If you live in or develop apartments in California, there’s fresh cash on the table to get Level 2 EV chargers installed. The Communities in Charge project, backed by the California Energy Commission’s Clean Transportation Program, just opened a new funding lane worth up to $56.5 million for multi-family housing and nearby spots where tenants can plug in.

How it works

• Who can apply? California property owners or stakeholders ready to install Level 2 chargers at multi-family and adjacent tenant-accessible sites.
• When? Applications opened today at 9 am PT and run through January 9, 2026, at 5 pm PT.
• What’s covered? Up to $8,500 per Level 2 port. Starting in October, the program will also kick in $2,000 per publicly accessible Level 1 port.  Extra “plus-ups” are available for Tribal communities.
• Equity first: An equity-based scoring system bumps projects that serve disadvantaged, low-income, and Tribal areas to the front of the line.

The project is run by CALSTART (with GRID Alternatives and Tetra Tech riding shotgun). CALSTART already oversees more than $1 billion in national clean-transportation incentives.

“This funding wave marks a critical step in making electric vehicle charging accessible to more Californians, no matter the type of housing,” said Stacey Simms, CALSTART’s senior director of clean fuels and infrastructure. “By dedicating funding to this housing sector, we’re ensuring that infrastructure barriers are broken down so that multi-family housing residents can go electric at home.”

What happens after you click ‘submit’

Applications roll in through the Incentive Processing Center and get reviewed as they arrive:

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• Readiness Tier 1 (projects that can basically start tomorrow) snag an immediate “Notice of Final Award.”
• Readiness Tier 2 candidates get a “Notice of Conditional Award” and 90 days to hand in extra paperwork before they secure their final green light.

Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles

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Rivian just posted its more recent letter to shareholders outlining its progress and financial numbers from Q2 2025. We have already covered much of Rivian’s Q2 achievements outlined in the letter. However, we have gained a clearer understanding of where the American automaker stands on production numbers, revenue, and gross profit through half the year as it continues to gear up for the start of R2 production next year.

While Q2 2025 is by no means the worst report from Rivian, it’s not the most exciting from a financial outlook. However, the American automaker does point out several impressive milestones and investments it solidified the previous three months.

For example, Rivian shared news of a fresh equity investment of $1 billion from Volkswagen Group, part of a larger $5.8 billion agreement joint venture between the two OEMs.

As we pointed out in July, Rivian has been expanding its global footprint, announcing a new UK office in addition to a shiny new East Coast headquarters located outside of Atlanta, not far from where its second EV manufacturing facility will eventually operate.

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Q2 2025 also marked Rivian’s initial sales of its second-generation Quad Motor R1 models. Speaking of new models, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe shared several progress updates of the new R2 throughout Q2 2025, and today’s letter to shareholders continues to detail steady progress for the highly anticipated EV.

Let’s dig into the full report, shall we?

Rivian expects higher Q3 2025 deliveries compared to Q2

As announced before the full Q2 2025 report, Rivian’s BEV production was way down, completing a mere 5,979 vehicles in Normal, IL, compared to 14,611 a quarter prior. That said, Rivian deliveries were up in Q2 (10,661 vs. 8,640 in Q1 2025).

Rivian cited the reason for limiting production last quarter as “primarily due to a variety of supply chain complexities partially driven by shifts in trade policy.” Despite the lower production numbers, Rivian said it is staying pat on its delivery guidance for 2025 and expects to have an even better Q3 2025. Per the shareholder letter:

We are maintaining the range of our delivery guidance to 40,000 – 46,000. We anticipate the third quarter to be our peak delivery quarter of the year across both our consumer and commercial vehicles. Due to some of the recent changes associated with regulatory credits and our second quarter performance, we are increasing our guidance for adjusted  EBITDA losses to ($2,000) million – ($2,250) million.

Total revenues were up in Q2 2025 by both quarter and year-over-year, but Rivian’s total cost of revenues increased, leaving gross profits at an (unaudited) plateau. Same as last quarter, Rivian still expects its 2025 capital expenditures to land somewhere between $1.8 and $1.9 billion.

Aside from the financials, which you can view in their entirety here, Rivian continues to put a tremendous amount of future success in its upcoming R2 model. Per Rivian, R2 development and launch remain on track. The automaker has essentially completed construction of a new 1.1 million square foot plant expansion in Normal, with production tooling equipment for component manufacturing installations now underway.

Rivian expects to commission the new R2 line in Q3 2025 en route to equipment and production processes validation. As we’ve covered plenty this year, the American automaker is assembling validation prototypes of the R2 on a pilot production line in California.

