The ChargeX Consortium has figured out how to automatically restart failed EV charging sessions at fast chargers so drivers don’t have to.

Every EV driver has been there. You plug in, walk away to grab food or run errands, and expect your battery to be juicing up at a DC fast charger, only to return and realize nothing happened. Maybe the session failed, or maybe the charger glitched. Either way, you’re stuck unplugging, plugging back in, and now it’s going to take twice as long to charge.

The ChargeX Consortium (National Charging Experience Consortium), which is made up of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), along with industry stakeholders, has come up with a smart fix for one of the most frustrating parts of public EV charging: failed sessions.

Its new report highlights the benefits of what it calls “seamless retry” – a hands-free tech solution that automatically restarts failed charging attempts. In other words, the driver no longer needs to physically unplug and replug the charging connector when a charging session fails.

The consortium’s new tech is designed specifically for DC fast charging. The “novel mechanism” automatically resets both the EV and the charger, then restarts the session in the background, so drivers don’t have to return to the car – or even have to think about it.

Ed Watt, a researcher at NREL and lead author of the “Recommended Practice Seamless Retry for Electric Vehicle Charging” report, said, “With a seamless retry mechanism in place, an EV driver at a retail center can plug in a charging connector, provide user input data, leave to shop, and feel confident that they will return to a charged vehicle.” (Click on the report link to see the specifics of how the novel mechanism works.)

The researchers didn’t just focus on the perks of seamless retry – they also looked at potential downsides. One concern was the extra time it might take for the system to restart a failed session, which could leave drivers frustrated. To tackle that, the consortium suggests that the EV industry provide transparency in the form of real-time status updates, insights into what went wrong, and recommendations based on the type of charging failure and number of attempts made.

Going forward, as the user experience becomes clearer, more work will fine-tune seamless retry. The ChargeX Consortium will keep refining the system – developing smarter, more targeted retry methods, ironing out implementation details, and running verification tests to make sure everything works seamlessly in the real world.

Read more: The latest US EV sales and charger growth – in numbers

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Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer, Taneja Vaibhav, and the head of Tesla’s board of directors, Robyn Denholm, have just sold tens of millions of dollars worth of Tesla (TSLA) stocks.

Elon Musk’s brother is also selling.

Public companies must report insider stock trading by critical executives and board members to the SEC.

For Tesla, it’s a very limited group for a company of that size:

And they are not buying the stock. In fact, they are almost exclusively selling.

Today, Tesla reported two new sets of transactions in SEC filings.

Chief Financial Officer Taneja Vaibhav confirmed that he sold 7,000 shares for $2,681,770.

He was able to acquire those 7,000 Tesla shares at $18.22 as part of his stock option plan. He sold at an average of $383, and the stock closed at $374 today.

Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chairwoman, sold 112,390 shares at an average price of $384.04, for a total value of $43,162,255.60.

She also got the shares as part of a stock option plan. Denholm had to return tens of millions of dollars worth of Tesla stocks to the company after settling a lawsuit over excessive compensation brought by shareholders.

Tesla’s entire board settled for nearly $1 billion:

After announcing its electric vehicle business lost over $5 billion in 2024, Ford could face even more headwinds this year. Despite the threat of new tariffs and fewer government incentives, CEO Jim Farley stressed Ford is still “really confident” in its EV strategy. Farley said that Chinese EV makers are becoming a major global force, and even with tariffs, Ford needs to beat them “straight up in a street fight.” This is the electric car he was referring to.

Ford reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street’s top- and bottom-line estimates. Despite posting $48.2 billion in Q4 revenue, Ford’s model e division reported an EBIT loss of $1.4 billion.

The EV business lost $5.1 billion last year after losing $4.7 billion in 2023. On the company’s earnings call, Farley said new competition led to increased pricing pressure. Ford expects Model e to lose another $5 billion to $5.5 billion this year. In total, the company is forecasting an adjusted EBIT of $7 billion to $8.45 billion in 2025.

Like GM, Ford did not factor in the potential impacts of tariffs or other changes in policy by the Trump administration.

Farley explained on the call that “There’s no question that tariffs at 25% level from Canada and Mexico, if they’re protracted, would have a huge impact on our industry, with billions of dollars of industry profits wiped out and an adverse effect on the US jobs.”

Ford’s CEO said he looks forward to working with government leaders to ensure they are “strengthening, not weakening our nation’s auto industry.”

The tariff situation, growing demand for the latest tech and software, and “the Chinese OEMs growing to become a global reality,” Farley said, “these dynamics will all play out for some time to come.”

Ford CEO warns Chinese EV makers are a global threat

Ford sells some electric cars outside of the US, including the new electric Puma, Explorer, and Capri models, launched in Europe, so it does have an idea of the changing market dynamics.

After accounting for 8% of car sales in the US last year, Farley said EVs are growing, and “people who buy these vehicles don’t go back to combustion.” He added that it is a “very vibrant market” and a “global capability for Ford.”

As a global player, it will need to compete with Chinese EVs, which Farley has previously called an “existential threat” to the industry. During the earnings call, Farley touched on the subject, saying they continue to expand and are becoming “a major force in our industry.”

After Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas asked, “Do you think that U.S. tariff policies will be successful in keeping Chinese EVs out of the US market long term,” Farley said the topic “is really pertinent to us.”

Ford’s CEO added, “The level of subsidies that these companies have in China is very material as well as these are digital vehicles with digital footprints and really deep into people’s digital life.” Farley explained, “On the kind of unfair part or the subsidy part, I think we’ll have to sort that out as a country.”

At the end of the day, “the company has to stand on its own.” Ford will work with government partners to make it a level playing field, but “in the end of the day, it’s management’s responsibility to beat the SU7 straight up in a street fight.”

The SU7 is Xiaomi’s first self-developed electric car. After shipping one to the US and driving it for a few months, Farley called it “fantastic” and didn’t want to give it up.

After launching the SU7 last April, Xiaomi revealed it had already delivered over 135,000 models in 2024. The SU7 starts at around $30,000 (215,900 yuan).

Ford is betting on its low-cost platform, which is being developed by a team of former Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and Apple engineers, to help it compete.

The first models, due out in 2027, are expected to be a smaller electric pickup and SUV, starting at about $30,000.