When Rivian was first announced, I didn’t know if they were going to survive or end up like Fiskar, Faraday, Alta, and Canoo. However, they seem to be selling well, and Ford has invested $500-Million in Rivian. Also, Amazon has ordered 100,000 delivery vans, so…lets take a look. _______________________________________________ Rivian R1S, the “big” SUV At this point, I believe Rivian will survive and even become quite successful. The products from Tesla have a forward-thinking and modern look, but the Rivian models appeal to a customer who wants an EV that is slightly more conventional-looking ..read more

I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen, because…I knew something like this was eventually going to happen. It’s a second-gen 2007 Toyota Prius, and it clocked a verified ONE MILLION kilometers on the original battery pack and engine (621,000+ miles). First, I’m going to list some info about what a Prius is, and then I’ll list a few hybrids that made it to very high miles, so we can see if there’s any pattern that we can learn from. _________________________________________________ Toyota Prius, Gen-1 (1997-2003) In 1995, Toyota premiered their prototype hybrid Prius at the Tokyo m ..read more

I am pretty excited about all the electric VTOL’s that are progressing rapidly. The biggest reason we have been writing about electric aircraft is because they will be the drivers of advanced battery tech. The Tesla car company has produced pure EV’s that have a 300-mile range, so car companies are not pushing very hard to advance batteries. The aircraft industry (on the other hand) is continuing to spend many millions on battery improvements. Also…electric aircraft are just fantastically cool. I’m not going to list any electric drones, there are waaay too many of them (like these, click here ..read more

Looking down at the odometer on my Luna X-1 I realized that I had just turned over 2000km on the clock. For normal ebikes 2000km is not much of a milestone, but considering how I only ride my X-1 on trails and thrash on it pretty hard every day I thought I would do an article on how it has held up and the good, the bad and the ugly about this bike. There is a lot of components I have replaced due to failures or just because I wanted to, there is nothing that I have done to this bike that I have regretted. I bought the X-1 on June 2019 and paid $3305 for it from Lunacycle. At the time of purcha ..read more

This is a 6-seat electric aircraft that uses four “stowaway” rotors for initial lift, and one rear-facing propeller for sustained flight. Several years ago they started with a prototype that did not have any of the vertical-lift features, called the CX300. It also used a single rear-facing propeller, which would take off and land on conventional runways. Over two years, the CX300 has flown 22,000 miles, and has been evaluated by FAA and military test pilots. It has flown 386 miles on a single battery charge. The CX300 is designed for short-haul medical, cargo, and passenger operations at a low ..read more

I like hybrid electrical powertrains, so I was excited to see these being produced. Some of our readers may remember an article I wrote on the history of hybrid cars and in that article I listed quite a few of the newest hybrids that are available to the public (click here to see that article) Don’t get me wrong, I still do love EV’s, but…by me supporting hybrids, it allows both sides to hate me! But are there any “real” benefits to a hybrid? I’d say yes, and I think the major one is the charging infrastructure. I live in a small town in central Kansas, and if I bought any kind of EV, I’d need ..read more

Now that all the electric car charging companies are lining up for handouts from the federal government to expand the US electric charging infrastructure, this is the perfect opportunity for us to force them to implement a handful of things that will greatly improve the integrity and usability of US chargers. A GFCI 20 amp plug with two sockets so people can charge their ebikes or scooters for free if they need to. If the charger is broken then they can use their low speed 8/12Amp 120v charger that comes with most electric cars and get a measly 3-4 miles of range per hour. This might save peo ..read more

I have to confess that I am no expert when it comes to controllers, and when I find someone who has a lot of experience and is honest about the benefits and drawbacks of any given model of controller, I want to hear what that tech has to say. There are some very good products out there, but if every manufacturer says that their controller is the best, and never tells you why (or they fail to mention any particular weaknesses that it may have) then we can’t make an educated choice. The reason these tech details are important is because some of the issues are something that we can fix ourselves ..read more

This is big news, but there’s not much to add after reading the title. Tesla did two very important things early on. The first is that they developed a charging port where the design really makes sense for technical reasons. The second thing they did was to build thousands of Tesla “Super Chargers” just about everywhere. ______________________________________________ The Tesla NACS Supercharger Plug In March of 2021, we wrote about the various proprietary charge plug designs (to see that article, click here) The CCS “Combined Charging System” on the left, and the Tesla NACS “North American Ch ..read more

One of the most often asked questions about any electric conversion is “what controller should I use?”. Controllers are the last remaining voodoo in electric systems, and they are not easy to understand. I have picked up a few bits and pieces over the years, but to be honest, I have to trust in the opinions of other people who are more experienced than me when it comes to controllers. Our custom builds article (click here to see that) shows several examples of ebikes using RC controllers, which for some reason are called “Electronic Speed Controllers” or ESC. They are tiny compared to the amou ..read more