Charging Infrastructure, Site Design and Customer Experience

• The Tesla Diner runs roughly 20 charging sessions per stall per day, four to five times a typical public fast charging site.
• Site design, not just hardware, now shapes the charging experience, from arrival sightlines to lighting and wayfinding.
• Copper theft at charging stations is pushing proposals for customer-supplied charging cables.
• The Mercury Consortium certified its first three devices, setting response time standards for demand-response-ready chargers.
• JD Power's 2026 study found charger availability satisfaction up 27 points, with three networks now outranking Tesla Superchargers.
• EVgo Superchargers now appear in Tesla's navigation and Trip Planner, running V4 technology up to 500kW.
• Blink launched EnergyConnect, an AI-driven platform to manage charging site power capacity and costs.

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Battery Technology, Manufacturing and Degradation

• Battery aging emerges from coupled chemical and structural evolution within a metastable system, not one wear mechanism.
• Data from roughly 10,000 battery tests shows Korean models like the KIA e-Niro retaining over 97% capacity after 62,000 miles.
• CATL now holds close to 40% of the EV battery market and is expanding into AI data center and grid backup batteries.
• Mana Battery and Saft signed a joint development agreement for anode-free sodium-ion batteries.
• Converting a gigafactory from EV to energy storage production means shifting cell chemistry from NMC to LFP.
• Industrial battery storage costs vary sharply between smaller behind-the-meter and larger front-of-the-meter installations.

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Vehicle-to-Grid and Bidirectional Charging

• Denmark's 10,000-EV vehicle-to-grid program now holds more battery capacity than any single grid-scale installation in the country.
• Volkswagen confirmed bidirectional charging is arriving on more 2026 models, extending vehicle-to-home capability.
• Massachusetts utilities EnergyHub, Sunrun, Eversource and National Grid pay EV owners to interconnect bidirectional vehicles as backup power.
• EVgo's roughly 600 MW of connected utility capacity is about 45% unused, positioning grid interconnects as a separate monetizable asset.
• A real-world Volvo EX90 and dcbel test showed bidirectional energy flowing from car to house.
• Recurring transformer shortages and grid fragility are fueling calls to reconfigure the grid into interconnected microgrids.

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Fleet, Trucking and Commercial Charging

• MAN Truck and Bus's Megawatt Charging System hits 750kW, charging a heavy-duty truck from 20% to 80% in under 30 minutes.
• Volvo's upgraded FH Aero Electric adds 60% range in 50 minutes on up to 700kW Megawatt Charging.
• Welch Group's first megawatt charging hub went live at its Cambridge depot after an 18-month build.
• ENGIE Deutschland, ENGIE Vianeo and the Port of Kiel opened a public truck charging park in Germany.
• Roxpay's first e-truck charging site now has ABB A400 chargers installed for logistics center locations.
• Europe counts 2,405 public truck charging sockets across 373 sites, while depot chargers remain officially untracked.

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Market, Policy and Industry Consolidation

• E.ON Drive Infrastructure is taking over 19 Swedish sites and 80 ultra-fast points as Europe's charge point operator market consolidates.
• A new ten-year financial model starts from the premise that every public EV charging company currently loses money.
• Demand charges are straining small-business Supercharger economics, as seen at a four-stall Gorham, New Hampshire site.
• Walmart's EV charging expansion is read as reinforcing existing retail traffic more than building a charging business.
• Microsoft signed a 20-year, roughly $9 billion deal with Chevron for 2.67GW of dedicated off-grid gas power in West Texas.
• Schneider Electric and Budderfly will invest $4.4 million to electrify five City of Cadillac, Michigan facilities at zero upfront cost.
• A month of driving in Mérida, Mexico revealed a heavy mix of Chinese EV brands alongside Teslas and Superchargers.

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Regional and International Charging Rollouts

• India's new Unified Bharat eCharge network makes EV chargers nationwide accessible directly through the BHIM UPI app.
• More than one-third of cars sold in France in July were fully electric, straining motorway charging capacity.
• The US Department of Energy closed a $489.4 million loan for 220MW of battery storage in Puerto Rico.
• New York City will install 600 curbside EV chargers over three years for its for-hire driver fleet.
• The first NEVI-funded fast charging station on the Indiana-Illinois border is now online.
• Chargemap survey data ranks Electra first for charging experience among Belgian drivers.
• Northern Maine's Aroostook County still has zero operational public DC fast chargers.

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Thanks to Branden Flasch, Joshua Copeland, Tor "Solar Fred" Valenza, Yuliia Zabudska, Bart Saunders, Badar Khan, Mike Battaglia, Yufan Peng, Raul Arredondo, Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, Julia Lamb, Katharina Gerber, Philipp Graf, Philippe Curchod, Matthew Bell, Kurt Johnson, Gregor Hintler, Michael Greenberg, Alexander Tripi, Carla Ribeiro, Chris Welch, Jan-Niklas Ellerich,  Shiri Levi-Laor, Jigar Shah, George Karayannis, David Streitfeld, Akhil Jp, Sara Bryan Pasquier, Sheila Moynihan, Nicole Shelton, Megha Lakhchaura, Viktoria Ladchuk and Steven St Peter Jr for the insights behind this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: