Why Is There So Much Tribalism In Alternative Fuels? There Are 39 Trillion Reasons (Part 2 Of 2)
In the first half of this pair of articles on the challenges of internecine squabbling among those focused on replacing fossil fuels, I covered the $39 trillion worth of reasons why the fossil fuel industry is trying incredibly hard to pretend that it has a future as an energy delivery industry, why electrification is the answer to almost everything, and why biofuels are the answers to what electricity can’t do.
Now it’s time for hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
Hydrogen
Next we have hydrogen. Hydrogen is indeed the most abundant element in the universe, however, the thing that isn’t said clearly is that it’s tightly chemically bound to other things, and doesn’t float around freely in a harvestable form. And it does indeed have a high energy density by mass, but unfortunately it has a terrible energy density by volume, which more than counterbalances the mass side of the equation. We have to get it from fossil fuels, which are, after all, hydrocarbons, or from water, which is two hydrogens and an oxygen. Both of those things require a lot of energy, and there are a bunch of negative externalities for several of the processes.
First off, there’s black, gray, and blue hydrogen. About 99% of all hydrogen created and used today comes from fossil fuels, and it’s black. Making hydrogen from natural gas produces 10x the mass of CO2 as of produced hydrogen. Making hydrogen from coal produces 20–35x the mass of CO2 as of hydrogen. End to end, because of process efficiencies, methane leakage, and the like, more greenhouse gases are created for the energy in hydrogen than if we just used the fossil fuels directly.
The false promise of blue hydrogen is that all of those negative externalities will be centralized into a gas reformation or coal gasification facility, where the CO2 can be captured as it is emitted, and the chemical and particulate pollution can be scrubbed sufficiently from the effluents. The $39 trillion in profits fossil fuel industry really, really loves this, because it means that they can keep an enormous amount of their revenue and profits, as long as someone else pays for the capture and sequestration of the CO2 and other pollutants. As a result, there’s an awful lot of fossil fuel money and lobbying pushing hard for a hydrogen economy.
And as stated, carbon capture and sequestration is a money pit of extremely limited value. 50 years of investment in CCS has resulted in the biggest CCS ‘wins’ pumping CO2 out of the ground in one place and pumping it back into the ground in another, typically with lots of government money, and almost entirely for enhanced oil recovery, which produces more CO2 than was sequestered. The total scale of all carbon capture and use globally is five to seven orders of magnitude off the scale of our CO2 emissions problem. Making hydrogen from fossil fuels just makes the CO2 emissions higher, and the scale problem just gets worse. You can understand why the fossil fuel industry doesn’t like that part of the story being told.
The second form of hydrogen is green hydrogen. In this pathway, renewable electricity is used to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, putting energy in to break the chemical bonds and get hydrogen out. Then the hydrogen can be compressed to ten thousand pounds per square inch to get it down to a usable volume, or chilled to 24 degrees above absolute zero to turn it into a somewhat manageable liquid.
Hydrogen burns fairly cleanly, combusting with oxygen to make water again. However, burning hydrogen creates the nitrous oxides mentioned above, as burning anything in our atmosphere does. That’s because nitrogen is 78% of the atmosphere and oxygen is 21%. Burning anything releases heat and causes the nitrogen and oxygen from the air to combine in various ways, with the associated negative externalities of smog-precursors and high global warming potential gases.
Hydrogen fuel cells are like electrolyzers run in reverse. Instead of burning hydrogen, you run it through the cell, recombine it with oxygen and get some energy and waste heat from the process, but without nitrous oxides, which is nice.
The problem with green hydrogen is that it’s both inefficient and ineffective. Creating hydrogen from water loses at minimum 20% of the energy required for the process. Compressing and/or chilling it loses more. Transporting it is inefficient, with piping it, for example, taking three times the energy as for natural gas. When it’s burned, it’s like fossil fuels in that we get relatively low grade heat back, which means waste heat and entropy. Burning it for heat produces nitrous oxides still, and unless you directly need heat, converting it to electricity has a bunch of losses. Hydrogen fuel cells produce waste heat and at best are 60% efficient at getting the remaining energy out.
Hydrogen has some other problems for distribution. It embrittles harder steels, so a lot of existing pipelines and pumps can’t be reused and would have to be replaced at great expense. And electronics don’t like hydrogen much, so in many places the electronics for monitoring and controlling distribution have to be replaced too. And for use, hydrogen doesn’t directly replace natural gas in appliances, so brand new appliances — which don’t exist as manufactured commodity items today, by the way — must be purchased and installed.
Electricity turns into heat or mechanical energy for motion very efficiently. But the same ‘energy’ of heat, unless it’s extremely hot, doesn’t turn into mechanical energy efficiently. The technical term is exergy, which is the percentage of the energy in something which can actually be usefully used. Low grade heat has poor exergy, while electricity has high exergy.
Electrification types, like me, point out that all of that inefficiency and ineffectiveness is avoided by using the electricity from renewables more directly. Tie things to the grid wherever that’s possible — and there close to 100,000 kilometers of electrified rail in the world, for example — and use batteries which are 80%+ efficient and very easy to charge from ubiquitous wires we already have in place. Use electric heat pumps and induction stove tops and electric arc furnaces for all the things we need heat from.
What this comes down to is that hydrogen isn’t fit for purpose directly for virtually any transportation form, to burn for heat of any quality, or for grid storage of electricity. Its inefficiencies and effectiveness challenges compared to electrification or biofuels mean that it’s unlikely to be used directly.
That’s okay, by the way, because we need green hydrogen for fertilizer and other chemical processes. But using it for heat, storage, or transportation makes no sense.
And here’s another source of confusion and contention. Green hydrogen is being deployed as a bait and switch for blue hydrogen. The fossil fuel industry is telling everyone who will listen, and politicians who are often happy to take their money, that if we just use black hydrogen for heating and transportation now, they’ll make it blue soon with a lot of taxpayer money, and then eventually we can have green hydrogen economy.
It’s a massive delaying tactic and governmental money grab by the fossil fuel industry.
Of course, there are the other people, the ones who read Rifkin’s Hydrogen Economy in 2000 or so, and never did the math. There are a lot of people heavily intellectually and fiscally invested in the hydrogen economy, and they spend a lot of time advocating for hydrogen pathways instead of direct electrification. The side that does electrolyzers have a good value proposition and should be listened to. The side that does fuel cells, not so much. They all want a piece of that $39 trillion, after all.
And there are countries and industrial giants that perversely love hydrogen for transportation, causing confusion. Some now very old men in Japan’s government and Toyota got together in the 1990s and decided that hydrogen was the answer, and 30 years later they have to die off before new blood can change to electrification without causing them to lose face. Germany’s chemical industry loves hydrogen, and they have salt caverns, and as a result they have a dream of dunkelflaute storage of hydrogen in the caverns, and the odd distinction of being the only country in the world where it’s possible to conveniently own and drive a hydrogen fuel cell car anywhere in the country because they have hydrogen stations all over the place. That filling network was naturally heavily subsidized by the German government, and is barely used. Hyundai has managed to capture some Korean governmental officials and is trying to recreate the Japanese debacle, as well as in smaller scale it’s national nuclear debacle.
Lots of fossil fuel money, investor’s money, and fan bois are spending a lot of time and energy promoting hydrogen for things it’s not useful for. And governments are getting sucked in by the massive fossil fuel lobbying effort, hence a bunch of the contention.
Synthetic Fuels
Finally, we have synthetic fuels. In the best case scenario, these fuels take CO2 from waste emissions and hydrogen from electrolysis of water and combine them into hydrocarbon fuels. It’s entirely chemically possible, and has been done, to make gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
Synthetic fuels have pretty much the same negative externalities as biofuels.
- CO2 (a lot less, but still present)
- nitrous oxide (N20) with a global warming potential 265x that of CO2
- nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a chemical precursor to smog
- particulate matter
- unburned hydrocarbons aka black carbon with global warming potentials thousands of times that of CO2, but typically less than bunker fuel
However, the kicker with synthetic fuels is that everything I wrote about the inefficiencies of hydrogen as a fuel apply doubly to synthetic fuels. After all the trouble of making it, compressing or chilling it, storing it, and possibly shipping it, then you have to use another lossy process to combine it with CO2 (which is also high energy to produce), and typically more processes to get it into a final usable form. By the time you get to the end of the process, the energy is like cocaine you buy from some guy on a street corner, stepped on so many times that you get barely any of the original substance.
