All the news about EV charging in the US

Bounced emails. Stalled projects. Delayed adapters. These are the immediate effects of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s “absolutely hard core” approach to cost cutting, which has resulted in at least 500 layoffs from the company’s Supercharger business, including the division’s top executive, Rebecca Tinucci.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Tesla was on the verge of making its vehicle charging plug the de facto standard in North America, and its competitors and stakeholders are counting on a smooth ride. But Musk claims the leaner team will focus less on deploying new Supercharger locations and instead focus on “100 percent uptime.” How that will translate into reality is unclear, with laid-off employees telling InsideEVs that reduced manpower will affect their ability to respond to outages.

Tesla was on the cusp of taking over electric vehicle charging in the US — then, the layoffs came.

Today, multiple outlets reported that the company has laid off hundreds of employees, just weeks after cutting 10 percent (approximately 14,000 people) of its global workforce. Tesla’s Supercharger division was said to be particularly hard hit, with several soon-to-be-former employees saying that close to the entire team had been cut.

Google Maps is rolling out some new updates designed to make locating an electric vehicle charging station less stressful. And to accomplish this, it will (of course) lean heavily on artificial intelligence.

Google says it will use AI to summarize customer reviews of EV chargers to display more specific directions to certain chargers, such as those located in parking garages or more hard-to-find places. And there will be more prompts in the app to encourage users to submit their feedback after using an EV charger — which will then be fed into the algorithm for future AI-powered summaries.

Rivian is pushing a new software update that will give its customers better insight into which EV chargers to visit — and which to avoid.

EV charging reliability remains a serious sore spot for a lot of owners of plug-in vehicles, leaving the companies selling the cars scrambling to boost their confidence. Rivian’s solution is to use their vehicle fleet to gather data about broken chargers, which then get downranked in the company’s software algorithm.

Rivian owners will be able to charge their electric trucks and SUVs at Tesla Supercharger stations starting today at 9AM PT / 12 PM ET, the company tells The Verge. The news comes after several Rivian owners noticed a software update allowing Supercharger access over the weekend.

Rivian was one of the first automakers to announce plans to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its future EVs. For current owners, Rivian will send out a Tesla-made adapter free of charge, much like Ford started doing last month.

Starting today, people who own electric vehicles from Ford can reserve an adapter that will enable them to charge at Tesla’s vastly superior Supercharger network.

The company is the first to distribute adapters to customers, after announcing last year its plans to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector for its EVs. Other automakers soon followed Ford’s lead, leading to a massive shift toward Tesla’s standardized version of its proprietary charging system.

Lucid Motors announced it was slashing prices on most of its electric vehicles and would also provide up to $1,000 for customers to purchase charging equipment. It was the third price reduction announced by the company in just seven months and came as the company continues to struggle to generate demand amid a broader slowdown in EV sales growth across multiple markets.

Lucid said its base Air Pure model with rear-wheel drive would now start at $71,400, which includes a $1,500 destination fee. That’s down from Air Pure’s $78,900 price announced in October, which itself was down from the $83,900 price that was reported in August.

Stellantis, parent company to storied brands like Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, and Dodge, said it will adopt Tesla’s electric vehicle charging plug for its future EVs — becoming the last major car company to do so.

Stellantis said its first EVs to feature the SAE J3400 plug, also known as Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, will be out in 2025. During the transition period, the company said it will provide adapters to customers who own EVs with Combined Charging Standard, or CCS, plugs.

Volkswagen Group, which also owns Audi, Porsche, and Scout Motors, is finally doing what nearly every other automaker has already done: announce its intention to adopt Tesla’s electric vehicle charging standard.

VW said it is “exploring adapter solutions” so that its current EV owners can access Tesla’s Supercharger network and expects to have something to roll out by 2025. That same year, you’ll start to see new VW electric vehicles rolling off the assembly line with Tesla’s charging port natively installed. All told, VW says the deal will give its customers access to 15,000 Supercharger locations in North America.

Ford may be dialing back some of its larger EV investments, but it’s still operating under the assumption that a lot of businesses will be interested in electrifying their fleets eventually. The company is partnering with Xcel Energy to install 30,000 EV charging ports for fleet customers by 2030, at little to no cost to the businesses to the businesses themselves.

The project will be run out of Ford Pro, which is the automaker’s commercial vehicle and software division. The first EV charger installations will begin in the first quarter of 2024 in two states, Wisconsin and Colorado, and later will grow to include more states, said Amanda Rome, executive vice president and chief customer officer at Xcel Energy.