Capable of delivering up to 1,200 kW of power to get electric commercial trucks back on the road in minutes, the new ABB MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System is part of an ecosystem of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) that ABB’s bringing to this year’s ACT Expo.
UPDATE 03MAY2025: ABB reads Electrek (see above).
So, in fun news, the team at ABB reads Electrek (as they should), and were eager to talk to us about that “Goldilocks” post about matching charge time to the preferred customer experience. That idea isn’t just something ABB can get on board with – it’s at the core of their new, modular EV charging infrastructure.
“With our new interface, we make it easy to customize the charging experience for the CPO and the customer,” explained an ABB engineer, who walked me through the new EVSE’s backend on the show floor (paraphrased). “The users can pay with a card, with an app, or an RFID – and you can program what that experience is like, even prioritizing certain members or giving others free or discounted charging.”
Advertisement – scroll for more content
There’s a lot to unpack there, including the ability to provide priority charging to certain vehicles (like police or emergency service EVs) to get them back on the road faster. In the next few days, we’ll have ABB President, Brandt Hastings, on Quick Charge to walk us through more of those features and how they come together to deliver a better charging experience.
Stay tuned for that, and check out the original article, below.
New 1.2 MW truck charger; via ABB.
ABB E-mobility is using the annual clean trucking conference to showcase the expansion of its EVSE portfolio with three all-new charger families: the field-upgradable A200/300 All-in-One chargers, the MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System for heavy-duty vehicles shown (above), and the ChargeDock Dispenser for flexible depot charging.
The company said its new product platform was built by applying a computer system-style domain separation to charger design, fundamentally improving subsystem development and creating a clear path forward for site and system expansion. In other words, ABB is selling a system with both future-proofing and enhanced dependability baked in.
“We have built a system by logically separating a charger into four distinct subsystems … each functioning as an independent subsystem,” explains Michael Halbherr, CEO of ABB E-mobility. “Unlike conventional chargers, where a user interface failure can disable the entire system, our architecture ensures charging continues even if the screen or payment system encounters issues. Moreover, we can improve each subsystem at its own pace without having to change the entire system.”
The parts of ABB’s new EVSE portfolio that have been made public so far have already been recognized for design excellence, with the A400 winning the iF Gold Award and both the A400 and C50 receiving Red Dot Design Awards.
New ABB chargers seem pretty, good
ABB’s good-looking family; via ABB.
ABB says the systemic separation of its EVSE enhances both reliability and quality, while making deployed chargers easier to diagnose and repair, in less time. Each of the chargers’ subsystems can be tested, diagnosed, and replaced independently, allowing for quick on-site repairs and update cycles tailored to the speed of each systems’ innovation. The result is 99% uptime and a more future-proof product.
“The EV charging landscape is evolving beyond point products for specific use cases,” continued Halbherr. “By implementing this modular approach with the majority of our R&D focused on modular platforms rather than one-off products … it reduces supply chain risks, while accelerating development cycles and enabling deeper collaboration with critical suppliers.”
Key markets ABB is chasing
HVC 360 Charge Dock Dispenser depot deployment; via ABB.
PUBLIC CHARGING – with the award winning A400 being the optimal fit for high power charging from highway corridors to urban locations, the latest additions to the A-Series All-in-One chargers offer a field-upgradable architecture allowing operators to start with the A200 (200kW) with the option to upgrade to 300kW or 400kW as demand grows. This approach offers scalability and protects customer investment, leading to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings over 10 years.
PUBLIC TRANSIT AND FLEET – the new Charge Dock Dispenser – in combination with the already in market available HVC 360 – simplifies depot charging with a versatile solution that supports pantograph-, roof-, and pedestal charging options with up to 360kW of shared power and 150m/490 ft installation flexibility between cabinet and dispensers. The dispenser maintains up to 500A output.
HEAVY TRUCKS – building the matching charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles and fleets represents a critical innovation frontier on our journey to electrify transportation. Following extensive collaboration with industry-leading truck OEMs, the MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System delivers up to 1,200kW of continuous power — 20% more energy transfer than 1MW systems — providing heavy-duty vehicles with purpose-built single-outlet design for the energy they need during mandatory driver breaks. To support other use cases, such as CCS truck charging, a dual CCS and MCS option will also be available.
ABB says that the result of its new approach are chargers that offer 99% plus uptime — a crucial statistic for commercial charging operations and a key factor to ensuring customer satisfaction. The new ABB E-mobility EVSE product family will be on display for the first time at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo (ACT Expo) in Anaheim, California next week, then again at Power2Drive in Munich, Germany, from May 7-9.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. 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.
President Donald Trump could further rachet up sanctions against Russia’s oil sector, with an expected global surplus of crude next year leaving the U.S. room to escalate while insulating American drivers from a price shock.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil exporters, citing Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
The sanctions mark the “most material move to date by the United States to shutter the Russian war ATM,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital markets, told clients.
