Climate XChange’s 9th Annual EV Raffle is your chance to win the electric car of your dreams – but with just two weeks left and fewer than a third of tickets remaining, now’s the time to grab yours!
Imagine designing your dream EV precisely how you want it – every detail customized, up to $120,000, with all taxes covered. That’s the reality for the Grand Prize winner – and it could be you.
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How it works
Climate XChange, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is driving the transition to a zero-emissions economy nationwide – and you can support its mission by purchasing a raffle ticket.
Enter at CarbonRaffle.org/Electrek. Every ticket you buy is one entry to win. Climate XChange is only selling 5,000 tickets, which means your odds are better here than most internet sweepstakes. And with fewer than a third of the available tickets remaining, ensure you don’t miss out on your dream EV!
Plus, you can feel good knowing your ticket supports an amazing cause: pushing for state-level climate action and advancing the transition to a zero-emissions economy.
The last day to purchase a raffle ticket is February 26, or when they sell out.
The prizes
Grand Prize: Custom-built EV of your choice, valued up to $120,000, with all taxes covered.
2nd Place: $12,500 cash.
3rd Place: $7,500 cash.
That’s three chances of winning, and no matter how many tickets Climate XChange sells, it will still give away the grand prize EV.
Why enter?
For nearly a decade, Climate XChange has been turning dreams into reality. Last year’s winner drove away in a custom red Tesla Model X Plaid – and now it’s your turn.
Climate XChange runs a tight ship to ensure a fair and transparent raffle. It prints every ticket stub and live-streams the entire drawing process – including loading the raffle drum – so you can be confident the winners are chosen fairly. It also hires independent auditors to oversee the raffle to ensure that every ticket purchased is correct and entered into the drawing.
BUY YOUR TICKET TODAY at CarbonRaffle.org/Electrek and start daydreaming about what your perfect car will look like!
Who is Climate XChange?
Climate XChange (CXC) is a nonpartisan 501(c)3 nonprofit working to help states transition to a zero-emissions economy. It advances state climate policy through its State Climate Policy Network, connecting over 15,000 advocates and policymakers, and through its State Climate Policy Dashboard, a leading data platform for up-to-date state climate policy information across all US states and major climate sectors.
When innovative EV charging startup FreeWire shut its doors last year, it looked like its clever, infrastructure-light EVSE concept might vanish along with it. Now, Orange EV has taken up the cause, and it’s bringing the battery-based charging tech back with an all-new name. Meet the Orange Juicer. (!)
The FreeWire concept was, if you’ll forgive the effusiveness, fantastic. Basically, they integrated a li-ion battery back into a vertical cabinet that could be effectively “trickle charged” with a standard 110 or 220 AC connection, then “dump” that charge into an EV very quickly – enabling up to 200 kW of DC fast charging without the need for expensive utility and infrastructure.
But, while most people the FreeWire concept might have great for rural gas stations that rarely saw EVs and didn’t need constant access to hundreds of kW of power, the engineers at Orange EV saw something different.
“Fast” is the key word here. As the lower TCO and improved uptime promises of Orange EV’s electric terminal tractors get proven out again and again by customers like DHL and YMX, more companies are turning to Orange to help electrify their operations – but getting adequate charging to their truck depots has slowed that growth.
“Limits on grid capacity are the most significant source of delay, especially when installing DC fast chargers,” writes Esther Conrad, Research Manager for the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. “Multiple jurisdictions, both large and small, reported long delays on the part of the utility to provide adequate electricity to a site. Timeframes can be on the order of months or even multiple years for large installations.”
Months or years is more than enough time for a skittish customer to second-guess an expensive vehicle fleet purchase, so Kurt Neutgens did what he apparently does best: found an engineering solution that was laser-focused on the problem, and acted.
Orange EV formed a new division called Optigrid, bought FreeWire’s battery-backed DC fast charging back from the brink, and repackaged it as the Orange Juicer to specifically address the problems facing fleets struggling to get adequate grid power to their sites.
The result is an EV charging solution that’s perfect for the way terminal trucks operate, and one that can be up and running in a matter of weeks instead of months or years.
“Fleet operators are tired of waiting on infrastructure that doesn’t match their electrification schedule,” said Tyler Phillipi, CEO of OptiGrid. “The Orange Juicer gives them the power to deploy today, with charging performance that rivals high-capacity systems but requires just a fraction of the grid input.”
The first Orange Juicers are expected to reach customer sites in Q4 of this year.
Electrek’s Take
e-Triever terminal tractor; via Orange EV.
Despite the progress made in recent years, there are still some wacky assumptions being made out there – from the idea that you must have on-site DC fast charging to successfully deploy an EV fleet to the even wackier notion that you need a dedicated charger for each EV. Orange, on the hand, doesn’t make such sweeping statements. Instead, they’re listening to customers’ needs, understanding what really needs to happen in order to successfully deploy their products, and delivering a better TCO with lower costs … even without government incentives.
“In a two-shift operation over a 10-year period, our customers are experiencing a $500,000 benefit per truck,” Neutgens told Freight Waves. “That’s full price, no incentives.”
Over at The Heavy Equipment Podcast, we had a chance to talk to Kurt ahead of last year’s ACT Expo for clean trucking. On the show (available here), Kurt explained how his experience at Ford helped inform his design ideology, and that the Orange EV was designed to be cost competitive with diesel options, even without subsidies.
Give it a listen, then let us know what you think of Orange EV’s holistic electrification solution for logistics fleets in the comments.
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The Sindh government in Pakistan has just launched a bold new initiative aimed at transforming mobility for women: a fleet of free pink electric scooters for female students and working women. Called the Free Pink EV Scooty Scheme, the program is designed to offer women across the province a safer, more dignified, and cost-effective way to get to school or work without relying on crowded, often unsafe public transportation.
Like many countries in the region, Pakistan is a deeply patriarchal society, not historically known for gender equality or freedom. That has meant that despite women technically having equal standing under the law, they often face significant challenges accessing safe and reliable transportation, let alone gaining higher education or entering the workforce.
Announced by Sindh Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon, the initiative goes beyond transportation to empower women seeking to enroll in education or join the workforce in the nation’s second-largest province.
Eligible participants include women who are permanent residents of Sindh, hold a valid driver’s license (car or motorcycle), and are either employed or in school. Winners will be selected via a public, lottery-style balloting system conducted in front of media and overseen by multiple government departments. To ensure safety, selected applicants will also need to pass a road skills test before riding off.
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“We have ensured a transparent and merit-based selection process so that the maximum number of women can benefit,” said Sindh Minister of Transport Sharjeel Memon, who emphasized that the project will cut commuting costs, save time, and increase safety for women on the move.
But the program doesn’t stop at just handing over keys. It includes full registration, insurance, helmets, and even rider training. Riders will also have access to an expanding network of EV charging stations throughout Sindh, making this a fully supported electric mobility solution.
By investing in personal electric transportation for women, the government hopes to improve access to education and employment, reduce reliance on gas-powered public transport, and promote sustainability. It’s a major step for a region where mobility remains a significant barrier to opportunity for many women, and one that may serve as a model for similar programs across the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond.
Electrek’s Take
I think the fact that electric scooters are being used as a tool to provide transportation equality and increased accessibility is a great thing here, and highlights the importance of these types of vehicles in the broader mobility ecosystem. The whole “let’s give the women a bunch of pink scooters” definitely sounds like an idea thought up by a man, but I think their hearts were in the right place.
In much of Pakistan, especially in conservative and rural areas, women face significant challenges in accessing safe and reliable transportation. Public transport can be overcrowded, unsafe, or socially restrictive for women, which in turn limits their access to education and employment opportunities. By offering these free e-scooters, the government is trying to empower women with greater autonomy and freedom of movement, thereby increasing their participation in both the academic and economic spheres.
There are obviously huge strides that still need to be made in many similar countries in order for women to feel safe when out of the home, let alone have access to employment and educational opportunities, but it sounds like this program is working towards addressing those issues.
Note: The lead image is AI-generated, but then again, so is the Sindh Government’s image. So we’re just sort of sticking with the theme, there.
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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (L), and Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia.
Reuters
ABILENE, Texas – Sam Altman had a deadline. OpenAI’s CEO was headed to Texas to unveil his company’s next big infrastructure push, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wanted in on the action.
Through a series of hurried negotiations, late-night calls and last-minute contract tweaks, the two giants of artificial intelligence struck a $100 billion partnership on Monday, hours before Altman boarded his flight to Abilene, a city of about 130,000 residents roughly 180 miles west of Dallas.
It helped that Huang and Altman had been part of President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. a week earlier, allowing the president to be briefed on the agreement days in advance.
The deal, which Huang described to CNBC as “monumental in size,” marks a watershed moment in the tech industry, as capital and influence are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the two companies closest to the heart of the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang now presides over the world’s most valuable public company, worth nearly $4.5 trillion after gaining $170 billion following Monday’s announcement, while Altman runs the most prominent startup on the planet, valued at half a trillion dollars.
OpenAI’s ascent to the forefront of generative AI has relied on Nvidia’s high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs). Now the companies are more intimately linked than ever, as they plan to carve a path to jointly building the next wave of AI supercomputing facilities.
“You should expect a lot from us in the coming months,” Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview at Nvidia’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday. “There are three things that OpenAI has to do well: we have to do great AI research, we have to make these products people want to use, and we have to figure out how to do this unprecedented infrastructure challenge.”
