Report: EV charging sessions were up 50% YoY during Thanksgiving week
It’s been a week since the most politically-charged Thanksgiving week in four years, and the results are in: people are buying more EVs, and they’re not afraid to hit the road in their new, battery-powered conveyances. The automotive and EV charging industry analysts report that DC fast charging sessions were up nearly 50% compared to the same week last year.
If you were to look across the Thanksgiving table ask your racist uncle (you know the one) what he thought of EVs, odds are he’d repeat some tired old trope about range, infrastructure, or the grid. As ever, some of his concerns probably were incredibly valid 2-3 years ago, but the real-world data is showing again and again that battery electric cars are ready and able to meet the vast majority of Americans’ everyday driving needs – and now, the data experts at Paren are showing that EVs are ready for road trips, too!
“It is a really positive story,” reports Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren. “Despite the narrative from some corners that we aren’t going to have enough chargers, our data shows that the charging infrastructure is keeping pace with the growth in demand and session activity. And reliability is making progress too.”
From the report:
We analyzed data across public fast charging “travel” stations (excluding locations such as dealerships and requiring four or more ports) for Thanksgiving week, Monday through Sunday. Black Friday 2024 saw a 54% increase in charging sessions compared to 2023, while Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving had the lowest year-over-year (YoY) increase in sessions at 39%. The overall average YoY increase for the week was 48%.
PAREN
Despite the growth, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of chargers or the sort of long wait times that plagued early adopters of EVs years ago. In fact, actual utilization rates declined compared to last year, due to a 50% increase in the number of new fast charging ports and the faster charging speeds possible in newer EVs.
Paren’ analysis also seems to indicate that drivers’ concerns about whether or not they’ll be able to find open, working chargers when they need them — a condition the company calls, “charger anxiety” — may be overblown, if only just.
The company’s proprietary EV charger reliability index was up 3.4% compared to last year, reaching 85.5% and signaling an improving charging experience overall for EV drivers.
The Paren Reliability Index incorporates multiple factors, but is a measure of whether a driver was able to initiate and complete a successful charging session. While many charge point operators (CPOs) claim “uptime” rates meeting or exceeding the 97% National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) minimum requirement, that metric typically only captures whether the charging system was turned on, and not whether a driver was actually able to complete a charging session due to anything ranging from hardware and software issues to broken connectors, cut cables, or payment processing issues.
You can check out Paren’s Thanksgiving data dive in more detail at their site.
Electrek’s Take
I’ve known Loren McDonald for a number of years, and he’s been good enough to work with me in several capacities and smart enough to find me a little annoying. More significantly, though, he is almost always right, and the first person to beat himself up when his projections are off by 1-2% while everyone else’s are off by 10-20.
Earlier this year, the data firm Loren founded, EV Adoption, was acquired by Paren – and both Loren and Paren’s co-founder, Bill Ferro, visited me on Quick Charge to talk about it. I’ve included the episode, above. Enjoy!
SOURCE | IMAGES: Paren.
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Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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