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Plug-and-charge might, maybe, finally be coming in 2025.
I outsmarted myself the other day. The line at the Tesla Supercharger was only two or three cars deep, but none of the plugged-in vehicles looked to be in any hurry to leave. Across the lot were another company’s high-speed chargers that were newly outfitted with the NACS plug — meaning I should have been able to charge my Model 3 without even getting out an adapter.
I jumped out of line, zipped over to the empty stall, plugged in … and couldn’t get the charger to come to life. I had the phone app by Chargepoint, the third-party company that operates the charger. I had a credit card on file and money in my account on the app. But still, nothing. I couldn’t get the phone and the charger to talk to each other. Embittered by losing my place in line, I continued bitterly down the road toward the promise of open stalls at a different Supercharger a few miles away.
This is an all-too-common episode for America’s EV drivers. After the relief of finding an open charger comes the exasperation of finding the electricity won’t flow — the charging station won’t just shut up and take your money because of an inoperable touchscreen, a failure to pair with your phone, or a refusal to accept your credit card.
But, just maybe, 2025 will be the year the darkness begins to part. Next year, SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) will launch a “plug-and-charge” initiative alongside a variety of EV manufacturers and energy companies, together making up the Electric Vehicle Public Key Infrastructure group, which also has testing support from the Biden Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. Their goal: a universal protocol to pay for juice that would make charging seamless.
“Universal Plug & Charge levels up the electric fueling experience, making it even easier than filling up with gas,” Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said in SAE’s news release. “We are rapidly approaching a future where every EV driver can just plug in, charge up, and go; the network will talk to your car and process the payment seamlessly.”
Plug-and-charge is the way Tesla’s Superchargers have always worked, which — along with the extent and reliability of that network — gave Tesla a huge leg up on its competition. Drivers have a credit card on file with the company; when they plug into a charger, it automatically recognizes the car and charges the card based on that plug’s cost per kilowatt-hour. Other EVs have managed to create this convenience for their owners, but it’s a trickier business for non-Tesla automakers who don’t control both the vehicles and the charging network, and therefore must work out deals and technology standards with the charging companies.
Those other charging networks have presented EV drivers with an experience that’s more like visiting a gas station, except worse. Some ask you to pair the charger with an app on your phone via Bluetooth. Even when the technology works, which it often doesn’t, this requires drivers to have already downloaded the app and created an account in advance, otherwise they’re fussing with their phones for minutes on end just to start charging.
Some feature the kind of touchscreen or button-powered display you might find when you pull up to a gas pump, which is fine when it works. But at a gas station, there’s typically a person inside a convenience store to help out if, say, your credit card won’t swipe correctly outside. EV charging stations, on the other hand, have popped up in parking garages or the lots around shopping malls, where there’s nary a soul to lend a hand if the charger won’t activate. For that reason and more, EV chargers need to just work.
The SAE-led initiative is part of a welcome maturation and streamlining that’s been coming to the EV industry. We’ve talked plenty about how nearly every automaker over the past couple of years has adopted the NACS plug that was formerly Tesla’s proprietary technology, leading EVs to consolidate toward uniformity rather than competing standards. A true industry-wide push for plug-and-charge would eliminate one of the major headaches and sources of anxiety for electrified drivers.
And it could do much more. To create universal plug-and-charge, vehicles would need public key-based authentication systems to identify themselves and securely verify that identity. With such a standard in place, EVs would be a big step closer to a future in which their owners can use the energy stored in vehicle batteries to do whatever they want.
For example, such keys could allow for the advent of widespread vehicle-to-grid integration, or V2G, where EVs can send energy from their batteries back onto the grid rather than just drawing power from it. In this way, EVs could be used to balance the grid and avoid blackouts, since any plugged-in EV could temporarily become a source of supply in times of crisis-level demand. (V2G also allows some people to engage in energy arbitrage, selling kilowatt-hours back onto the grid when prices are high.)
The potential wrench in the gears, especially considering the involvement of President Biden’s joint office, is the forthcoming second Trump presidency. Representatives of the mission say this effort is industry-led and -funded, however, and not reliant on federal support to survive. A better way to charge EVs is in the free market’s hands now.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the involvement of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.
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Current conditions: San Francisco received a record-breaking amount of rain yesterday • Madagascar has been struck by two tropical cyclones in the span of a week • Scientists are warning of an “extreme winter warming event” unfolding at the north pole.
Climate scientist James Hansen has published a new study concluding the world is on track for more than 2 degrees Celsius in warming by 2045. Hansen has been saying for some time that current climate models underestimate the rate at which global temperatures are rising. The new research, published in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, says that we have been artificially cooling the planet with aerosol pollution for years. With new shipping regulations limiting these aerosols, this cooling effect is waning and warming will ramp up rapidly – probably by about 0.2 or 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade. “Unless actions are taken to reduce global warming,” the study warns, “shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years.”
Hansen has a long history of presenting alarming climate studies that divide the scientific community. But much of his work has proven to be remarkably prescient. In 1988 he famously warned Congress that human activity was changing the climate. In 2023, Hansen published controversial work projecting that the world would breach 1.5 degrees Celsius in warming much sooner than expected. “In the next several months,” he said, “we’re going to go well above 1.5C on a 12-month average.” Last year was indeed the first full calendar year during which the 1.5 Celsius threshold was broken. In fact the average temperature for the whole of last year was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times. This year is already confounding scientists who were expecting things to cool down a little bit: Last month was the hottest January on record, with temperatures 1.75 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial years.
Government websites are being scrubbed of references to climate change. So far climate pages have stopped working on websites for the Departments of Defense, State, Agriculture, and Transportation. A “climate change” landing page for the White House does not load. Climate scientist David Ho noted that a page charting CO2 atmospheric trends has also been removed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.
Meanwhile, President Trump this week nominated Neil Jacobs to lead NOAA. Jacobs was acting NOAA head in 2019 when Trump infamously used a Sharpie to draw the path of Hurricane Dorian to suggest the storm would hit Alabama, contradicting weather forecasts. NOAA backed the president’s statements, prompting an investigation that concluded Jacobs violated scientific integrity policy.
Chaos within the Trump administration has all but paralyzed environmental permitting decisions on solar and wind projects in crucial government offices, including sign-offs needed for projects on private lands, reported Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. According to an internal memo issued by the American Clean Power Association, the renewables trade association that represents the largest U.S. solar and wind developers, Trump’s Day One executive order putting a 60-day freeze on final decisions for renewable energy projects on federal lands has also ground key pre-decisional work in government offices responsible for wetlands and species protection to a halt. Renewables developers and their representatives in Washington have pressed the government for answers, yet received inconsistent information on its approach to renewables permitting that varies between lower level regional offices. “In other words,” Holzman wrote, “despite years of the Republican Party inching slowly toward ‘all of the above’ energy and climate rhetoric that seemed to leave room for renewables, solar and wind developers have so far found themselves at times shut out of the second Trump administration.”
The deadline for countries to submit new climate targets is fast approaching, and many of the world’s largest polluters are not ready. Under the Paris Agreement, nations have until February 10 to submit their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outlining 2035 emissions goals and plans for reaching those goals. According to the Financial Times, the European Union, India, Australia, and South Africa will likely miss the deadline. One expert estimated that just one third of G20 economies would submit their plans on time. “Because of the shock of the U.S. presidency and all the other issues, there is not a lot of leader attention on this issue,” said Nick Mabey, co-founder of climate think-tank E3G. There’s no penalty for a late submission, and some say that filing a little late is fine so long as the final plans are robust. “This next round of NDCs may be the most important documents to be produced in a multilateral context so far this century,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said last year. “As they add up, they will determine which direction the world will take over the coming decades.”
A California judge on Monday sided with the state in its legal battle with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups by dismissing two claims that California’s climate laws violate the Constitution. The laws in focus require that large companies report their emissions and any climate-related financial risks. The Chamber of Commerce filed its complaint against the laws last year, saying they were in violation of the First Amendment because they “unlawfully attempt to regulate speech.”
A geoengineering project in the Arctic involving using glass beads to try to reflect some of the sunlight has been shut down over concerns that the beads pose a “potential risks to the Arctic food chain.”
Here’s one federal climate program that’s still working — for now.
The first two weeks of the Trump administration have been chaotic for the clean energy industry, to say the least. Offshore wind permitting is on hold and state governments are canceling plans to sign new contracts. Trump’s federal funding freeze was on, then off-but-actually-still-on, and then technically off again. Despite a court injunction on the pause, many grant recipients still seem to be locked out of their funding portals.
But one climate initiative that’s also one of the president’s biggest bugbears has escaped his meddling thus far: The federal tax credit for electric vehicles is still functioning normally.
Former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act created a tax credit of up to $7,500 for new electric vehicles and $4,000 for used vehicles. As of January of this year, about 16 EV and plug-in hybrid models were eligible for the new vehicle credit, which is limited to models that are assembled in North America and meet certain battery sourcing requirements. A loophole in the rules also allows dealers to apply the tax credit to any electric vehicle lease, meaning dealers can offer lessees a discount on a much wider range of options.
Trump attacked the subsidy on the campaign trail, and his transition team was reportedly planning to kill it. One of his first executive orders took aim at a number of electric vehicle-related programs, ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke waivers that allow California and other states to pass stronger emissions standards for vehicles than the federal government’s. His funding review and freeze specifically called out the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a $5 billion program to fund EV charging infrastructure. But even though EV charger grantees couldn’t access their funding, car dealerships around the country did not have any trouble getting into the Internal Revenue Service’s portal to log their electric vehicle sales and file for reimbursement for the tax credit.
When someone purchases an eligible electric vehicle, the buyer can either claim the tax credit on their own tax return or they can “transfer” it to their dealership, allowing the dealer to take the credit amount off the sale price. Dealers can then file for a direct reimbursement from the Internal Revenue Service.
I reached out to the National Automobile Dealers Association, which represents new car dealers, to ask if they had heard from any of their members about issues with the advanced payment program for the EV tax credit. “We checked into this earlier in the week, both on the dealer end and with Treasury,” Jared Allen, the vice president for public affairs told me on Friday. “Nothing has changed with the availability of advanced payments to dealers for EV tax credits.”
The president does not have the authority to end the EV tax credit program on his own — changes would have to come through Congress. Before Trump’s inauguration, Republicans on the House Budget Committee circulated a long list of potential cost-cutting measures that included eliminating many Inflation Reduction Act programs. One menu item recommended cutting all clean energy tax credits, but a separate proposal explicitly suggested keeping the EV tax credit and closing the leasing loophole. The Committee is aiming to present a first draft of a budget reconciliation bill by the end of this week, according to E&E News, at which point we’ll see what made the cut.
Rob and Jesse talk with former Ford economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick.
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. automaking industry has transformed how it builds cars and trucks, constructing a continent-sized network of factories, machine shops, and warehouses that some call “Factory North America.” President Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports will disrupt and transform those supply chains. What will that mean for the automaking industry and the transition to EVs?
Ellen Hughes-Cromwick is the former chief economist at Ford Motor Company, where she worked from 1996 to 2014, as well as the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is now a senior visiting fellow at Third Way and a senior advisor at MacroPolicy Perspective LLC.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse chat with Ellen about how automakers build cars today, why this system isn’t built for trade barriers, and whether Trump’s tariffs could counterintuitively help electric vehicles. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: I hear often that we’re also sending parts back and forth as well — that particularly near the border with Canada, we have manufacturing parts suppliers on both sides of the border. So it’s not just the final car, it’s also pieces of the car going back and forth. How does stuff move around in this sort of complicated trade network between, Canada, the U.S., and Mexico?
Ellen Hughes-Cromwick: There is a lot of back and forth, and as you mentioned, a lot of the automotive analysts track the travel of not just the vehicles, but the parts. And the latest estimates show that in some cases, we’re going back and forth across the Ambassador Bridge here in Detroit, you know, six, eight times.
So when you say all of a sudden, as of tomorrow, I’m going to put a 25% tariff on that — I mean, that basically shutters businesses. You can’t absorb a 25% hit, especially if it’s a part or an assembled vehicle. Part of that 25% you could probably absorb, but for the thin margins that parts suppliers work for day in and day out, I mean, there’s just no way. You’re better off shuttering your business. I hate to say that, but you know, you just can’t make the equation work, with a 25% hit.
Jenkins: So this is hypothetical structure, I don’t know if this is exactly right, but so you might have engine parts manufactured in Michigan being sent to Windsor, Ontario to assemble an internal combustion engine. And then it goes back to a plant somewhere else in the U.S. to be assembled into a vehicle. Maybe you get the glass from somewhere for the windows, you know, these are all moving back and forth on a regular basis after so many years of free trade agreements between the two countries, or the three.
Hughes-Cromwick: That’s right. That’s right. And again, coming back to Michigan, because we’re so close to the suppliers in Canada, and we have the lion’s share of automotive suppliers, especially small and mid-size suppliers — so the tier two, tier three. They’re supplying to a tier one big supplier like Magna or Borg.
So you’ve got a lot of these tier two, tier three suppliers in Michigan. Well, why? Because they’re getting a part from a Canadian supplier, putting it into theirs. And maybe that’s a component that goes into an internal combustion engine that’s being produced.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Download Heatmap Labs and Hydrostor’s free report to discover the crucial role of long duration energy storage in ensuring a reliable, clean future and stable grid. Learn more about Hydrostor here.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.