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Your favorite late-night snack place, Taco Bell, is always looking for new ways to serve its customers, introducing irresistible favorites like nacho fries. TB’s latest idea: to serve the growing population of EV drivers with ultrafast charging stations so you can “get an EV charge and a chalupa all in one easy stop.”

The first Taco Bell fast EV charging station opened Tuesday morning as the restaurant chain looks to solidify its position in a new era of drivers.

Electric vehicle sales are outpacing their gas-powered counterparts, and it’s not even close. Over 200,000 EVs were sold in the US this past quarter, a record as automakers scale production to meet the overwhelming demand.

A Consumer Reports study finds over 70% of Americans express some interest in electric vehicles as their next car. With new options available in nearly all segments, Americans are transitioning to electric at a record pace.

Meanwhile, the majority of eager EV buyers are younger adults living in urban areas, precisely the market Taco Bell targets. The fast food chain targets consumers in the 18-34 range, while US adults ages 18-29 are the most likely group to purchase an EV at 55%.

Taco Bell introducing its first fast charger for EVs in California comes after the state banned gas-powered car sales by 2035 to accelerate the shift to zero-emission transportation.

Taco-Bell-EV-Charging-1
ChargeNet Taco Bell EV chargers (Source: ChargeNet)

One of Taco Bell’s largest franchisee owners, Diversified Energy Group, is teaming up with EV fast-charging and software company, ChargeNet to allow its customers to charge up while they eat.

Taco Bell will use Tritium fast chargers utilizing ChargNet’s software to integrate solar energy and energy storage solutions. ChargeNet says its stations are compatible with all EV connector types, and on average, a 100-mile charge in 20 mins will cost around $20.

ChargeNet’s CEO, Tosh Dutt, talks about the opportunity, stating:

Call it quick food, quick charge. You can get an EV charge and a chalupa all in one easy stop.

Dutt continues:

We are committed to catalyzing the EV revolution to ensure it spans across all demographics. This is why we are working with quick-serve restaurants, where an estimated 120 million Americans eat every day. About half of our locations are in marginalized communities across California, providing charging access to people who may not have the luxury of a home charging station. We are out to democratize EV charging across California and beyond.

Using solar and energy storage solutions, ChargeNet says, can keep restaurant utility costs down while increasing renewable energy options.

Taco Bell opened its first six EV charging stations at its 465 El Camino Real location as it looks to add to its network in up to 120 additional locations across California. SG Ellison, president of Diversified Restaurant Group, states:

We’re always looking for opportunities to bring innovative and sustainable ideas to market, especially those that create a “win-win” for our customers, the community, and our business.

Electrek’s Take

ChargeNet’s CEO makes a good point by mentioning many Taco Bell locations are in places where people may not have access to home EV charging. They may live in an apartment or otherwise rent like many younger generations do, as housing prices are near record highs.

Although EV charging is not cheap to install and maintain, I believe Taco Bell is looking toward the future.

As more people that don’t own home shift their preference to owning an electric vehicle, charging stations can become a valuable asset for businesses.

Taco Bell has a first-mover advantage here as one of the first fast food restaurants to introduce EV charging. Starbucks is another company (though not so much associated with “fast food”) that introduced charging options for its customers, teaming up with Volvo and ChargePoint.

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I found this cheap Chinese e-cargo trike that hauls more than your car!

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I found this cheap Chinese e-cargo trike that hauls more than your car!

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.

Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!

I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!

Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.

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To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.

Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!

Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.

The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.

The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!

I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.

That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.

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OPEC+ members agree to larger-than-expected oil production hike in August

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OPEC+ members agree to larger-than-expected oil production hike in August

The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.

This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.

In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”

The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.

One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.

Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.

They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.

Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.

At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

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After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

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