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Even with Trump in the White House, we’ll still have electric vehicles.

It would be easy to feel down about the state of electric vehicles with an avowed EV foe set to reenter the White House. Yes, the election’s fallout will no doubt reshape the car market in the years to come. But in the short term, there’s good news in the form of the new slate of EVs already in the pipeline. For those looking to ditch their fossil fuel-burner for an electric model, there’s plenty to be excited about in 2025.
Having long since displaced the minivan and the sedan as America’s family car, the crossover is the most important piece of the electric car market, and the biggest seller. Next year, we’ll welcome a slew of new models.
Hyundai’s Ioniq EVs have been a hit, with the hatchback/crossover hybrid Ioniq 5 selling impressive numbers (more than 30,000 in the first three quarters of 2024) and the quirky Ioniq 6 sedan earning rave reviews. The Korean brand will be filling out more Ioniq numbers in the years to come, and 2025’s major arrival in terms of size and importance is the three-row Ioniq 9 SUV. The sharp-looking big boy joins the EV9 by Hyundai’s partner brand, Kia, in offering a more affordable EV for those who need to move six or seven people at a time.

Audi was a pioneer offerer of EVs in America: The original Audi e-Tron came to the U.S. in 2019, when Tesla was just starting to sell the Model 3 and many legacy brands had yet to enter the electric market. That model’s 204-mile range looks puny and outdated by today’s standards, however. Next year, Audi is slated to roll out a much-anticipated update to the lineup with the Q6 e-tron (and its A6 e-tron sedan counterpart) delivering a respectable 350 miles of battery power.

The EV startups are expanding their lineups, too. No, we won’t see the new, more affordable Rivians until at least 2026. Lucid, however, plans to inflate the successful Air sedan up to the size of a three-row SUV when it introduces the Gravity, which it claims will deliver 440 miles of range. The story is similar at Polestar, where the upcoming Polestar 3 SUV looks like an expanded version of the Polestar 2 sedan that’s been on sale for several years now.
Remember Chrysler? The erstwhile member of Detroit’s Big Three had withered to a brand that, in the U.S., sells only minivans and the obsolete 300 sedan. Stellantis (parent company of Chrysler, Ram, Jeep, and others) has pinned its hopes for an American revival on electrification, which includes an EV Chrysler crossover planned for 2025. It looks to be called the Airflow and will target the Ford Mustang Mach-E as its competitor.

The same is true of another decaying American giant. Cadillac, fresh off some success with the Lyriq EV (20,000-plus sold through Q3 2024), is pushing out a slate of electric vehicles in the hopes of reminding buyers of its former glory. The smaller Optiq, three-row Vistiq, and extravagant Escalade iq are soon to join the brand’s EV lineup, the latter bringing the icon of early 2000s wealth-bragging into the electric age.

For those who swear by the go-anywhere potential of the true 4x4, battery power is a tough sell — there aren’t too many plugs in the backcountry. Yet as EV driving ranges get longer and EVs get more capable, the icons of off-roading are coming around.
Jeep, which has introduced plug-in hybrid models of some of its best-selling SUVs, is at last taking the all-electric plunge. No, you won’t be able to buy an EV Jeep Wrangler, which is still years away. (Stellantis is being cautious with its icon.) But we are on the cusp of having the Jeep Recon, a mid-size EV 4x4, as well as an EV version of the big, luxe Wagoneer called the Jeep Wagoneer S.

Wagoneer won’t be alone in the market for expensive luxury SUV EVs. Land Rover is telling anyone who’ll listen about the torture testing it is now performing on the upcoming Range Rover EV, subjecting prototypes to the 120-degree heat of the UAE’s desert. Arriving soon alongside the electric Range Rover is the battery-powered version of Mercedes-Benz’s G-Wagen, a $170,00 status symbol.
We may be on the cusp of seeing the titans of muscle embrace electricity. At last month’s L.A. Auto Show, Dodge’s machismo-dripping presentation of the Charger Daytona EV promised the brawny battery-powered pony car would “save our planet … from all those lame, soulless, weak-looking, self-driving sleep pods.” With silent power that more than matches its combustion days, the Charger should win converts to the church of instantaneous electric torque. Oh, and in 2025, we just might get a look at the fully electric Chevy Corvette that’s in the works.

For those with no interest in dropping a wheelbarrow of cash on an electric sports car, fear not: The Chevy Bolt is coming back. The plucky, affordable Bolt was the best-selling non-Tesla EV when GM suddenly gave it the axe to focus on its Ultium EV platform. Chevrolet says it’ll release the new, Ultium-based Bolt in 2025, and that this version will feature faster charging and other bells and whistles lacking in the original car.
Finally, the most fascinating offering to come next year is the 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger, the first time range-extender EV technology comes to one of America’s best-selling vehicles. Like a normal EV, the Ramcharger has electric motors to propel it, a battery to store electricity, and can be plugged in to charge the battery, however, it also carries a gasoline engine that can turn on to recharge the battery when necessary. If this hopefully seamless version of a hybrid convinces America’s legion of truck buyers, it’ll go a long way toward advancing the pace of EV adoption.
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1. Suffolk County, New York – Rarely do I get to say battery fire fears can be quelched but we have a very good example brewing in the Empire State.
2. Loudon County, Virginia – I can’t believe it: Data Center Alley is going to enact a moratorium.
3. Pulaski County, Arkansas – Entergy has dropped the lawsuit it filed against an Arkansas newspaper over the publication of a power deal with Google.
4. Darlington County, South Carolina – We conclude this week’s Hotspots with a focus on a GOP-leaning county rejecting a renewables moratorium.
A conversation with Sam Lyman of the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
This week’s conversation is with Sam Lyman, head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute. Originally focused on cryptocurrency, Lyman’s organization has expanded to policy and messaging development around data centers, most notably providing research many AI boosters cite to claim foreign influence is driving opposition to new hyperscale projects. Last week, the think tank released a new report calling for a novel solution to the data center permitting bottleneck: direct cash payments from data center projects to individuals involved with building them, as well as residents nearby facilities once they’re operating.
I reached out to BPI and asked for a chat with Lyman about the data center dividend proposal. I also tried to get to the bottom of where this increasingly relevant think tank stands on the general idea of a national data center law. The conversation was immensely informative. So here it is, in a lightly abridged and edited format.
Let’s start with the data center dividend proposal. Walk my readers through it.
Data center dividends came from the idea that, ideally in the AI revolution, we want all Americans to benefit. Especially rural Americans. You look at the landscape today, the majority of AI data centers are being built in rural America. It’s critical they’ll benefit from the massive wealth AI will unlock.
There’s lots of ways to make that happen. People point to the jobs AI data centers will build out, for example. But with data center dividends, we take the logic of the Alaska Permanent Fund and we apply it to America’s rural counties, which are sitting on a proverbial gold mine right now but lack any kind of public mechanism allowing them to benefit from that in a maximal way.
If you look at the tax revenue these data centers create, which is astronomical, how do we distribute this tax revenue in a way where it has the most tangible impact on the families living there? We believe data center dividends are the best way to do that – after allocating money for schools, public safety, and infrastructure, it allows these counties with tens of millions of dollars left over to distribute them as they see fit. They should distribute that money to the men and women who make those data centers happen in the first place.
The most effective form of a dividend would take a direct payment: a cash payment, a physical check, a direct deposit. Or the form of credits paying back property taxes, utility bills, an endowment for scholarships. There’s a number of different forms this can take.
Hopefully this gets the conversation going about how we can make these work for everybody.
Who do you want to see set up this dividend mechanism? How’s your approach to implementation?
The report is addressed to county commissioners. I’m thinking of commissioners who represent both sides of the political spectrum facing this huge backlash. Many of them want to do good by their communities and their voters, even if it means doing a data center, in places where it’s difficult to explain right now. Dividends make this indisputably clear.
I tried to put myself in the shoes of an enterprising county commissioner who sees the merits in the data center buildout and wants to break out of the political storm. It’s important to note data centers can be a huge economic boon for communities, in ways that can impact lives positively.
Have any communities – counties, as you noted – taken this idea up yet? Are there any models for this proposal?
The best analogue is West Feliciana, Louisiana, which is the case study we feature. West Feliciana made an agreement with a data center developer where in lieu of taxes, they make direct payments of about $90 million a year to the parish. That triples the community’s tax budget every year. It leaves ample room not only for essential services but dividends afterwards. Louisiana then passed a law – Act 434 – that allowed West Feliciana to remit some of those payments to residents as a tax credit. This bill first provided the opportunity for the parish to even remit those payments as cash, but it was changed in the legislature to make it a credit. That’s the closest we’ve gotten so far.
As far as reaching out to individual counties, we’re a think tank. We put ideas into the universe. We haven’t had anyone reach out to us since the publication of the report so far but we’re hoping they will.
Your report does lay out how there’s a bottleneck in development and this could help with easing it. Do you see an impetus to put ideas like the dividend out there right now, in light of the increased data center scrutiny in this year’s midterms?
Our publication is irrespective of the midterms. But it is tied to the fact that a bottleneck facing the data center buildout includes it becoming a politicized issue. We’re of the belief these projects shouldn't be political at all. One way to break through the noise is by showing how they can benefit those involved in construction and residents who live there. Data centers are critical infrastructure; other forms of critical infrastructure aren’t being politicized. Our efforts are to demonstrate how these shouldn’t be political.
When it comes to the future of AI data center regulation, this proposal is obviously geared towards incentivizing a resolution to the bottleneck through using resources produced from data centers – namely, new investment.
Where does your organization stand on the increased push for environmental or siting regulation on AI data centers?
I’m not familiar with what you might be referring to there.
