YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

The test laboratory is hidden away in an industrial park in Reston, Virginia, not far from the Washington, D.C., airport. Inside a corrugated metal structure, four men are sitting at folding tables and staring into their laptops. Nothing seems to disturb them as they work, and they don't even look up when the roller door at the entrance rattles open and a yellow, electric Chevrolet drives in.

The car stops in front of a row of white metal posts out of which green light is shining, thick, black cables hanging down at their sides. They're charging stations for all different brands of electric cars, from Tesla to Porsche to Chevrolet, and thousands of them are to ultimately be set up at parking lots and highway rest stops across the United States.

The man behind the wheel of the Chevrolet is named Giovanni Palazzo, and he is the head of this vast project, the name of which is mounted in black lettering on the back wall of the warehouse: "Electrify America." "We want to make the switch to electric cars as easy as possible," he says. "We want e-mobility to finally become reality in the U.S."

There is nothing in the building to indicate who is behind the multibillion-dollar project. The U.S. government? One of the tech companies based in Silicon Valley? Nope. It's an automobile producer from Germany: Volkswagen. 

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