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Former President Trump wants to know: Would you rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark?
On Sunday, during a rally in Las Vegas, the Republican nominee floated the question for what is
at least the second time this campaign season (an odd choice, perhaps, given that Nevada is hardly shark territory, and therefore his supporters there are unlikely to have given the question much thought).
Trump’s fear of sharks is
well documented at this point, and I myself have given that question a fair bit of thought, as well. Personally, I’d choose electrocution because of its merciful speed, but unfortunately for both me and Trump, “electrocution” isn’t a realistic option in the scenario he went on to describe. According to Trump, an unidentified “they” want to make boats all-electric, which — according to the representative of a “boat company” Trump spoke to in “South Carolina” — would require a battery so heavy that “it can’t float.”
As Trump goes on:
“I said, let me ask you a question. And he said nobody ever asked this question. And it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there.”
Can you believe nobody ever asked this question?! “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, you notice that?,” Trump briefly digressed before returning to his main point:
“... Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking — do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because, I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it's a good question.’”
Luckily for Trump,
I answered his question last year. And, as the former president ought to be reassured, while all-electric boats are still in their relative infancy (and no mysterious “they” is trying to make them all-electric, anyway), boats more generally have been using batteries for over a century.
Furthermore, marine architects actually design their boats with the understanding that they may get wet. It’s true! The electric boat manufacturers I spoke with
for my article told me that their designs typically meet a waterproofing standard similar to what is required for submarines, and that the high-voltage batteries on board are kept in puncture-resistant shells to prevent exposure even if the boat were to get incredibly mangled.
While electric shock
is a danger in water, electric shock drowning is usually caused by faulty wiring at a dock or a marina. However, this overwhelmingly happens in lakes and rivers; saltwater, where most sharks live, is a better conductor of electricity than human bodies, so it will go around a swimmer to ground unless they grab something that is electrified, such as a dock ladder or a boat propeller.
All this is a long way of saying: If your boat — electric or otherwise — is sinking, electrocution might not even be an
option for a swift, toothless death. You’ll have to deal with the shark 10 yards away, whether you’d rather or not.
And for that, I can offer no reassurances. After all, as a “very smart” person recently observed, there have indeed been
a lot of shark attacks lately.
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The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by a quarter point, the central bank announced Wednesday afternoon, its first rate change since Chairman Kevin Warsh took his seat in May and its first rate hike in over three years.
The federal funds rate will now sit between 3.75% and 4%. According to projections by regional Federal Reserve presidents and members of the Board of Governors, the central bank expects to hike rates one more time this year.
In its now characteristically brief statements, the Federal Open Market Committee said that the hike “will support a timelier return to the Committee's 2 percent goal” for inflation. Inflation is currently running at 3.4% and has been above the Fed’s 2% target since 2021.
The FOMC’s (brief) statement explaining the hike pointed to “resilient” domestic spending and “robust” capital investment. It characterized the economy as “expanding at a solid pace,” albeit with “elevated” uncertainty due to “geopolitical developments.”
This combination of factors — high oil prices due to the partial shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and high investment in data centers — have helped push up yields on Treasury bonds, which helped maneuver the Federal Reserve into its rate hike. These rising Treasury yields have made raising capital more difficult for sectors besides artificial intelligence, very much including the capital-intensive renewable and clean energy industries.
Warsh attributed higher Treasury yields to “economic strength, competition for capital, and geopolitics,” in his press conference following the rate announcement. The yield on the 10-year treasury bond, often used as a benchmark for the cost of money throughout the economy, rose to over 5% on the news, the highest level since 2007.
Across the country, average household electricity bills are up 2.7% in the first eight months of the year, according to the latest update to Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub, tacking on $4 per month to the typical bill. This level of rise is consistent with the pace set in 2024 and 2025, but faster than 2021 and 2023.
As we’ve discussed before, some of the fastest growth in prices comes either in the Atlantic Seaboard — with Washington, D.C., Virginia, and New Jersey all having year over year growth rates of at least 7.5% — thanks largely to increased demand and capacity payments in the PJM Interconnection marketplace. Another standout so far this year is Hawaii, which is uniquely dependent on imported oil to power its grid and has seen its 12-month trailing average prices rise by over 8% so far this year.
