After Donald Trump’s US election win, French energy giant TotalEnergies has hit the pause button on Attentive Energy, its planned offshore wind farm off the New York coast.

“Offshore wind, I have decided to put the [Attentive Energy] project on pause” with Trump’s return, said Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne on Tuesday at an energy conference in London. “I said to my team, the project in New York, we’ll see that in four years. But the advantage is it’s only for four years.”

Total’s offshore wind project is Attentive Energy, which is an 84,332-acre area around 54 miles from its nearest point to New York and 42 miles from its nearest point to New Jersey. Attentive Energy has the potential to generate 3,000 MW of clean energy to power nearly 1 million homes.

The company won the rights to develop Attentive Energy in a record-setting auction in 2022 and planned to bring it online in the early 2030s. But the project is currently in a very early phase, and it’s not permitted. It hasn’t filed a construction and operations plan with the US Department of the Interior, and that review process can take at least three years, which would be particularly challenging, if not impossible, under an administration that openly opposes the offshore wind industry.

Trump is a vocal critic of offshore wind and has repeatedly vowed on the campaign trail to target the industry with an executive order on his first day in office. His plans are vague but probably relate to lease sales and permitting. He’s also chosen pro-fossil fuel fracking executive Chris Wright as secretary of energy.

However, Trump won’t be able to cancel offshore wind farms that are fully permitted and are at more advanced construction stages.

Total is retaining Attentive Energy’s lease so it can resume work on the offshore wind project after Trump’s term ends under a more environmentally friendly administration.

Read more: The US’s largest offshore wind farm is on budget and on time

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Tesla adds direct charge port defrosting option just in time for winter

During Model 3’s first winter in 2018, we reported that the electric car had some issues with the cold weather, and Tesla said they were investigating the situation.

Several owners in cold weather regions were experiencing difficulties entering their vehicles because the door handles wouldn’t open, the windows, which need to go down about an inch to open the doors, would jam, and even the charge port would freeze shut.

A week later, Tesla released a software update to help with some of these issues.

Later, they also released a new software update to use climate control to help thaw the charge port when it gets frozen.

However, the real solution to the freezing charge port was a heater dedicated to it, which Tesla started putting in its vehicles in late 2020.

While charge port heaters have been in vehicles for years, Tesla never really gave the option to owners to specifically defrost their charge ports. Instead, it would activate when turning on the overall or rear defrosting functions of the vehicles.

This is now changing.

Not A Tesla App, which tracks Tesla software updates, is nothing that some Tesla vehicles are now getting the specific option to activate the charge port heater with the latest software update:

Tesla has finally added a solution to this problem. You can now manually turn on the charge port heater by going to Controls > Service > Charge Port Heater. However, the feature is not available on all vehicles. It’s only appearing in the release notes for a very small segment of vehicles. We’ve confirmed that it is showing up on a 2024 Model X and some 2023 Model Ys on Tesla software update 2024.44.3.1.

The change is coming right in time for the cold weather, and it should enable owners to target the charge port when needed – increasing efficiency.

Electrek’s Take

To be honest, I haven’t heard many issues about frozen charge ports since the first winter with the Model 3. I had this issue myself during the first winter.

There were a few reports about it the next two winters, but Tesla did help a lot simply with a software update to better manage the airflow toward the charge port area. Then, when the heater was introduced, it seemed to have basically eliminated the issue.

I still like to have a direct option to activate the specific charge port heater. It makes sense.

With plans to drastically downsize its workforce, Ford’s future in Germany looks bleak. According to Germany’s largest trade union, Ford’s new job cuts “would mean an incremental death” to its future in Cologne.

Ford’s job cuts spark backlash in Germany

On November 20, Ford announced plans to cut another 4,000 jobs in Europe by the end of 2027. Most of them will be in Germany, about 2,900 of the eliminated positions.

The move comes after Ford incurred “significant losses” in recent years amid a “highly disruptive” influx of new competition, mainly electric models. Ford blames slower-than-expected demand for its EVs and a weakening economic situation for the downsizing.

According to the German newspaper Automobilwoche, Ford’s job cuts are now being discussed among economic committee members in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

SPD parliamentary group leader Jochen Ott said, “The job cuts announced on November 20 are a breach of the agreement reached in February 2023.” Ott added that the lack of transparency and late information provided to the works council are a “blatant breach of trust and a slap in the face.”

Germany’s largest trade union, IG Metall, even chimed in, claiming the plans “pose a massive threat to the continued existence” of Ford’s remaining German sites.

Ford is still the largest employer in Cologne, but it will slash about one in four of its current 12,000 jobs by the end of 2027. By then, the American automaker will have halved its workforce in just ten years.

Two electric models, the Explorer and Capri EVs, are currently built in Cologne, but lack of demand is forcing Ford to slow production. Ford began building Capri EV models just last month after the electric Explorer in June.

Electrek’s Take

Ford is struggling to keep up in Europe as new competition enters the market. With China becoming flooded with low-cost EVs, domestic automakers are looking overseas for growth, and Europe is one of the biggest targets.

BYD, MG, NIO, and others are launching advanced new EV models aimed at European buyers. After squeezing legacy automakers like Ford, VW, and Toyota out of their home market, Chinese EV leaders are now looking for a bigger share of the global market.

As its record sales run continues, BYD topped Nissan and Honda for the first time in global deliveries this year. Now, it’s closing in on Ford.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, BYD is quickly closing in on Ford in global deliveries and could top the American automaker sooner than expected.

CEO Jim Farley acknowledged the threat of Chinese automakers, saying, “As the CEO of a company that had trouble competing with the Japanese and the South Koreans, we have to fix this problem.”

Ford is shifting plans to focus on smaller, more profitable EVs with a new low-cost platform. However, the first model, a midsize electric truck, won’t hit the market until 2027. By then, it could be too little, too late.