What synthetic fuels have going for them is that they can be a bit cleaner than biofuels because there’s none of that messy biology and its convoluted organic chemicals in there, and like biofuels and fossil fuels, you can carry it in buckets, pipe it, and store it. The end result is effective, but deeply inefficient, and inefficiencies means that it will always be a lot more expensive.
But the final problem is when you use the synthetic fuel. Typically, they are burned, replacing gasoline, diesel, bunker fuel or kerosene in places where fossil fuels are used now. And that very expensive synthetic fuel’s remaining energy mostly turns into waste heat, with 15–20% efficiencies in cars, and better in bigger engines, but still below 50%. All that energy to make the synthetic fuels, and then you throw most of it away. This is just like fossil fuels, but since almost all the energy to make them was done millions of years ago by biological and geological processes, we haven’t cared. But when we make our own fuels from scratch, economics makes us care a lot.
Advocates of electrification point out that avoiding all of that hassle makes a lot more sense. Advocates of biofuels point out that biofuels are a lot cheaper, use a lot less energy to make, and have virtually the same advantages as synthetic fuels, and remember all the people advocating for biofuels.
Fossil fuel companies get in the mix too. They love synthetic fuels because they perpetuate things which burn fossil fuels, and they know that no one will ever pay for synthetic fuels when they can buy fossil fuels vastly more cheaply. Lots of baiting and switching, lots of ‘blended’ fuels with subsets of synthetic fuels mixed with fossil fuels, lots of lobbying.
This doesn’t mean we won’t make synthetic hydrocarbons, but they won’t be put in engines and burned for the most part. Power-to-X (P2X) will be for many industrial feedstocks, but power-to-fuel will be supplemental to biofuels.
So that’s the reason why there’s all this tribalism in alternative fuels. There’s a $39 trillion in annual profits in the industry up for grabs. The current players in the industry want to keep it all, and want to create as much confusion about alternatives as possible, and want to ensure that alternatives chosen can also use their products.
Other people, who actually want to solve the negative externalities problem and avert horrific outcomes from global warming, are fighting to be heard above the millions and billions of PR and lobbying.
In the end, the laws of thermodynamics will win. Hype doesn’t stand a chance against reality in the long term. But it’s an uphill battle, because the vast majority of people involved in the debate don’t understand or accept the laws of thermodynamics, but live on hope instead.
Here are some of my publications and podcasts where the subject is dissected in detail:
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Polestar invited us up to the hills above Malibu for a drive of its new Single motor RWD Polestar 3, a lower-priced version of the brand’s all-electric SUV.
The RWD Polestar 3 is the new more efficient, longer-range version of the brand’s electric SUV with a lower starting price. It recently started production in the US, and is available now and even being shipped out for export to other markets.
Previous versions of the Polestar 3 were both dual motor – the 489hp Dual motor version and 517hp Dual motor Performance version.
The Single motor version deletes the front motor and uses only the rear motor, with 299hp (the number isn’t exactly half because total horsepower is also a function of the amount of power the battery pack can put out).
As a result of this, the Single motor version does 0-60 in 7.5 seconds, quite a bit slower than the 4.8 and 4.5 seconds of the other models.
It is however nearly 400lbs lighter after deletion of the front motor, and change to coil spring suspension, rather than air suspension on the upper models – and a lighter weight does have its own performance benefits.
These modifications make the Single motor model much more efficient, with 350 miles of range, compared to 315 miles for the Dual motor and 279 miles for the Performance version. All three models use the same hefty 111kWh battery, with the same 250kW peak DC charging rate, capable of charging from 10-80% in 30 minutes.
Polestar called the Single motor 3 “the most efficient Polestar yet” in its presentation to us, which didn’t sound right for an SUV – but it turns out, it does have the same ~350Wh/mi energy consumption rating as the smaller Polestar 2 and 4.
It also shaves nearly $6k off the price, starting at $67,500, compared to $73,400 for the Dual motor or $79,400 for the Performance model.
But how do those differences feel in the real world?
We had a couple hours with the Single motor car, and only a very short drive up and down PCH with the Dual motor Performance as a quick back-to-back comparison. We didn’t get a chance to charge the cars, or to do any sort of realistic range testing.