Altman and Huang negotiated their pact largely through a mix of virtual discussions and one-on-one meetings in London, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., with no bankers involved, according to people close to the talks who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The arrangement calls for Nvidia to invest $10 billion at a time in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. As the buildout unfolds, Nvidia will also supply the cutting-edge processors powering a host of new data centers.
While OpenAI gets more intimate with Nvidia, it has to maneuver through a number of high-stakes relationships with other key partners.
OpenAI only informed Microsoft, its principal shareholder and primary cloud provider, a day before the deal was signed, the people familiar with the matter said. Earlier this year, Microsoft lost its status as OpenAI’s exclusive provider of computing capacity.
The pact also comes less than two weeks after a disclosure from Oracle indicated that OpenAI agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power with the company over about five years, starting in 2027. At the start of the year, OpenAI joined Stargate, a multibillion-dollar project announced by President Trump and backed by Oracle and SoftBank, to build out next-generation AI infrastructure.
Going forward, all of OpenAI’s infrastructure projects will fall under the Stargate umbrella.
Representatives from Microsoft, Oracle and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia and OpenAI provided scant details about where and when the buildout will take place, other than to say that the first of the 10 gigawatt sites will go online in the back half of next year.
Executives said they’ve reviewed between 700 and 800 potential locations since unveiling Stargate in January. In the months that followed, they fielded a flood of proposals from developers across North America offering land, power, and facilities. That list has been narrowed as OpenAI weighs energy availability, permitting timelines, and financing terms, the company said.
In Monday’s announcement, OpenAI described Nvidia as a “preferred” partner. But executives told CNBC that it’s not an exclusive relationship, and the company is continuing to work with large cloud companies and other chipmakers to avoid being locked in to a single vendor.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang arrive to attend the State Banquet during U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit, at Windsor Castle, in Windsor, Britain, September 17, 2025.
Phil Noble | Reuters
For Nvidia, the investment in OpenAI is historic in size, but it’s just a big piece of a rapidly expanding portfolio.
Last week, Nvidia put $5 billion into Intel as part of a joint venture to co-develop data center and PC chips with the troubled chipmaker. Nvidia also said it invested close to $700 million in U.K. data center startup Nscale, a move that resembles Nvidia’s backing of U.S. AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which held its IPO in March.
Tranches of money
The financing structure for the OpenAI deal is designed to avoid hefty dilution. The initial $10 billion tranche is locked in at a $500 billion valuation and expected to close within a month or so once the transaction has been finalized, people familiar with the matter said. Nine successive $10 billion rounds are planned, each to be priced at the company’s then-current valuation as new capacity comes online, they said.
The relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI long predates the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
Back when OpenAI was still a small nonprofit research lab and Nvidia was best known for building graphics chips for video games, Huang personally delivered his company’s first DGX supercomputer to OpenAI’s office in 2016. At the time, the startup was located in San Francisco’s Mission District, in a building that’s now home to Elon Musk’s xAI.
Almost a decade and trillions of dollars in value later, Huang and Altman are perhaps the most significant power players in the tech industry.
In October of last year, Nvidia formalized its financial stake in OpenAI, joining a $6.6 billion funding round that valued the company at $157 billion. A month later, in Tokyo, OpenAI executives met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to brainstorm what to call their next phase of expansion. Out of that session came “Stargate,” a codename that has since become shorthand for OpenAI’s most ambitious buildout plans.
Stargate now encompasses every major deal for compute capacity, including this week’s partnership with Nvidia. Securing the rights to the name required some careful maneuvering, but OpenAI has embraced it as the banner for its long-term infrastructure strategy.
The $100 billion commitment from Nvidia represents only part of what’s required for the planned 10-gigawatt buildout. OpenAI will lease Nvidia’s chips for deployment, but financing the broader effort will require other avenues. Executives have called equity the most expensive way to fund data centers, and they say the startup is preparing to take on debt to cover the remainder of the expansion.
As OpenAI’s compute necessities increase, a big question is where the company will host its workloads, which have to date been largely housed in Microsoft Azure. Taking the work in-house would push OpenAI closer to operating as a first-party cloud provider, a market led by Amazon Web Services, followed by Azure, Google and Oracle.
Executives have openly floated the idea, suggesting it may not be far off. Some even indicated to CNBC that a commercial cloud offering could emerge within a year or two, once OpenAI has secured enough compute to cover its own needs. For now, demand for training frontier models leaves little capacity to spare, but OpenAI isn’t done looking for new opportunities.
As Altman and Huang hammered out details of the arrangement that was announced this week, OpenAI’s infrastructure team was in Tokyo meeting with SoftBank’s Son to discuss broader financing and manufacturing support.
The parallel talks underscored the scale of Altman’s ambition, and the web of global players now involved in bringing it to life.