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If youve been thanking the heavens for your A/C this week, spare a thought for Paul Farmer, whos enduring the peak of Arizonas summer without itby choice. Last year, Farmer went without air-conditioning out of financial necessity. This year, even with his finances in better shape, hes voluntarily forgoing it again. Since May, hes been documenting his no A/C challenge on social media, aiming to hold out until September 22, the official end of summer. View this post on Instagram A post shared by AZBACKPACK (@azbackpack) Why would anyone put themselves through that, youre probably asking? With the challenge, Farmer hopes to raise awareness, and funds, for those struggling to pay their electric bills in the extreme heat. With indoor temperatures regularly creeping toward 100 degrees, Farmer has had to get creative. Hes placed tinfoil in the windows to keep out the heat and built a makeshift air-conditioning unit using a foam cooler. At night, he mostly sleeps on the floor, surrounded by ice packs, with multiple fans blasting. @azbackpack Day 46 No A/C challenge In ARIZONA #aznoacchallenge Quiet vlog fashionable chill out(1501557) – Yu Yaguchi About 39 million Americans (roughly 12%) currently live without air-conditioning, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Many simply cant afford it. This summer, electric bills are projected to hit $784 on average, the highest cost in at least 12 years. Farmers challenge comes as more than 168 million Americans are under active heat advisories, according to the National Weather Service. Extreme heat is responsible for around 700 deaths a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Farmer has pledged to donate the money he saves on his bills to families in need, hoping to generate enough to pay three families electric bills for an entire year. With less than a month to go, his GoFundMe page is sitting at $2,37785% toward his $2,800 goal.
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E-Commerce
For the rest of the summer, Starry is giving away free soda if any part of the U.S. experiences 100-degree weather. The PepsiCo-owned lemon-lime soda brand is offering a limited digital rebate through Labor Day when temps reach 100 degrees anywhere nationwide. Additionally, consumers in select cities have access to special vending machines through the end of July that the company says “will automatically dispense” free sodas if local temperatures hit or exceed the 100-degree mark. “When the temperature hits triple digits, Starry shows up big-time,” Michael Smith, VP of flavored carbonated soft drink marketing at PepsiCo, tells Fast Company. Like a fast-food chain that offers free french fries if the local pro baseball team hits a certain number of home runs, Starry is running a conditional giveaway through a promotion that introduces an element of chance and suspense. It also offers a treat in what could otherwise be a crummy situation. It’s hot outside. But hey, at least you can get a free soda. [Photo: Todd Kirkland/AP Content for PepsiCo] Starry’s “100 Degrees 100% Off” campaign comes as 100-degree days are increasingly the norm for many parts of the country at this time of year. Death Valley, Californiathe hottest place in the U.S.is forecast to reach highs of at least 111 degrees for the next 10 days, according to the Weather Channel. Last year Phoenix set a record with a streak of 100 days when it was at least 100 degrees that stretched from May to September. What starts off as a fun, seasonal promotion is just one extended heat wave away from serving as a grim reminder of the effects of a warming climate. If you’re a marketing department looking to limit payouts, designing a trigger campaign based on the possibility of a 100-degree day anywhere in the U.S. from now until after Labor Day isn’t a good bet. Read the fine print of the promotion, though, and you’ll see there are limits. It’s a onetime rebate for a 20-ounce bottle of Starry (at a maximum retail price of $3.99) that requires consumers to scan a QR code and the receipt from a participating retailer while supplies last, or until September 2, 2025. And while Starry is being geographically generous with the 100-degree requirement for its giveaway digitally, physically its targeting key markets where summers tend to be cooler than in Death Valley: Atlanta, Charlotte, and Miami. Those cities will see out-of-home advertising and the vending machine activation. But Starry’s playing it safe, with no vending machines in places like Las Vegas, for example, or Tucson, Arizona. Pepsico tells Fast Company no additional vending machines will appear in other cities at this time. PepsiCo launched Starry in 2023 as a replacement to its own Sierra Mist brand after its market share against Coca-Cola Co.’s Sprite had gone flat. Its mascots are an anamorphic lemon and lime who starred alongside Ice Spice in the brand’s Super Bowl ad. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said on a company earnings call in 2024 that the brand had a strong first year and was “over-indexing with Gen Z.” Growing that share could be one key way the company adapts while facing falling snack sales. Starry’s “100 Degrees 100% Off” promotion gives the brand a way to tap into triple-digit temperatures, but it also speaks to a larger business imperative. Summer is the beverage industry’s most important time of the year, so if PepsiCo hopes to build on Starry’s success, there’s no better time than now to promote it.
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E-Commerce
In 2024, the U.S. added nearly 12,500 new DC fast EV chargers to the national public network. Fast chargers can get an EV to an 80% charge in less than an hour, an appealing option to drivers with range anxiety, or those who cant install EV chargers at their homes. It was a landmark accomplishment bolstered by Biden Administration initiatives, including the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. But in 2025, the country is on pace to install even more fast-charging portsdespite Trumps attacks on EVs and their infrastructure. The deployment of fast EV chargers is on a record pace in 2025, according to a new report from EV charging analytics company Paren. Their latest analysis forecasts that 16,700 fast-charging ports will open across the country this yearup more than 25% from last year, and 2.5 times as many ports as opened in 2022. In the second quarter of 2025 alone, the country added more than 4,000 fast ports to its EV charging network, a more than 23% increase from the first quarter. One EV charging station can have multiple ports, so while new station openings were also up, it was by a smaller amount: the U.S. opened 784 new EV charging stations in the second quarter of 2025, up from 738. New EV charging stations are typically opening with 8, 10, 12, or more charging ports. The number of new EV chargers seem surprising given how Trump has taken aim at EV programs since he took office earlier this year. On his first day in office he wrote in an executive order that he was ending the EV mandate, and since he has killed the EV tax credit as well as paused NEVI funding, cutting off millions of dollars for EV chargers. At the end of June, months after Trumps NEVI pause in February, court rulings lifted that freezebut some EV charger startups had already been hurt by the move. According to Paren, though, NEVI funding would have accounted for just 2% to 3% of the new DC fast-charger ports in 2025. (NEVI funding also goes to Level 2 EV chargers, which get an EV to 80% in about 4 to 10 hours, and which in 2024 made up the majority of newly installed EV charging infrastructure.) When it comes to fast chargers, private companies have stepped in to fund the space. Paren calls these “Charging 2.0 companies, and points to Ionna, Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging, BP Pulse, and Walmart as examples as businesses that have increased their fast-charger deployments. Those companies have brought EV charging to places like Starbucks and Waffle House, modifying the idea of what it looks like to refuel your vehicle. Tesla has long been one of the dominant fast-charger companies, but when its Supercharger team saw layoffs last April, that slowed down its pace. Since the fall, it’s been back on track for deployments, but Paren notes that its overall share of the fast-charging space has declined. Between 2013 and 2017, Tesla accounted for 85% to 98% of new DC fast-charger ports that opened, but in Q2 of 2025, Tesla accounted for just 40% of new fast-charging ports. Paren estimates Tesla will open just 6,000 ports in 2025, bringing its share further down to 36%. If the amount of fast EV charging ports stays on the record pace for all of 2025, then the U.S. could have more than 100,000 fast-charging ports by 2027. Thatll be necessary to support growing EV sales. Even as Trump tries to curtail the industry, and as Tesla loses marketshare, EV salesboth new and usedare up so far this year.
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E-Commerce
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