But we did definitely feel the huge difference in power between these models.
The Performance version predictably has pretty bonkers levels of power, and will really throw your head back when in performance mode.
The Single motor version is much more sedate by comparison. It still has snappy throttle response like one would expect of an electric car, but power was much weaker, especially at higher speeds.
As a result, merging performance was not as exceptional as in other EVs. One great thing about instant torque is that it makes it very easy to get exactly where you want to be, when you want to be there during merges or lane changes.
Regenerative braking also could be stronger. Less motor power also means less regen capacity, and while Polestar did retune regenerative braking for the Single motor version, it didn’t quite feel strong enough to me. I like very strong off-throttle regen, but found myself hitting the brake pedal much more than I’d have liked. Regen is adjustable, but even on the strongest level, I’d have liked more.
However, perhaps unexpectedly, I might have even liked the feel of the throttle more on the Single motor than the Performance. I’ll attempt to explain why.
One thing that Dual motor vehicles often do is put one of the two motors “asleep” when traveling at a consistent speed in order to increase efficiency. Then when power is called for, the car wakes up the second motor.
On the Performance model, if you have “performance” mode turned off, this wakeup takes a second or so, which means pressing the accelerator leads to a ramp-up effect in power delivery. The car’s software smooths this out, but it still feels a little strange.
If “performance” mode is turned on, both motors are always powered – so there’s no ramp-up effect, just unbridled power. But in that case, the car has so much power that it can feel a little jumpy on the throttle.
Meanwhile, with the single motor version, there is no sleeping of the motor, but since the motor is weaker, rough throttle inputs from the driver’s foot are mediated by the fact that there simply isn’t as much power there to jerk you around.
As a result, the Single motor ends up giving a more sedate, but more comfortable driving or riding experience.
On roads as twisty as the ones we drove on, I’ve had poor drive experiences in the past with co-drivers who are perhaps less accustomed to the instant torque of an EV and have a shaky throttle foot. But this time that wasn’t an issue at all – probably due partially to the EV experience of my co-driver, and also partially due to the Single motor’s more sedate character.
Now, the Single motor version’s coil suspension should stand to offer less ride comfort than the air suspension of the Dual motor, but we found no particular discomfort with the new coil suspension system.
We had a lot more time with the Single motor than the Dual, and our time with the Dual was on a smooth section of PCH rather than the curvy mountain roads we spent most of our time on, but I will say that both driving and riding in the Single motor was a plenty comfortable experience.
For comparison, I do not like the suspension in the Polestar 2, so either version of the Polestar 3 is a superior experience to that one.
Other aspects of the Polestar 3 Single motor are the same as the Dual motor version which we’ve reviewed before. For some quick takes on the rest:
- The seats are comfortable but I felt the cockpit was maybe a little crowded. I do like the Scandinavian-style sparseness of Tesla cockpits by comparison, and Tesla out-Scandinavian’d the Scandinavians here. If the Tesla cockpit is just a bit too sparse for you, then maybe this will provide the balance you want.
- The user interface is good and snappy, with occasional small hiccups (for example, it took maybe a second to load the page with mirror adjustments on it). I’ve experienced one really rough UI in a Polestar before, in a pre-production version of the 4, and this interface does not exhibit the difficulties of that one.
- We didn’t get a chance to test any driver assist features, other than lane departure warning, which had a fairly well-balanced intervention level. I do think it’s easy to get this wrong and make the interventions too light or too strong, and this car’s worked pretty well but was perhaps slightly lighter than I’d like.
- Can I just point out how much I love this front wing design feature? It reduces frontal area and improves efficiency, adds character, and leverages a benefit that EVs have (smaller engine compartment) to give the car a practical benefit (the Dodge Charger Daytona has a similar front wing, and I love it there too).
It’s not cheap though. The $6k in savings when compared to the Dual motor version are definitely appreciated, but $67,500 is still a steep starting price
That price is higher than the segment’s most popular vehicle, the Tesla Model Y (currently $60k for the Launch Edition model of the Juniper refresh, though once a base model is available, that will go down). Of course, many people wouldn’t buy a Tesla at any price right now, and Polestar’s new CEO sees this as an opportunity. In service of this, Polestar recently initiated a Tesla conquest offer, seeking to lure Tesla owners away (and even better, think of all the money you’ll save on bumper stickers).