To make room for R2 production, Rivian will shut down its existing production footprint in Illinois for about three weeks in September. After that, Rivian’s manufacturing capacity will increase to about 215,000 units per year. Per the shareholder letter:

During the second quarter we made significant progress towards our development of R2, and  advancements in AI. Due to our sourcing efforts and contracts we have in place, we are confident  R2 will launch at an advantaged cost structure as compared to R1 and expect it to have a quick  path to positive gross profit.

As always, Rivian will host an audio webcast this afternoon at 2:00 PM PT/5:00 PM ET to discuss its Q2 2025 results and provide a business update. The link to the webcast and shareholder letter is available here.

All Tesla vehicles are now capable of bidirectional charging (V2X) thanks to an impressive Powerwall competitor, Sigenergy, which can include a universal bidirectional DC charger.

V2X, or bidirectional charging, is becoming a fairly common feature for electric vehicles.

Whether it’s in a reasonably low capacity to power tools and other equipment on the go (V2X), or with higher capacities to power a home (V2H) or send electricity back into the grid for money (V2G).

As a leader in electric vehicles, Tesla was long seen as being reticent in adopting the technology.

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Today, Cybertruck is the only Tesla vehicle that officially supports bidirectional charging and it only works with Tesla’s own Powershare home solution, which still has limitations years after launching. For example, it still doesn’t work with Powerwalls.

And yet, I was surprised to see yesterday a Tesla Model Y send electricity back into a house for the first time.

My friend Sylvain Juteau, President of Roulez Electrique, was showing me the latest addition to his Trois-Rivieres charging station: the Sigenergy DC charging and ESS system. You can watch our video of our full walkthrough of the system here:

I had already heard a bit about Sigenergy and how they were gaining a foothold in the home energy storage market in countries like Australia.

Tesla has been dominating the home energy storage system for years with the Powerwall, but now its supremacy is being challenged, and I’m starting to understand why.

This device is what the Tesla Powerwall was supposed to be.

In 2016, when discussing the upcoming Powerwall 2, CEO Elon Musk stated that it would feature an “integrated Powerwall 2.0 battery and Tesla charger.”

The Powerwall 2 came and went, and never had a charger integrated.

Tesla is currently on the Powerwall 3, which features some significant improvements in power capacity and solar inverter integration, but it doesn’t have an integrated EV charger.

Sigenergy’s device combines all components into a single, stackable, and expandable system with an incredible user interface.

For a few years now, the industry has had the ISO 15118 international standard for vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and Sigenergy has built a fully certified bidirectional DC charger module that fits with its modular energy storage system.

The system consists of stackable 8 kWh battery modules, with a top module that includes a solar inverter and serves as the brain of the system.

Between them, you can fit this new bidirectional DC charger module. With 3 battery modules (24 kWh), it looks like this:

The system can provide up to 25 kW DC fast charging, allowing you to charge at a rate of 25 kW at home.

It bypasses the onboard charger in your electric vehicle, just like public DC fast-charging stations.

At 25 kW, which is achievable with 3 battery modules and solar, it is certainly not as fast as most public fast-charging stations, but it is a lot more than the generally ~7 kW capacity of a level 2 home charging station.

And the killer feature is that this module is capable of bidirectional charging so it can not only DC charge an EV, but it can also pull DC power from an EV.

The device is available with both CCS and NASC connectors, but bidirectional charging utilizes the CCS protocol.

It means that even Tesla cars with NASC connectors and CCS modules (2019-2021, depending on the model) can use the bidirectional. To be clear, this is unofficially supported by Tesla – meaning that it works, we have tried it, but it’s not something that the automaker officially supports.

Sylvain tried the system on a dozen electric vehicles, and it works perfectly with most of them.

However, not all automakers have adopted the new bidirectional charging standard. In his tests, he found that Ford’s EVs are the ones that work best with it. Most Tesla vehicles tested performed well, but a few would cut off after approximately 5 minutes.

GM’s vehicles were notoriously hard to make work with the DC charger.

Sigenergy’s system is the first to be fully certified to the ISO standard, and they are a bit ahead of the curve. Now, automakers need to fully support the standard to unlock all that potential energy storage capacity.

Electrek’s Take

Can you imagine the value in energy capacity we could unlock if this were widely available? All battery systems become interconnected between cars, homes, and the grid.

You can always have energy go to where it is needed the most.

I think that’s the future of a decentralized energy infrastructure.

I thought that this was Tesla’s plan for the Powerwall. Elon had hinted at this for a while. It would have made a great deal of sense, given that Tesla is both an automaker and a leader in energy storage, but it never happened.

Kudos to Sigenergy for leading the charge here. This is a fascinating product that enables complete control over your energy assets from your electric car to your solar panels.

Take a look at the user interface in Sigenergy’s app:

This is a treasure trove of stats for energy nerds. The first screen is very similar to the Tesla Powerwall app, but the rest provides much more detail. You can see where the energy in your batteries are coming from and where they are going exactly.

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