The sanctions took the oil market by surprise. U.S. crude prices spiked nearly 6% to trade above $60 per barrel in response after many traders had discounted the risk of escalation due to Trump’s focus on keeping energy prices low.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude oil prices hit five-month lows Monday and are down nearly 14% this year. The market has been under pressure as OPEC+ increases production and renewed trade tensions between the U.S. and China trigger fears of a global economic slowdown.
Weaker oil prices have given Trump scope to act against Russia while shielding U.S. motorists, said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy and a former energy advisor to President George W. Bush. The White House likely saw this as an opportune moment to hit Moscow, with the U.S. midterm elections still a year away, Croft said.
“It’s about hurting the Russian finance ministry while protecting the U.S motorist,” McNally said.
Escalation on the horizon
Trump’s sanctions, which take full effect Nov. 21, are likely designed to force Russia to sell its oil at a steeper discount to global benchmark Brent rather than immediately targeting Moscow’s export volumes, McNally said. This would reduce Russia’s petroleum revenue while avoiding a price spike that pinches Americans’ pocketbooks, he said.
But the oil market faces a looming surplus in 2026 that would give Trump more leeway to escalate sanctions against Russia further next year, by directly targeting its export volumes, according to the former Bush advisor.
This would carry the added benefit of aiding U.S. shale oil producers who are under financial pressure from low prices, McNally said. U.S. shale executives have been deeply critical of Trump’s push to lower crude prices in anonymous responses to a quarterly survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
“You can afford to do it because next year it won’t cause $100 oil — if anything it will help oil prices from dropping to $20 a barrel and killing shale,” McNally said.
“Next year somebody has to cut big – OPEC, Russia, Iran or shale,” he said. “Take your pick. The president doesn’t want shale to lose 2 million barrels a day plus like it did in 2020. He may want $40 oil but he doesn’t want $20 oil.”
Immediate market impact
The oil market may be close to pricing in the sanctions after the announcement caught traders by surprise, McNally said. Where prices go from here depends on how the measures are implemented. If the sanctions are loosely enforced, U.S. oil could dip back into the $50s but there’s also a risk that prices could push higher if the administration takes a hard line, the analyst said.
Lukoil and Rosneft account for more than half of Russia’s more than 5 million barrels per day in exports, according to data provided by Kpler. Trump’s sanctions come after former President Joe Biden in January sanctioned Russia’s third and fourth largest producers, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz.
India remained the largest buyer of Russia crude oil in September followed by China and Turkey, according to Kpler data. Trump has been pressuring India with tariffs to stop its imports of Russian crude.
“Refiners in India, China and Turkey are expected to conduct internal risk assessments on dealings with the sanctioned Russian firms while waiting for clarifications from their governments,” Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler told clients in a note.
That could lead to oil being “being resold — at steep discounts — to refiners willing to take the risk, such as already-sanctioned entities” or small, independent, privately-owned refineries in China, Smith said. “However, a major disruption to Russian crude exports appears unlikely,” he said.
Belgian aviation support brand Shire is hoping to change the airport ground support equipment (GSE) game with a line of purpose-built baggage and cargo tractors engineered from the ground up as electric vehicles.
A spinoff of M-ECS (Mertens Electrification & Control Systems), a Belgian engineering company with expertise in automation, electrification, IoT, and smart systems, Shire is leaning on its decades of engineering know-how to develop purpose-built electric GSE that, they believe, is vastly superior to retrofit designs that put electric motors in spaces originally designed for ICE.
“Retrofitting remains essential in the short term,” explains Toon (his real name) Mertens, founder of M-ECS. “But purpose-built electric machines are the real path to long-term efficiency, safety, and resilience.”
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. 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.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to find a way to turn lobbying, which is typically one of the most efficient ways to spend money as a company, into a net revenue loser for his company – flipping the script again from a true “innovator” in the field of corporate destruction.
Tesla released its 10-Q filing today, to supplement its Q3 shareholder letter and conference call from yesterday’s quarterly report.
The filing gives us more detail about what’s going on with Tesla’s financials, namely, how Tesla managed to have record revenue last quarter and yet still have a 40% drop in operating income from the year-ago quarter.
One explanation for this drop is lost revenue from regulatory credits. Regulatory credits have been a relatively stable portion of Tesla’s earnings over the years, as it is one of few companies producing more electric vehicles than it is legally required to.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
What are regulatory credits?
Several governments have committed to reducing pollution, and one way that they can do so is by requiring automakers to make less-polluting vehicles.
Generally, if an automaker fails to meet the guidelines set up by government, they have to pay a penalty for polluting the air too much and harming everyone with that pollution. Or, instead of paying that penalty, they can buy credits from a company that exceeded the guidelines, thus transferring money from the companies that are doing a bad job to the companies that are doing a good job.
Every government has a slightly different way of implementing requirements and credit swaps, but this is generally how it works on a high level.
Put aside for the moment that these penalties, or the cost of credit swaps, are almost always far lower than the actual amount of damage done by pollution, this is at least one method that governments can and have used to try to encourage cleaner air and lower health costs for the populations they govern.
Rules changed by republicans to cost you more money
That is, until the republican party came along. Buried in the $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites passed by republicans earlier this year was another provision to reduce the cost of regulatory fines in the US to $0.
Congress could not legally eliminate the fines, since they are mandated by the Clean Air Act, and republicans in Congress didn’t want to modify the Clean Air Act because it would be more obvious to everyone that they want dirty air, and because they didn’t have the votes to do so. But they did have the votes to do an end-run around democracy and eliminate the fines, which makes the regulation effectively useless.
So now, automakers have less incentive to work on making their cars more efficient. This means you’ll be buying more gasoline, that each gallon will have higher prices (and the increased price won’t go to any social good, but rather to line oil companies’ pockets), and that you’ll suffer from more air pollution which leads to higher health costs for everyone.
When, in contrast, President Biden had strengthened this rule, just the modifications made by his administration were estimated to save $600-700 over the lifetime of each vehicle, or $23 billion in total across the US. But that’s only from Biden’s improvement of the rule; the rule in total saves much more, in comparison to not having the rule at all.
But what does this all have to Elon Musk?
Elon Musk lobbied to have these rules removed, harming his company
But, due to Musk’s social media addiction to his bizarre upside-down twitter feed, he and many others convinced themselves that somehow, harming EVs would be good for EVs.
So, Musk spent the millions, got what he wanted, claims it was all because of him (egotistical much?), and as a result, his company… is worse off.
According to the company’s 10-Q filing, Tesla lost $1.41 billion worth of revenue in just the last 9 months that it would have had if not for changes in regulatory regimes. Here’s the passage, in financial speak:
Automotive Regulatory Credits
As of September 30, 2025, total transaction price allocated to performance obligations that were unsatisfied or partially unsatisfied for contracts with an original expected length of more than one year was $3.27 billion. Of this amount, we expect to recognize $877 million in the next 12 months and the rest over the remaining performance obligation period. Changes in regulations on automotive regulatory credits may significantly impact our remaining performance obligations and revenue to be recognized under these contracts. In 2025, governmental and regulatory actions have repealed and/or restricted certain regulatory credit programs tied to our products, contributing to the $1.41 billion decrease in our remaining performance obligations as of September 30, 2025 compared to December 31, 2024.
Translated, that means that the value of the various contracts that Tesla has to sell regulatory credits to other companies has reduced by $1.41 billion dollars as compared to where they were at the end of last year. Tesla says that the specific reason for this is due to the change in regulatory credits that its bad CEO lobbied for.
Some could argue that the value of Musk’s lobbying was to get a foot in the door, and to be able to influence republicans to do less anti-EV stuff than they might have otherwise done, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. There is no indication that republicans have softened their anti-EV position, and in fact, they keep doubling down on trying to harm you and ignoring science. And besides, Musk hasn’t even maintained any relationships, after a very public breakup.
So, somehow, Musk managed to turn lobbying spend from one of the most efficient possible ways a corporation can spend money, into one of the most inefficient ways.
Lobbying is generally highly efficient spend; Musk flips the script again
Normally, lobbying is considered an incredibly efficient way for companies to make money. Various analyses have suggested that the average return on investment from lobbying dollars is anywhere between 22,000% and 104,000%. (Yes, this is a problem, but it’s not what we’re discussing at the moment).
However, in this case, lobbying produced a loss of 489% of the money spent – and that’s just counting the losses caused by the last 9 months, and only in regulatory credits. Those credits are pure profit, too, with no cost of revenue associated with them, so this is just a straight loss of money for the company and its shareholders.
In addition to those losses, there’s the lost revenue from vehicle sales. While this has not yet been recognized by the company, going forward Tesla sales will experience a dip now that all of Tesla’s automotive and home energy products – essentially, all of the products that Tesla sells – have been made more expensive in the US due to political changes.
Needless to say, none of these options are great for business.
And so, since vehicle credits didn’t end until the end of Q3, and since home energy credits go away at the end of this quarter (and if you want your last chance to get in before they do, get started here), that means business going forward from this quarter will be a lot worse.
In addition to the lost revenue from credits, there is another issue which is more difficult to track, but is definitely happening.
The trillion-dollar number takes into account some optimistic stock growth for the company (which is unlikely given Musk’s recent performance as CEO, where earnings have dropped precipitously), but is still around 40x more than Tesla has ever made over its entire history. It’s also the largest CEO payday in history by multiple orders of magnitude.
Regardless of whether stock appreciates enough to give Musk all the shares covered under the plan, there is still room in the proposals for him to be granted well over 200 million newly printed shares of stock for doing nothing whatsoever, leading to dilution of voting rights and share value for current shareholders. The plan gives Musk’s personal friends on Tesla’s board significant discretion in this matter, and saddles the company with his poor leadership for another decade.
It would also give him a huge source of wealth, which he could turn into cash, to spend on other lobbying activities to harm Tesla’s business, as he has proven above that he is happy to do. If Musk can manage to lose Tesla $1.41 billion plus with $288 million, imagine what he could do with $1 trillion.
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.