Tesla, along with three other industry partners, quietly backed an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency application that won $100 million in funding to build electric truck charging stations across the state, TechCrunch has learned.
The award was the biggest given out by the Biden Administration’s Federal Highway Administration last week in the second round of what’s known as the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program. The CFI program gave out a total of $636 million to 49 applicants in this round, after distributing more than $1 billion to roughly 100 applicants in the first round in 2024.
A different $97 million project backed by Tesla, which focused on building an electric trucking corridor between northern California to southern Texas, was not selected for funding in either round, as TechCrunch reported earlier this week. The company has been developing its own electric big rig for years called the Tesla Semi, but has yet to get the truck into commercial production.
Megha Lakchaura, Illinois’ state EV officer, told TechCrunch in an interview that she decided to pursue CFI funding last year after seeing infrastructure startup TeraWatt and New Mexico’s Department of Transportation win $63 million to build heavy-duty charging along the I-10 corridor.
The Illinois EPA chose Tesla, logistics real estate firm Prologis, fleet electrification company Gage Zero, and truck stop giant Pilot in 2024 from that pool of applicants, and combined their requests into a single application to the CFI program.
Lakchaura said Illinois is already building fast charging stations for passenger vehicles using a mix of state and federal funding, but that there “was no pot of money for heavy or medium duty” electrification. The agency put out a call for partners in June 2024 to help craft the application, to which Lakchaura said prompted a “very good response from the market.”
Lakchaura said the agency requested around $126 million in CFI funding on behalf of the partners. Prologis requested $60 million, Tesla requested $40 million, Gage Zero requested $16 million, and Pilot requested $10 million. Each partner also offered to put up some of its own money to fund the charging station buildouts. Prologis offered to pay $18 million, Tesla offered to pay $19 million, Gage Zero offered $4 million, and Pilot offered $2.5 million.
Since the FHWA awarded slightly less than what was requested, Lakchaura said there is still some work to be done sorting out how much will get allocated to each partner. The money will help the state add 345 charging ports and vehicle stalls across 14 sites, and the chargers will range from as low as 150kW to as high as 1MW.
“Most of the development has happened on the coasts, and there’s nothing really happening in the Midwest, which is not great for long haul trucking,” Lakchaura said. “We think that this hub could be of national importance.”