Biden admin debuts infrastructure plan to electrify freight by 2040, a first
The Biden Administration has released the first-ever strategy document detailing its plan to target specific freight corridors for infrastructure improvement, with the intent of helping to reach its goal of 100% zero-emission new truck sales by 2040.
The strategy is a cooperation between the Departments of Transportation and Energy (through the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation) and the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s the first attempt of the US government to identify a consistent strategy for electrifying freight transport nationwide.
The offices analyzed how medium and heavy duty freight vehicles move in America, and established priorities of what routes should be targeted first in order to maximize pollution reductions.
Heavy duty vehicles have a disproportionate effect on pollution, as large diesel engines release many more particulate emissions than light-duty vehicles do. These vehicles tend to drive along specific routes, and those routes often go through poorer communities, with 75% of truck traffic traveling on just 4% of the nation’s roads.
This means these places experience disproportionate pollution – and that we can get disproportionate gains just by cleaning up a small amount of roads, instead of targeting every road in the country haphazardly.
So this strategy does target those roads first, focusing on certain “transport hubs” between 2024-2027. Those hubs are in the largest areas for freight traffic around the country, and some associated corridors between or near the hubs. For example, the hub around the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the logistics centers of the Inland Empire, or the Texas Triangle, or much of the Northeastern seaboard where US population density is highest.
These areas are targeted partially due to how much traffic they see, but also other important factors like areas that experience disproportionate air quality burdens, and with a particular interest in states with policies that enable zero-emission vehicle deployment (specifically, California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which several other states have adopted).
The deployment strategy goes on to connect these preliminary corridors from ’27-’30, then expand the network from ’30-’35, then complete electrification of the National Highway Freight Network from ’35-’40.
The staged deployment also recognizes the limitations of today’s technology. Currently, electric trucks are more than capable for certain tasks like drayage and last-mile delivery, but long-haul trucking and sleeper cabs just aren’t there yet due to the mass and cost of batteries. So in the short term, shorter and more frequent routes, which also tend to go through the most populated areas, will be targeted first. These routes also offer the best cost-of-ownership advantages, another factor the plan takes into account.
The strategy doesn’t just focus on BEVs though, but also acknowledges that hydrogen could help to electrify zero emission heavy duty transport. Due to hydrogen’s higher energy density, it could be useful for long-haul trucking.
But infrastructure difficulties are greater with hydrogen, because hydrogen fueling facilities are costly and rare, and there is no nationwide hydrogen distribution network already established, unlike the ones we have for diesel and electricity. So the strategy will help to identify where the best locations for hydrogen refueling facilities might land.
This strategy doesn’t commit additional money, it merely helps to direct funding, both from government and private sources, into the places that have been identified as the most ripe for electrification. Billions of dollars have already been committed by the federal government largely via President Biden’s two signature legislative accomplishments the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. In addition, there is additional funding from state governments, and just two weeks ago the EPA committed $3 billion towards cleaning up ports (there’s a webinar about this plan’s funding opportunities tomorrow from 2-4PM EDT).
The full strategy (with ~300 pages listing corridors and port facilities) is available here.
Electrek’s Take
In our recent conversations at events related to heavy duty trucking (e.g. truck charger openings, ACT Expo, municipal truck ride&drive events, etc.), infrastructure is the main topic of conversation. A few years ago, fleets were curious about how EV trucks might be able to fit into fleets like theirs, but things have moved rapidly and now everyone is rushing to install chargers at their depots, or wondering what sort of public charging infrastructure they might be able to find.
Regulators are trying to find ways to streamline these installations, as some of them can be held up and make it difficult for trucking companies to electrify as quickly as governments want them to.
So a directive from the federal government about how to achieve these goals will give a lot of entities more clarity on how to get where we need to be, and on what to target first. There’s no reason to install a huge charging station in Sterling, North Dakota, right now if we can instead target the trucks handling a combined ~20 million TEU on the 710 in Long Beach.
And apparently this was a pretty big deal, since we got comments from every environmental organization you can dream of about this new strategy. The Sierra Club, BlueGreen Alliance, Environmental Defense Fund, International Council on Clean Transportation and more all sent us statements praising the new strategy.
As one final note, as a Californian, I particularly like the shoutout to “states with policies that enable ZEV deployment,” namely California and the states that follow our heavy duty ZEV rules.
In many ways our aggressive zero emission truck rules have set the bar nationally, and proven viability of these strategies in a state with lots of roads and which enables a lot of America’s trucks commerce (through its two largest container ports). I love that we’re leading the way on this and that the Biden Administration seems to be rapidly taking up the banner (and we’re doing pretty well on the light-duty side too).
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Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch.
For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June.
We have extensively reported that this launch is disappointing compared to what Tesla promised for years: that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 are capable of self-driving.
Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now.
Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal.
That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data.
Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin.
However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report:
Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can launch the pilot service for customers.
For comparison, before launching its paid ride service in Austin, Waymo tested its vehicles with safety drivers in the area for 6 months and then without safety drivers for another 6 months.
Waymo has now taken over a significant market share of ride-hailing rides in the Texas capital, but it still has limitations; for example, it doesn’t drive on the interstate.
The report also mentions that Tesla has been working with local emergency services in Austin to develop intervention plans in order to avoid causing issues if its autonomous vehicles fail.
Electrek’s Take
This is the biggest softball goal. It’s a fraction of what was promised, it’s something that others have achieved before. It’s a punt created for Tesla to finally get a “win” in self-driving.
If they can’t even make it, it would be disastrous, but at least, I hope that it will finally open the eyes of many Tesla shareholders to the reality that Tesla is actually behind in autonomous driving and that Musk’s latest claims that Tesla will have “millions of robotaxi on the road” in 2026 are just the same as when he claimed it would happen in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019: corporate puffery.
My main concern now is for public safety. I have little hope of US regulators being able to stop Tesla considering Trump is firing anyone who got in Musk’s way after he gave him over $250 million.
If Tesla brings its cowboy approach to this, it could get bad quickly.
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The development of Rivian’s R2 validation builds continues to progress. We know so because the American automaker’s founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, continues to pepper us with welcome updates with plenty of fantastic images. The latest post features the inner workings of Rivian’s Maximus drive unit, which will propel the upcoming R2 EVs when they hit the market next year.
Another day, another exciting social media update from RJ Scaringe. Nine days ago, the Rivian CEO shared a peek at the company’s new Maximus drive unit, designed to be more compact and efficiently built to help reduce cost-per-unit production.
Our only look was from outside the drive unit’s casing at the time, but it was exciting news nonetheless. As an encore, Scaringe posted photos of the R2 validation builds on a pilot line at the automaker’s facility in Normal, Illinois.
This evening, Scaringe took to Instagram and X once again to share a better look at the inner workings of the Rivian Maximus drive unit. Check it out:
RJ shares more images of Rivian’s Maximus development
Rivian’s CEO posted the three images above, which showcase some interesting perspectives of the developing drive unit. As previously shared by Rivian, Maximus uses a new continuous winding technique that reduces the total welds per stator and thus the total overall cost of building each one.
For comparison, Rivian’s current Enduro drive unit requires 264 stator welds, while Maximus only needs 24. You can see the stator windings in the image above to the left. Scaringe shared excitement in the progress of the Rivian team’s Maximus drive unit as well as some insight in his post:
I love the packaging on Maximus — the drive unit for R2. It has a side mounted inverter that utilizes flat area at the end of the motor to minimize the length of bus bars, keeping them light and efficient. The large planar shape also allows all processing and power electronics to exist on a single printed circuit board.
The inverter chassis closes out the oil cooled motor cavity and seamlessly routes coolant from the power modules to the drive unit’s heat exchanger with no extra parts.
Overall, the inverter part count is reduced by 41% relative to Enduro and structural inverter lid saves more parts and fasteners by also serving as the drive unit mount. I love this design efficiency. (heart emoji)
Looks fantastic, RJ. We can’t wait to see the visual progress of the R2 you share next!
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On today’s thrilling episode of Quick Charge, we’ve a huge spike in global EV sales and a huge dip in Tesla deliveries. Plus a whole bunch of news from Toyota, including an updated bZ that’s just a bit better than before … but is a bit better going to make a big difference?
We’re also on track for more than 1 in 4 new cars sold this year to be electric, with a whole lot more hybrids coming in to make up the difference and drive fuel demand down to a new yearly low. All this, plus the top 5 cheapest EVs to insure when you hit the play button.
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