Overall, the Polestar 3 Single motor offered a smooth and comfortable ride experience as driver or passenger. If you’re looking at the Polestar 3 but prioritize comfort, efficiency and savings, this new base model offers a compelling package for anyone who knows they won’t be hitting a track or drag strip anytime soon.
The Polestar 3 Single motor is available now for order and configuration over at Polestar’s website.
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Automotive photographer Anthony Carter was on hand at last week’s SoCal Spring Fest 2025, where he captured a number of hot electric Mopar muscle cars – and one of those cars was the first publicly shown 2026 Dodge Charger Daytona sedan.
When Stellantis’ first-ever muscle car made its debut back in 2024, it was shown along with a four-door variant as well. Subsequent delays pushed the sedan’s arrival past the expected Q1 2025 timeline, but production is finally set to begin in May 2025, the four-door Daytona is finally making its way into the lineup as a 2026MY vehicle.
At last week’s SoCal Spring Fest 2025 car show, what’s believed to be a pre-production version of Stellantis’ new 2026 electric sedan made its public debut wearing the new, “Bludicrous” shade of blue our own Peter Johnson first covered last month.
And, as soon as the big sedan rolled to a stop, noted automotive photographer and Mopar enthusiast Anthony Carter was all over it.
2025 Spring Fest attendees received a surprise guest delivered from @Dodge and got first look at a pre-production 4-door Dodge Charger Daytona R/T in recently released color, Bludicrous.
DO YOU PREFER FOUR-DOOR OR TWO-DOOR?#GoWestForSpringFest #SFLX25 #SpringFest2025 #Dodge pic.twitter.com/JkemSHKPj4
— Anthony Carter (@IAmTurboBuckeye) March 25, 2025
The 2025 even was the first SoCal Spring Fest held since the 2020 lockdowns shut down most enthusiast events five years ago, and marked the first such event to be visited by a production electric Mopar like, at all – and there are several electric Mopars for EV enthusiasts to get excited about, all over Anthony “turbobuckeye” Carter’s insta feed …
… but we’re not here to ooh and aah over some Richard Petty tribute rides, right? No matter how bada** they might be, we’re here to talk about the four-door Charger Daytona, which starts at $59,995 with up to 496 hp in R/T trim, and $73,190 in 670 hp “Scat Pack” trim capable of sprinting from 0-60 mph in just 3.3 seconds
As for how the Bludicrous paint looks in person, the turbobuckeye has us covered there, too. Check out Anthony’s take on the new Charger Daytona R/T electric sedan at Spring Fest 2025 for yourself in his video, below.
If you’re not into either sedans or waiting, you can pick up a $7,500 National Consumer Cash rebate from Stellantis and combine it with a $3,000 National Dodge Performance Days Combo Bonus Cash and a $2,000 conquest cash offer for qualifying customers. That means new Mopar buyers could save up to $12,500 on a new Charger Daytona.
Other offers include 0% interest financing for up to 72 months and a $3,000 Bonus Cash Allowance or monthly leases as low as $519/mo.
Electrek’s Take
The Charger Daytona is a weird thing. As a product, it’s an electric vehicle designed to appeal to people who love V8s – and, in doing so, has managed to alienate both the people who love V8s and people who love EVs (the electric “exhaust” noises too, are laughable). That said, in my brief experience behind the wheel of a two-door Charger Daytona, I kind of liked it. With a vintage, NASCAR-style high wing, an aerodynamic nosecone, and Hugger Orange paint, I might have even been a player.
The stupid exhaust is unforgivable, though. Head on down to the comments and let us know if you agree that it’s a fatal flaw in Dodge’s plan.
SOURCE | FEATURED IMAGE: turbobuckeye Anthony Carter; via Mopar Insiders.
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JackRabbit, the leading name in micro e-bikes, has just unveiled two new models that put the micro in micromobility. The new JackRabbit OG2 Pro and JackRabbit XG Pro build upon the success of the company’s existing models, but add more of what the riding community has longed for.