I mean, there’s all kinds of proposals at the federal level and in states for everything from being required to pay for infrastructure upgrades to being required to use closed-loop cooling to siting restrictions, like temporary moratoria.
What I’m asking is, what else do you as an organization believe when it comes to regulating AI data center development at the federal level? State level?
We believe data centers should work for the communities where they’re being built. That’s important. So the concept of BYOP – Bring Your Own Power – we very much support that idea. We think the Ratepayer Protection Pledge is a great proposal because ultimately we want data centers, with them being critical infrastructure, to not only strengthen our national security but strengthen the communities where they’re being built.
Some states are rejecting data centers. We think that’s a mistake because it's something that’ll ultimately short-change the people who live there. For the states that do decide to build data centers, it's up to them what regulations make data centers more sustainable over time.
There’s increased public discussion for policy on AI development – as an organization, do you see any role in the federal government making policy here with a national data center law?
We think AI will be key to America’s prosperity over the long-term. We have concerns about the regulation of open-source artificial intelligence; bitcoin is a form of open-source software and open-source money. We believe intelligence should be something available to all Americans. That’s our concern with talk about regulating AI right now, it feels like a ploy for regulatory capture.
But what about national policy on AI data centers? Does your think tank support the national legislature doing a federal data center bill or is that something best for localities or states?
It depends on the bill. Are you talking about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ national moratorium?
With a permitting deal seemingly on the horizon, Republican Gabe Evans and Democrat Scott Peters may be about to see their partnership pay off.
The fate of permitting reform legislation that could smooth the way to all kinds of new and improved energy infrastructure — including transmission lines and renewables — is currently hostage to opaque discussions between Senate committee chairs. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told a Rhode Island business group earlier this week that “we’re actually in a pretty good place on permitting reform,” and that there was “maybe another week of negotiations.” Whitehouse’s Republican counterpart on the EPW committee, West Virginia Senator Shelly Moore-Capito, told Semafor on Friday that any bill has “got to pop out of here in the next 48 hours.”
If that’s going to happen, it will be because Republicans and Democrats have decided it’s worth it to get along. Any deal will eventually have to be voted on by the House, which has already produced several bills on a bipartisan basis, and even passed one — the SPEED Act — late last year.
Two of the busier House members on this issue are Scott Peters, a Democratic former environmental lawyer from San Diego, and Gabe Evans, a first term Colorado Republican representing a suburban and rural district north of Denver that includes wind farms and crude oil production. “The district that I represent truly is an all of the above energy district,” Evans told me.
Their latest effort is a bill aimed at smoothing out permitting for transmission development, especially interregional transmission. Last week, the two congressmen unveiled the CLEAR Act, seeking to apply a stricter set of standards for lawsuits against transmission projects that aligned with how natural gas and hydropower projects are treated under the Federal Power Act (it’s much harder to sue to stop these projects). Earlier this year, the two also sponsored the CERTAIN Act, a more comprehensive streamlining of federal permitting for energy infrastructure projects.
“We’re proud to have a lot of our work as the foundation for this, and I think if they send us over something that includes this, it’s got a really good chance of passing in the House,” Peters told me. Evans added that bringing forward bipartisan bills “gives a little bit more impetus to the Senate to know that the House is looking for these things.”
While the Senate’s deal will be up to the senators, Peters told me he envisions a broad permitting package that could include reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act to shorten permitting timelines, preventing the president from nixing individual projects, and reform Section 401 of the Clean Water Act which effectively devolves power to tribes and states to block a variety of interstate projects. “I think it’s coming together pretty well,” Peters said. “Obviously, we’re waiting for white smoke from the Senate.”
A permitting reform package may be one of the last major bills several bipartisan-minded House members get to vote on.
Election day is about six weeks off, and while Peters will likely have an easy time getting reelected for this eighth term, Evans is in a tough race. His purple-hued district is a target for the House Democratic campaign arm, which is hoping to flip it to former Colorado House of Representatives member Manny Rutinel, who worked as a lawyer at the environmental group Earthjustice. The Cook Political Report rates the race as toss-up, and Nate Silver gives Rutinel a roughly 75% to win.
But Rutinel won’t be getting any campaign help from Peters.
When I asked Peters about the timing of releasing a bill that could boost an endangered Republican’s bipartisan bona fides less than two months before an election, Peters told me that he and Evans had been working on it “for a while,” and that “my colleagues know that I’ve worked with Republicans to get problems solved.”
He said he wasn’t “participating in Gabe’s election” and wasn’t giving any money to his campaign, but also that he wouldn’t campaign Evans’ challenger, despite the opportunity to bolster his own caucus.
Peters is not shy about praising Evans. “What I appreciate about Gabe is that it takes a little bit of initiative to separate yourself from the majority — particularly when you’re in the trifecta — and do your own thing. He’s been a good partner in helping find ways to reduce process and make things go faster,” he told me.
Evans told me that he and Peters met early in this Congress, as Evans was getting settled into his new office in the Longworth building. “We’ve built the relationship over the last two years with a lot of the different areas that we’ve collaborated on.”
“I always try to meet the members of my committee and find out who will work with me. And I was fortunate to find Gabe,” Peters said.
“I do want to win the majority in the next Congress,” Peters went on, but “the norm should be that we figure out ways to work together to solve problems, and, you know, we’ll let the voters of Colorado 8 decide who to send me.”
Evans, for his part, told me that he had to work with Democrats to get anything passed as a member of a minuscule Republican minority in the Colorado statehouse, and that the 40-plus members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus have agreed not to campaign against each other. “There’s 385 other members that you can go pick fights with,” he said.