Connect with us

Published

on

EV registrations were up 15% in the US in January. Although Ford and GM’s EV registrations slipped, Rivian (RIVN) and Hyundai saw some of the biggest growth.

Tesla still leads the pack

Electric vehicles accounted for 7.8% of new US light-vehicle registrations in January, up from 7.1% in Jan 2022. That’s also up from 7.7% in 2023.

According to S&P Global Mobility registration data (via Automotive News), the growth was uneven across the competition.

The data is significant as not all automakers release monthly sales numbers. Tesla’s registrations were up 15%, in line with the average, at 48,757. Model 3 registrations were down 23% after losing the $7,500 EV tax credit. Tesla also launched an updated model.

Tesla’s best-selling Model Y had 11,739 registrations in January, up 35% YOY. The Model X (+32%) and Model S (+68%) both had YOY growth. After launching in November, the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck had 72 registrations.

Rivian and Hyundai were among the leaders in EV registration growth. Rivian’s R1S led the growth while Hyundai’s IONIQ 5 picked up the pace.

Hyundai-IONIQ-5-offer
2024 Hyundai IONIQ 5 (Source: Hyundai)

Hyundai, Rivian see EV registration growth in January

Meanwhile, Ford and Chevy had fewer registrations than the year before. Mustang Mach-E registrations fell 38% (1,977), while the F-150 Lightning gained 4.5% YOY( 2,956). The F-150 Lightning topped Rivian’s R1T for the best-selling electric pickup title.

Rivian-Hyundai-EV-registrations
Rivian R1T (Source: Rivian)

GM’s Chevy was third with EV 4,353 registrations. After ending production of its best-selling Bolt earlier this year, registrations fell 45% to 4,119. The new Chevy Blazer EV (which is just coming off a stop-sale) and Silverado EV had 234 registrations combined.

Hyundai had a big month with 4,144 EV registrations in Jan, up 79% YOY. The IONIQ 5 had 2,436 registrations (+47% YOY), while the IONIQ 6 had 1,063.

Place Automaker EV registrations in January 2024
1 Tesla 48,757
2 Ford 5,429
3 Chevrolet 4,353
4 Hyundai 4,144
5 Rivian 3,818
6 Kia 3,717
7 BMW 3,564
8 Mercedes-Benz 3,341
9 Cadillac 2,145
10 Volkswagen 1,836
EV registrations by automaker January 2024 (Source: S&P Global Mobility/ Automotive News)

With Kia and Genesis included, Hyundai Motor topped Ford and Chevy with 8,262 registrations in January.

EV startup Rivian trended higher, placing fifth, with 3,818 registrations. Despite R1T numbers slipping 44%, the R1S picked up the slack, with registrations quadrupling.

Kia was sixth after EV registrations more than doubled YOY. Its new three-row EV9 is off to a strong start with 1,361 registrations. The EV6 had 1,338, while the Niro EV had 1,018.

Kia-EV9
Kia EV9 (Source: Kia)

Other automakers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Cadillac, saw EV registration growth in January. Meanwhile, registrations of Volkswagen sole ID.4 fell 47%.

With many automakers fighting for the same segment in mid-size electric SUVs, several have introduced significant deals to undercut the competition. For example, Hyundai is offering 0% APR on the 2024 IONIQ 5. The offer could amount to up to $7,800 in savings compared to a same-priced Tesla.

Volkswagen-ID.4-lease-deal
2023 Volkswagen ID.4 AWD Pro S (Source: Volkswagen US Media Site)

Volkswagen announced a $13,000 lease deal on the 2023 ID.4 AWD Pro S Plus as it makes room for new models.

Despite strong early demand, Kia is already offering a $5,000 customer cash offer on its first three-row electric SUV, the EV9.

With new models like the Volvo EX30, Fiat 500e, Honda Prologue, Chevy Equinox EV, and others rolling out this year, it will be interesting to see how the rankings turn out over the next few months.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

IONNA and Casey’s to bring more fast charging to the US Midwest

Published

on

By

IONNA and Casey’s to bring more fast charging to the US Midwest

Charging network IONNA is partnering with Casey’s, one of the US’s largest convenience store and pizza chains, to bring DC fast charging to EV drivers across the Midwest.

Starting this year, Casey’s customers can plug into IONNA’s 400 kW charging stations while grabbing a slice or stocking up on road-trip essentials. Eight “Rechargeries” are already under construction in six states and are expected to open in 2025:

  • Little Rock, Arkansas
  • Vernon Hills, Illinois
  • McHenry, Illinois
  • Terre Haute, Indiana
  • Parkville, Missouri
  • Kearney, Missouri
  • Blackwell, Oklahoma
  • Waco, Texas

The Casey’s deal pushes IONNA past 900 charging bays in construction or operation — more than double what it had just three months ago. IONNA says the partnership will “expand,” but doesn’t provide specifics.

“This partnership with Casey’s is key to expanding our presence in America’s heartland,” said IONNA CEO Seth Cutler. “With a shared respect and commitment to delivering quality customer experience, we are pleased to add Casey’s to our growing network of partners.”

Advertisement – scroll for more content

IONNA is a joint venture backed by eight of the world’s biggest automakers – BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota – working to rapidly scale a DC fast-charging network in the US.

Read more: Wawa is getting ultra-fast EV chargers from IONNA


The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

Published

on

By

Google and Anthropic announce cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

Google, Anthropic agree to cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars

Anthropic and Google officially announced their cloud partnership Thursday, a deal that gives the artificial intelligence company access to up to one million of Google’s custom-designed Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.

The deal, which is worth tens of billions of dollars, is the company’s largest TPU commitment yet and is expected to bring well over a gigawatt of AI compute capacity online in 2026.

Industry estimates peg the cost of a 1-gigawatt data center at around $50 billion, with roughly $35 billion of that typically allocated to chips.

While competitors tout even loftier projections — OpenAI’s 33-gigawatt “Stargate” chief among them — Anthropic’s move is a quiet power play rooted in execution, not spectacle.

Founded by former OpenAI researchers, the company has deliberately adopted a slower, steadier ethos, one that is efficient, diversified, and laser-focused on the enterprise market.

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

A key to Anthropic’s infrastructure strategy is its multi-cloud architecture.

The company’s Claude family of language models runs across Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s custom Trainium chips, and Nvidia’s GPUs, with each platform assigned to specialized workloads like training, inference, and research.

Google said the TPUs offer Anthropic “strong price-performance and efficiency.”

“Anthropic and Google have a longstanding partnership and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of AI,” said Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao in a release.

Anthropic’s ability to spread workloads across vendors lets it fine-tune for price, performance, and power constraints.

According to a person familiar with the company’s infrastructure strategy, every dollar of compute stretches further under this model than those locked into single-vendor architectures.

Google, for its part, is leaning into the partnership.

“Anthropic’s choice to significantly expand its usage of TPUs reflects the strong price-performance and efficiency its teams have seen with TPUs for several years,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in a release, touting the company’s seventh-generation “Ironwood” accelerator as part of a maturing portfolio.

Anthropic takes a page from Palantir as AI battle with OpenAI goes global

Claude’s breakneck revenue growth

Anthropic’s escalating compute demand reflects its explosive business growth.

The company’s annual revenue run rate is now approaching $7 billion, and Claude powers more than 300,000 businesses — a staggering 300× increase over the past two years. The number of large customers, each contributing more than $100,000 in run-rate revenue, has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year.

Claude Code, the company’s agentic coding assistant, generated $500 million in annualized revenue within just two months of launch, which Anthropic claims makes it the “fastest-growing product” in history.

While Google is powering Anthropic’s next phase of compute expansion, Amazon remains its most deeply embedded partner.

The retail and cloud giant has invested $8 billion in Anthropic to date, more than double Google’s confirmed $3 billion in equity.

Still, AWS is considered Anthropic’s chief cloud provider, making its influence structural and not just financial.

Its custom-built supercomputer for Claude, known as Project Rainier, runs on Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips. That shift matters not just for speed, but for cost: Trainium avoids the premium margins of other chips, enabling more compute per dollar spent.

AWS outage ripples across internet, puts pressure on Amazon ahead of earnings

Wall Street is already seeing results.

Rothschild & Co Redburn analyst Alex Haissl estimated that Anthropic added one to two percentage points to AWS’s growth in last year’s fourth quarter and this year’s first, with its contribution expected to exceed five points in the second half of 2025.

Wedbush’s Scott Devitt previously told CNBC that once Claude becomes a default tool for enterprise developers, that usage flows directly into AWS revenue — a dynamic he believes will drive AWS growth for “many, many years.”

Google, meanwhile, continues to play a pivotal role. In January, the company agreed to a new $1 billion investment in Anthropic, adding to its previous $2 billion and 10% equity stake.

Critically, Anthropic’s multicloud approach proved resilient during Monday’s AWS outage, which did not impact Claude thanks to its diversified architecture.

Still, Anthropic isn’t playing favorites. The company maintains control over model weights, pricing, and customer data — and has no exclusivity with any cloud provider. That neutral stance could prove key as competition among hyperscalers intensifies.

WATCH: Anthropic’s Mike Krieger on new model release and the race to build real-world AI agents

Anthropic’s Mike Krieger on new model release and the race to build real-world AI agents

Continue Reading

Environment

JB Straubel’s Redwood snags $350M to deploy more US-made battery storage

Published

on

By

JB Straubel’s Redwood snags 0M to deploy more US-made battery storage

Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO and cofounder JB Straubel, has raised $350 million in new funding to scale its US-made battery storage systems and critical materials operations. The company is ramping up to meet surging demand from AI data centers and the clean energy sector.

The oversubscribed Series E round was led by Eclipse, with participation from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, and other new strategic investors.

As global supplies tighten, the US is racing to secure domestic production of critical materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper. In July, Redwood and GM signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to turn new and second-life GM batteries into energy storage systems. Redwood launched a new venture in June called Redwood Energy that repurposes both new and used EV battery packs into fast and cost-effective energy storage systems.

Redwood says large-scale battery storage is the fastest and most scalable way to enable new AI data center rollout while unlocking stranded generation capacity and stabilizing the grid. Battery storage also helps industrial facilities electrify and balance renewable energy output. The company aims to deliver a new generation of affordable, US-built energy storage systems designed to serve the grid, heavy industry, and AI data centers, reducing dependence on imported Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

Redwood will use the new capital to expand energy storage deployments, refining and materials production capacity, and its engineering and operations teams.

Read more: Redwood is repurposing GM’s EV batteries into energy storage


The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending