Aurelia Butler

General Motors will produce Ultium-brand Level 2 electric vehicle charging equipment and work with its dealers donate thousands of the units to underserved areas in cities and rural areas.There are three levels of charging equipment, with power ranging from 11.5 to 19.2 kW, and they’ll be usable by all EV customers, not just GM EV owners.Deliveries of the first Ultium charging stations start in early 2022, and customers can include the cost of a station when financing their new GM EV.General Motors said today it will sell its own electric-vehicle charging stations, branded with the Ultium name—and donate more than 40,000 of them to its 4000-plus franchised dealers to install in their communities.The goal, the company said, is to expand access to charging stations in “underserved, rural, and urban areas where EV charging access is often limited.” It’s a recognition that while GM “aspires” to sell only EVs as passenger cars and light trucks by 2035, many of its dedicated customers and longtime dealers have little exposure to them—and, crucially, may have never seen or noticed a public EV charging station.

The three Ultium charging stations announced today vary in their features, including models with an embedded touchscreen and a camera. They also vary in the amount of power they deliver, from 11.5 to 19.2 kilowatts, which makes them among the highest-power stations available. (In comparison, Electrify America’s Level 2 HomeStation is 9.6 kW, ChargePoint’s Home Flex claims 12.0 kW, Ford’s Mach-E Connected Charge station provides 11.5 kW, and the top-end Charge Station Pro for the future Ford F-150 Lightning will offer 19.2 kW.) All are networked via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing GM to monitor and aggregate charging data, though the company says users can opt out if they prefer. All offer dynamic load balancing, meaning that when electric utilities signal they need to reduce demand or want to encourage off-peak charging, the stations can adjust the energy delivered to the vehicle.Deliveries of the first Ultium stations will start early next year, and EV buyers can roll the cost into their auto financing at the dealer. Importantly, the stations are intended for both home and commercial use. That’s a hint that, like Ford, General Motors may anticipate faster EV adoption among commercial-vehicle fleets, lured in by EVs’ far lower per-mile running costs, than among consumers who often need to be educated one by one.As for what GM calls the Dealer Community Charging Program, the company will give each of its EV-certified dealers up to 10 Ultium charging stations for free. The dealer is expected to work with community leaders to identify highly visible, long-dwell locations where EV charging doesn’t presently exist. Those may be parking lots at arenas, sports fields, fairgrounds, and the like—locations that will be “accessible, visible, and ubiquitous,” in the words of Hossein “Hoss” Hassani, GM’s North America director of EV commercialization and ecosystem.The new stations won’t be at the dealerships themselves, however. Dealers have other programs under which they can install charging stations—though their real-world accessibility varies greatly. (EV drivers often report that dealership charging stations nominally open to the are frequently blocked by other vehicles.) This program is intended to get EV charging out in front of the people who have never seen such a site—or may not be aware that they’ve encountered one.

The stations will be branded Ultium Charge 360, GM’s unwieldy name for what the company calls its “holistic charging approach that integrates charging networks, GM vehicle mobile apps, and other products and services to simplify the overall charging experience.” Essentially that translates to making EV charging more available, simpler, and easier. No EV maker except Tesla has accomplished that goal so far, but with more than a dozen EVs from its four U.S. brands hitting the market by 2025, the company realizes it has to do better.Earlier this month, GM CEO Mary Barra said the company would spend $750 million by 2025 to improve electric-vehicle charging and make it accessible to all Americans. This morning’s announcement is a first cautious step toward that goal. Asked if that rather large amount of cash would include DC fast-charging for trips beyond an EV’s range, Hassani demurred. “This is what we’re announcing today,” he said. Clearly, though, if GM is serious about making EV charging available to all U.S. drivers, we can expect more such announcements, and soon.

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RVs are incredibly popular right now, and anything that allows you to spend more time off-grid certainly has an audience waiting to check it out.The latest such accessory is the Xpanse Solar Awning, which can provide up to 1.2 kW of solar power to power up an RV full of appliances while it shades your comfy seats below.Xponent Power will take your pre-order $100 deposit and is offering the awning at an initial price of $7500 through October 30, but buyers after that will pay $10,000. Deliveries should happen sometime next year.There’s been an unmistakable boom in RV sales during the pandemic. According to the RV Industry Association (RVIA), there were just over 55,000 RV shipments in the U.S. in September 2021, a 32.2 percent increase over the same month in 2020. September 2021 was also the highest month for RV sales that the RVIA has ever tracked, which helped 2021’s third quarter (July to September) become the highest sales quarter ever, with 152,370 RVs shipped. In other words, if you’re getting ready to launch the “first commercially available retractable solar awning for RVs,” now’s the perfect time.

Xponent Power, which is coming out of stealth mode today, is right on time with its new Xpanse solar awning. Instead of a fabric awning to provide shade near the camper, the Xpanse awning is made up of thin, high-efficiency solar panels that fold together in a zigzag fashion and hide inside a protective shell on the top of the RV when not in use. Xponent said it takes 30 seconds to extend or retract the awning, which in standard form is about 16 feet long and can be mounted anywhere there is space available to mount two side arms 16 feet apart, company founder Rohini Raghunathan told Car and Driver, adding that Xponent is working on designing other sizes and ways of attaching it to an RV.”The Xpanse solar awning can be sized anywhere from three feet to 16 feet,” Raghunathan said. “We are in the process of designing the next-generation product that will not require side arms and hence will be compatible with a broader base of models, including Sprinter-type vehicles.”