California, which is well known for seeing especially sharp price increases in recent years largely due to wildfire-related costs, has seen somewhat restrained bill growth so far this year across the state, with the 12-month-rolling average bill rising just 3% in the past 12 months and prices going up 4%. (That price level is still quite high, however, at almost 32 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to a national average of around 19.)
Rates charged by Southern California Edison, one of the state’s big three investor-owned utilities, are up almost 15% in the past year, averaged across its baseline regions. The MIT researchers attribute this increase to two major factors: one, a decrease in the California Climate Credit, which is paid out to electricity customers from the state’s emissions cap-and-invest program. This year, the credit for Southern California Edison ratepayers is $72, applied to bills in July and August in tranches of $36. Last year, by contrast, Southern California Edison handed out $112 in two tranches, April and October.
The second factor in Southern California Edison’s inflated bills is an increase in the fixed charge portion of the bills ratepayers receive. Following changes in California state law designed to distribute the cost of the grid more equitably, SCE revamped its rate structure at the end of last year to include a “Base Services Charge” of $24 per month for customers not enrolled in any special rate program. At the same time, SCE instituted a roughly 10% decrease in its per-kilowatt-hour electricity rate in order to protect lower-income ratepayers (who would pay a fixed charge substantially lower than the baseline $24). PG&E moved to a similar system earlier this year.
When it introduced the new rates in November of last year, SCE said that “medium energy users” would likely see little change in their bills. Price Hub data suggests, however, that the typical household has seen a bill increase from the new service charge of 13%, even before accounting for the smaller climate credit.
Voltpost, the company putting electric vehicle chargers on lampposts, is now expanding to parking garages.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled two new configurations that can attach to the walls and ceilings of parking garages, lots, and other locations without easy access to streetlights or utility poles. Like Voltpost’s signature pole-mounted design, the ceiling- and wall-mounted options avoid the expensive construction work required by freestanding charging infrastructure. In theory at least, that should allow the company to deploy more chargers faster.
“Our mission has always been to decarbonize mobility by democratizing charging access,” Jeff Prosserman, Voltpost’s co-founder and CEO, told me. “And the real value proposition is that, when you can leverage the existing infrastructure, you can significantly reduce the cost, the timeline, and the physical footprint of chargers.”
The second Trump administration hasn’t made things easy. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump officials began slashing Biden-era programs designed to support the EV charging buildout, including the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and Charging and Fueling Infrastructure programs. Along with a handful of environmental groups, 17 states sued in May of last year to force the federal government to release NEVI funding and quickly received a preliminary injunction unfreezing the program. A similar group sued in December over the CFI funding, and though that case is still pending, Prosserman told me he expects to see a positive resolution before the end of the year.
Though the death of the EV tax credit has shrunk its addressable market, Voltpost has emerged relatively unscathed. “Honestly, that doesn’t really impact us at all,” Prosserman told Heatmap’s Katie Brigham last year. “At the end of the day, EV adoption will either increase X or Y percent in a given year, but it’s going to continue to increase year over year. We’re past the tipping point, going from early adopters into the mainstream.”
That said, he also told Katie that the company was taking a “more conservative approach” to growth as climate tech investment dried up. Voltpost itself also received several federal grants that are still in limbo. Instead, the company focused on its strategic partnerships with the likes of AT&T and Zipcar, and in July signed an agreement with InCharge Energy to handle installation and maintenance. To date, Voltpost’s funders include RWE Energy Transition Investments, a private equity vehicle within German energy giant RWE, alongside Twynam Funds Management, Exelon Foundation, Good News Ventures, and Climate Capital.
Like its lamppost chargers, Voltpost’s wall- and ceiling-mount kits work with Tesla and non-Tesla vehicles alike, and come with demand management software that responds to electricity time-of-use price signals to enable cheaper charging where and when possible. As for the cost of the kits and how many the company plans to install initially, Prosserman wouldn’t say.
Since deploying its first lamppost chargers in New York in 2024, Voltpost has expanded into California, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., among other states. It has more than 100 deployments in the pipeline through the end of this year, and is aiming for 10,000 by 2030. The point, Prosserman told me, is not to stand out in these communities, but rather to fit in.
“It’s not going to be just about greenfield project development if we’re going to decarbonize a planet across all aspects,” Prosserman said. “We’re really looking at building something that’s integrated, that fits in the fabric of the built environment and communities.”
