Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck startup Nikola, was charged Thursday on three counts of fraud stemming from federal prosecutors' investigation of allegedly inaccurate or misleading statements the company made to investors.

Driving the news: The Securities and Exchange Commission — which filed a complaint alongside a grand jury indictment from federal prosecutors in Manhattan — accused Milton of engaging in a "fraudulent scheme to deceive retail investors about Nikola’s products, technical advancements, and commercial prospects for his own personal benefit."

The pressure is on for Lucid Motors. Shares of the electric vehicle company closed up more than 10.6% on its first day of trading on Monday.

Why it matters: Lucid has yet to deliver any cars. The company went public by merging with a SPAC, Churchill Capital Corp. IV, in part to get enough cash to start production.

America is moving toward an electric vehicle future, but the present infrastructure can be maddening for those who own an EV. Particularly if that EV isn't made by Tesla.

Why it matters: President Biden's infrastructure proposal includes billions of dollars for EV charging, in an effort to replicate the ubiquity of gas stations.

Tesla is expected to report an eighth consecutive quarterly profit after markets close today, but still faces big questions despite showing it's now consistently in the black.

Why it matters: The company dominates U.S. electric car sales and is a leading player globally too, so its fortunes are both a business story and a climate story.

The huge automaker Stellantis — whose brands include Dodge, Peugeot, Jeep, Citroën, Opel and more — is pouring over $35 billion into vehicle electrification efforts through 2025, it announced Thursday.

• They include an EV from Dodge, the North American performance division, coming in 2024. (Slogan: "Tear Up the Streets… Not the Planet.")

Why it matters: The company, formed via the recent merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and PSA Group, is the world's fourth-largest automaker.

All the battery metals we need to power a billion electric vehicles could be lying on the floor of the Pacific Ocean — but collecting them and turning them into EV batteries is a major challenge.

Why it matters: It's going to take a lot of batteries to replace the world's gasoline-powered cars with zero-emission EVs. And that will require digging more lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese out of the earth.

• Experts worry that mining's environmental threats could outweigh the benefits of increased renewable energy production.

The above image is what Volvo calls its "Concept Recharge," which is a very rough look at their future EV designs.

Why it matters: The company recently said it will sell only electric cars by 2030.

The big electric vehicle charging network EVgo has registered an in-house lobbyist for the first time.

Driving the news: Alex Beaton, a former longtime aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, joined the company in May as a public policy manager.

Just-released projections from the consultancy Wood Mackenzie see battery electric vehicles growing to 56% of global sales by midcentury as internal combustion models see their share greatly erode.

The big picture: It estimates there will be 875 million electric passenger vehicles and 70 million electric commercial vehicles on the roads by 2050. The latest analysis of passenger and commercial markets boosts its estimate of fully electric vehicles' share compared to even a February projection, which had it at 48%.

At the very moment the United States is ramping up electric vehicle development manufacturers are running up against the weakest link in the supply chain — a shortage of battery materials.

Why it matters: The bottleneck puts the United States at a major disadvantage to China, which controls most of the world's battery minerals mining and processing.