It’s been a bad week for DOGE. And a really bad week for dogecoin.
The meme coin, which gained popularity in part because Elon Musk once dubbed it “the people’s crypto,” fell about 10% on Thursday and is down 22% over the past week. That drop corresponds with Musk’s official departure from the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was the centerpiece of his effort to radically downsize the federal government.
Musk and Trump had been sparring in recent days, with Musk slamming the president’s spending bill, and Trump withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman, a Musk ally, as his pick to run NASA.
Trump called Musk “CRAZY” and threatened to cancel his government contracts, sending shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla tumbling to close down 14% for the day.
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Dogecoin and Tesla shares drop as Elon Musk beefs with the president.
Musk responded on X, “Go ahead, make my day.” He later said that following Trump’s comment about canceling contracts, his rocket company SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” Dragon is the only U.S. option for delivering crew to and from the International Space Station.
The spat wouldn’t necessarily have an impact on the price of dogecoin, which, like most meme coins, has no attached asset or underlying value. But it’s a particularly volatile coin that can move up or down based on consumer sentiment, celebrity hype, internet memes and Musk news.
Musk’s public backing of dogecoin has long been a major driver of its price, making it particularly sensitive to shifts in his political standing. The price jumped more than 15% on a single day in 2022 after Tesla began accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for some merchandise. The next year, dogecoin spiked more than 30% in a day after Musk replaced the blue bird on the Twitter (now X) website with an image of a shiba inu, the digital coin’s logo.
Dogecoin, along with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, soared after Trump’s election victory in November on optimism that the new administration, which was heavily backed by Musk and the crypto industry, would return the favor with friendly policies and deregulation.
Buyers of the coin are now paying the price for the Musk-Trump breakup.
Today was the official start of racing at the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025! There was a tremendous energy (and heat) on the ground at NCM Motorsports Park as nearly a dozen teams took to the track. Currently, as of writing, Stanford is ranked #1 in the SOV (Single-Occupant Vehicle) class with 68 registered laps. However, the fastest lap so far belongs to UC Berkeley, which clocked a 4:45 on the 3.15-mile track. That’s an average speed of just under 40 mph on nothing but solar energy. Not bad!
In the MOV (Multi-Occupant Vehicle) class, Polytechnique Montréal is narrowly ahead of Appalachian State by just 4 laps. At last year’s formula sun race, Polytechnique Montréal took first place overall in this class, and the team hopes to repeat that success. It’s still too early for prediction though, and anything can happen between now and the final day of racing on Saturday.
Congrats to the teams that made it on track today. We look forward to seeing even more out there tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some shots from today via the event’s wonderful photographer Cora Kennedy.
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The numbers are in and they are all bad for Tesla fans – the company sold just 5,000 Cybertruck models in Q4 of 2025, and built some 30% more “other” vehicles than it delivered. It just gets worse and worse, on today’s tension-building episode of Quick Charge!
We’ve also got day 1 coverage of the 2025 Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix, reports that the Tesla Optimus program is in chaos after its chief engineer jumps ship, and a look ahead at the fresh new Hyundai IONIQ 2 set to bow early next year, thanks to some battery specs from the Kia EV2.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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Tesla has launched its new Oasis Supercharger, the long-promised EV charging station of the future, with a solar farm and off-grid batteries.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to the Supercharger stations, and CEO Elon Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
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All of these pieces have been in place for years, and Tesla has now discontinued the Powerpack in favor of the Megapack. The Supercharger network is also transitioning to V4 stations.
Yet, solar and battery deployment haven’t accelerated much in the decade since Musk made that comment, but it is finally happening.
Tesla has now unveiled the project and turned on most of the Supercharger stalls:
The project consists of 168 chargers, with half of them currently operational, making it one of the largest Supercharger stations in the world. However, that’s not even the most notable aspect of it.
The station is equipped with 11 MW of ground-mounted solar panels and canopies, spanning 30 acres of land, and 10 Tesla Megapacks with a total energy storage capacity of 39 MWh.
It can be operated off-grid, which is the case right now, according to Tesla.
With off-grid operations, Tesla was about to bring 84 stalls online just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend. The rest of the stalls and a lounge are going to open later this year.
Electrek’s Take
This is awesome. A bit late, but awesome. This is what charging stations should be like: fully powered by renewable energy.
Unfortunately, it will be much harder to open those stations in the future due to legislation that Trump and the Republican Party have just passed, which removes incentives for solar and energy storage, adds taxes on them, and removes incentives to build batteries – all things that have helped Tesla considerably over the last few years.
The US is likely going to have a few tough years for EV adoption and renewable energy deployment.
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