Electric avenue
On Wednesday, The White House announced that Tesla is set to start opening up part of its charging network, making 7,500 charging stations — roughly half of which will be Tesla’s fast “superchargers” — available to non-Tesla EVs by 2024.
That’s a big deal, and gives the government a better chance of achieving its goal of 500,000 accessible chargers across the country by 2030. Indeed, Tesla isn’t the only company plugging in to help. Hertz, BP, GM, and EVgo are among the 16 companies that will provide an additional 100,000 chargers to the US network. A bigger network should, of course, accelerate the switch to EVs, and mitigate some of the current range anxiety.
Nudging
The carrot for participating in building out the charging network is getting a slice of the Biden administration’s $7.5bn EV charging fund. That’s encouraged Tesla execs to deviate from their prior policy, where they kept their setup from rival brands in a similar way to how Apple has shielded much of its tech ecosystem from competitors. The pivot has already got some Tesla drivers worried about long waiting times at busier charging stations though.
