It’s understandable if you’re starting to experience AI fatigue; it feels like every week, there’s another announcement of some company boasting about how an LLM chatbot will revolutionize everything—usually followed in short succession by news reports of how terribly wrong it’s all gone. But it turns out that not every use of AI by an automaker is a public relations disaster. As it happens, General Motors has been using machine learning to help guide business decisions regarding where to install new DC fast chargers for electric vehicles.
GM’s transformation into an EV-heavy company has not gone entirely smoothly thus far, but in 2022, it revealed that, together with the Pilot company, it was planning to deploy a network of 2,000 DC fast chargers at Flying J and Pilot travel centers around the US. But how to decide which locations?