Palmer Morse/Xpanse

The Xpanse awning can provide up to 1.2 kW of solar power to run onboard appliances and is unsurprisingly compatible with the kinds of electrical components used in traditional RV solar installations, including charge controllers, batteries, and inverters, plus RV appliances such as refrigerators, lights, and microwaves, the company said. It can be installed on either side of an RV, so if you like the shade awning you already have but want an additional power source, that’s not a problem.

Xponent Power

Xponent said it designed the Xpanse so it doesn’t cause problems when the wind picks up. For one thing, the solar panels are separated from each other to let air pass through and thus stay stable “even at relatively high wind speeds,” the company said in a statement. At higher speeds, the awning uses built-in sensors detect wins speed and automatically retract when needed. The awning decides when to retract using what Xponent calls “extensive machine learning” that has helped the company identify situations when it is no longer safe to have the awning out.There are still some details pending. For example, Raghunathan said Xponent is currently in discussion with manufacturing and assembly partners in the U.S. and hasn’t yet finalized the assembly location. “We are also in discussions with solar cell manufacturers for sourcing and final decisions have not yet been made about where these cells will be sourced from,” she said. Even more interesting, the company said it is also in talks with automotive and RV manufacturers to offer the Xpanse as a pre-installed option on new vehicles.

Xponent Power

Xponent Power plans to charge $10,000 for this solar awning system but initially is offering it for $7500 for those who order by October 30. The company will start taking $100 refundable pre-order deposits today even though the first product deliveries won’t happen until 2022.

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Rental giant Hertz announced this morning that it is ordering 100,000 Tesla Model 3 EVs, giving it “the largest EV rental fleet in North America” and making EVs 20 percent of the Hertz fleet.Hertz promised that customers will start to find Tesla Model 3 cars at some locations in the U.S. and Europe starting in early November. The full 100,000-car order is expected to be fulfilled by the end of 2022.Hertz said it will also install “thousands” of charging stations in its locations, which will supplement Tesla’s already expansive Supercharger network, and will set up an expedited app-based booking process for the EVs.In a major move both for Tesla and the rental-car market, Hertz has announced it has ordered 100,000 Teslas. The rental-car company’s $4.2 billion order represents the largest single EV purchase to date, as Bloomberg noted this morning. Tesla Model 3 cars will start appearing in Hertz airport and other rental locations next month, and the cars will continue to roll out across U.S. and Europe locations through the end of 2022. Hertz also announced today that customers who rent a Model 3 before February 1, 2022, who use the Tesla charging network will get free charging privileges. The announcement did not specify whether all 100,000 cars will be Model 3s but did not mention other Tesla models.

A big part of this deal, of course, is that Hertz customers will get to use Tesla’s expansive Supercharger network, and Hertz also said it will install “thousands” of chargers across the U.S. and Europe. The Hertz plan is to set up Level 2 and DC fast-charging stations in 65 cities by the end of 2022 and more than 100 by the end of 2023, although the rental company alluded to “semiconductor chip shortages or other constraints” as one reason that ambition could be delayed.Hertz is also promising faster booking through an EV-specific function on the Hertz app.The rental-car company first offered EVs in 2011 and started offering the Tesla Model S at airports in California in 2013, but as recently as 2017 Hertz and Enterprise both told Car and Driver that they were cutting their EV fleets because of low demand. One obvious difference between 2017 and today is that the growth of Tesla’s Supercharger network makes an EV rental a much more practical proposition.

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Emelia Hartford / Instagram

We already know the C8-generation Corvette Z06 will rev to an astonishing 8600 rpm. Now, we have studio-quality audio showing what that outrageous number sounds like in action.
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The video, from automotive content producer Emelia Hartford, shows a C8 Z06 test car in what has become very familiar camouflage. It is doing a pull on a dyno in a sound-standardized anechoic chamber, where Hartford says the Corvette team has spent “countless hours perfecting the noise” of what is expected to be an outlandish high-revving flat-plane-crank engine that shares elements with the engine used in the current C8.R racing car.

Thanks to a few previous teaser videos, we already know this will be the most outlandish sounding Corvette ever. As in previous audio released by Chevrolet, this video seems to indicate that the most extreme mid-engine Corvette yet will sound more like a V-8 Ferrari than any previous high-end Corvette. Given that the car was benchmarked against those same V-8 Ferraris at the Nürburgring, it may perform at that level, too.While the C8 Z06 will not be revealed in full until Tuesday, October 26, GM has already shared a photo of the car. It looks nearly as extreme as it sounds, but we still do not know exactly how fast it will be. The final reveal is set for 12:30 p.m. ET, so come back then for specific details on what makes the latest track-focused Corvette so special.

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