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Sparks

Detroit Is About to Test the Bejeezus Out of Wireless EV Charging

The dream of charging your car as you drive faces the reality of a Michigan winter.

A cord as a road.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Tesla

One block of Detroit’s hip Corktown neighborhood is now the home to the nation's first inductive charging roadway, allowing specially-equipped vehicles to charge while on the move.

The electric road system is being deployed two years after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced the pilot program. A joint project between the state’s Department of Transportation, Detroit, and the company that developed and installed the technology, Electreon, the quarter-mile stretch of road is packed with copper coils that allow EVs equipped with Electreon’s magnetic receivers to wirelessly charge while driving, idling, or parked. Just as importantly, it’s safe for pedestrians, animals, and other vehicles.

The stretch of 14th Street the city picked for the test was also no accident; it’s directly in front of Michigan Central, Detroit's innovation and technology hub that includes everything from autonomous vehicle developers to drone deployments. The symbolism is obvious.

Yet Electreon — a company that has partnered with other cities in Europe and its home country of Israel — might be interested in the area for more practical reasons. It’s just really hard to maintain roads in Michigan.

Concrete and pavement is pummeled year-round with excessive moisture that seeps into cracks, contracting and expanding to break apart roads from the inside. And that’s before you throw in metro traffic, tractor trailers, and the thousands of pounds of salt scattered on the road that keeps ice at bay and accelerates rust.

If that sounds like an awful place to test copper-embedded roadways and external magnetic receivers, maybe that’s the point. If wireless charging can make it in Detroit, it can make it anywhere.

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Sparks

It’s Been a Big 24 Hours for AI Energy Announcements

We’re powering data centers every which way these days.

Google and Exxon logos.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The energy giant ExxonMobil is planning a huge investment in natural gas-fired power plants that will power data centers directly, a.k.a. behind the meter, meaning they won’t have to connect to the electric grid. That will allow the fossil fuel giant to avoid making the expensive transmission upgrades that tend to slow down the buildout of new electricity generation. And it’ll add carbon capture to boot.

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The move represents a first for Exxon, which is famous for its far-flung operations to extract and process oil and natural gas but has not historically been in the business of supplying electricity to customers. The company is looking to generate 1.5 gigawatts of power, about 50% more than a large nuclear reactor, The New York Timesreported.

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Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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A clock and money.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Of the over $13 billion in loans and loan guarantees that the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office has made under Biden, nearly a third of that funding has been doled out in the month since the presidential election. And of the $41 billion in conditional commitments — agreements to provide a loan once the borrower satisfies certain preconditions — that proportion rises to nearly half. That includes some of the largest funding announcements in the office’s history: more than $7.5 billion to StarPlus Energy for battery manufacturing, $4.9 billion to Grain Belt Express for a transmission project, and nearly $6.6 billion to the electric vehicle company Rivian to support its new manufacturing facility in Georgia.

The acceleration represents a clear push by the outgoing Biden administration to get money out the door before President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to hollow out much of the Department of Energy, takes office. Still, there’s a good chance these recent conditional commitments won’t become final before the new administration takes office, as that process involves checking a series of nontrivial boxes that include performing due diligence, addressing or mitigating various project risks, and negotiating financing terms. And if the deals aren’t finalized before Trump takes office, they’re at risk of being paused or cancelled altogether, something the DOE considers unwise, to put it lightly.

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