support from firms in Japan and the U.S. government. In 2018, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation issued a $300 million loan to support the project. And in late 2023, Texas Central received a Corridor ID program grant to study the route’s potential for partnership with Amtrak.

With a historic $66 billion commitment to passenger rail, the U.S. government under Biden appears to have its best bet in generations to build high-speed rail systems. But the project and other publicly subsidized ones, such as the California project connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, remain uncertain. The California project’s estimated cost skyrocketed from $33 billion to over $100 billion amid delays and pushback from rural landowners, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

“The Biden Administration’s aspirations for high-speed rail fail to account for several realities, including lack of customer demand, economic viability, and impact on existing rail infrastructure,” said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, in a November 2023 congressional hearing on intercity passenger rail systems.

The backers of Texas Central declined repeated requests from CNBC for a comment on the project’s progress and expected completion date.

Watch the video above to learn about the long effort to bring high-speed rail system to the Texas Triangle.

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Biden’s $635M good-bye, Trump’s DOT pick will investigate Tesla, and a look ahead

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January 15, 2025

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Biden's 5M good-bye, Trump's DOT pick will investigate Tesla, and a look ahead

On today’s episode of Quick Charge we explore the uncertainty around the future of EV incentives, the roles different stakeholders will play in shaping that future, and our friend Stacy Noblet from energy consulting firm ICF stops by to share her take on what lies ahead.

We’ve got a couple of different articles and studies referenced in this forward-looking interview, and I’ve done my best to link to all of them below. If I missed one, let me know in the comments.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

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In December, EV sales were still up and incentives were still sweet – Kelley Blue Book

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January 15, 2025

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In December, EV sales were still up and incentives were still sweet – Kelley Blue Book

December-EV-salesKelley
Chevy Equinox EV (Source: GM)

EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.

December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.

Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.

EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.

(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)

Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.

However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.

What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.

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Tesla claims Cybertruck is ‘best-selling electric pickup’ without even confiming sales

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January 15, 2025

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Tesla claims Cybertruck is 'best-selling electric pickup' without even confiming sales

Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.

There’s a lot of context needed here.

As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.

Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.

For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:

You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.

There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.

This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.

Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:

It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.

Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.

However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.

First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.

However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.

Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.

Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.

Electrek’s Take

Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.

Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.

Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.

Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.

The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.

As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.

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