General Motors is partnering with electric vehicle charging network EVgo to build 2,700 new fast-charging stations across the U.S. over the next five years.
This would triple EVgo's current footprint of 800 stations across 34 states and provide the needed infrastructure for the electric vehicle boom.
"This is a fantastic boost for the business," Cathy Zoi, CEO of EVgo, told Cheddar. "We're seeing the United States ramping up right now on electric vehicles. The sales are increasing, and importantly the number of models is increasing."
GM alone is set to produce 23 new models by 2023, which means more electric cars on the streets. At the moment, however, most owners rely entirely on their home hook-ups to charge.
"The key to this is around leaning in and making sure we're ahead of the market," said Alex Keros, lead architect of EV infrastructure for GM. "It's really around building a full ecosystem, whether you're charging at home, whether you're at work, whether you're on the road for a longer trip."
How the EV industry thinks about the role of charging stations in growing the market for electric vehicles is often a "chicken or an egg conversation," he added. Do more people need to buy EVs before the infrastructure can grow? Or does the infrastructure already need to be there for widespread adoption to take place?
Ultimately GM settled on the idea that the "infrastructure needs to be there," he said.
In California, where EV ownership is the highest in the country, charging infrastructure has sprouted up all over the state. This initiative aims to broaden the footprint nationally, in anticipation of greater EV adoption, by providing highly-visible charging locations in about 40 metropolitan areas.
"Think of Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Orlando, all kinds of places," Zoi said.
Many of these stations, she added, will be at locations where vehicles can charge while you're doing something else.
"Our favorite place to site our charger is at a grocery store parking lot," Zoi said. "So it takes you 60 seconds or less to plug in, and then you go in to do your shopping."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