JackRabbit has built quite a name for itself centered around its quirky, lovable design. The brand leans heavily into its small, lightweight form factor. There are tens of thousands of self-styled “Jackos” in the ever-growing rider community whose fan rabidness seems second only to heavyweight Super73. It’s no wonder they proudly slap on the brand’s stickers touting phrases like “Micro and proud” or “Butts love me”.
Those Jackos have long touted the extreme portability of micro e-bikes—which technically aren’t electric bicycles since they lack pedals but otherwise look and handle like a bike. Starting at just 25 lb yet with full-size 20″ bicycle wheels and 20 mph (32 km/h) speeds, the combination of convenience and performance is hard to match—as long as you don’t mind looking different. For many, though, that uniqueness is the biggest plus.
But if there are three things that I regularly hear as the main requests to JackRabbit from the market, it’s a longing for more range, more power, and lower prices. Now, the company has responded with a resounding “We can do two of those things.”
Meet the new JackRabbit OG2 Pro and XG Pro.
Both are built on the same small-format frames of the already popular OG2 and XG, but have major upgrades to their performance and ride feel.
These will come as a welcome change to those who are already familiar with JackRabbit’s lineup, or as a major surprise to anyone getting ready to throw their leg over the diminutive yet powerful rides for the first time.
JackRabbit OG2 Pro
First of all, the OG2 Pro has seen the OG’s 300W motor swapped out for a more powerful and torquier 500W motor—the same motor found in the XG.
It also comes standard with JackRabbit’s bigger RangeBuster battery, which upgrades the range from 10 miles (16 km) to 24 miles (39 km).
Mid-rise handlebars and bar grips give the OG2 Pro a taller stance without adding more bulk. The handlebars retain the same pivoting design that allows the bike to shrink down to just 7 inches (18 cm) wide, easily slipping into the trunk of a car or under a dorm room bed. Those handlebars also get the XG’s nicer LCD handlebar display.
The upgrades may add another 5 lb (2.2 kg) to the bike, but it still weighs a mere 30 lb (13.6 kg), which is a featherweight in the e-bike world.
The OG2 Pro is priced at $1,649, and it comes in a new fun orange color option as well as a less fun black color option.
JackRabbit XG Pro
Similarly to the over-the-top upgrades on the OG2 Pro, the XG Pro also gets some serious ‘turn it up to 11’ energy.
The 500W motor on the XG has now been boosted to 749W on the XG Pro. It’s also much torquier for better hill climbing. In addition, riders can unlock the 20 mph (32 km/h) top speed to a faster 24 mph (38.6 km/h) in the new off-road mode. Importantly, though, that off-road mode is only available to 18+ riders who sign a waiver and agree to terms, including only using the off-road mode on closed course riding, etc.
Importantly, for a small bike with a faster top speed, larger 180mm brake rotors ensure the JackRabbit XG Pro has just as much stopping power as it has going power.
In fact, off-roading is a major part of the XG Pro’s intended use case. The new 20×2.8″ tires are more aggressive for better trail performance and look more at home on a mountain bike than a micro e-bike. With a nearly 3-inch profile, these tires also add quasi-suspension in the form of a more cushioned ride with more air volume between riders and the road.
Optional accessories for the brand’s other models now come standard on the XG Pro, including JackRabbit’s “Mega Metal Footpegs” that provide a larger foot platform, the high-rise handlebars that give an even more comfortable and upright seating position, and the LED light package that runs off the JackRabbit batteries.
Speaking of those batteries, just like the XG model, there are two battery slots on the XG Pro. However, the XG Pro comes standard with a pair of RangeBuster batteries that provide a combined 48 miles (77 km) of range.
Now available to order, the JackRabbit XG Pro is priced at $2,249 and comes in a never-before-seen Army Green and an unfortunately-seen-before black color.
Electrek’s Take
To look at this another way, the new OG2 Pro is basically the guts of an XG packaged into the more compact frame of an OG2, giving riders more performance with less bulk (and for $100 less than an XG).
The XG Pro, on the other hand, is basically an XG inside a fever-dream, with just about everything boosted way up. More power, more speed, more range, more craziness.
Now, let’s get to my opinion. First of all, I love the upgrades. More power, more speed, more range? Yes, yes, and yes! Then with the new and more comfortable handlebars included standard, the bikes are better than ever. Instead of sacrificing performance and ride comfort for a smaller size, now riders can get both. The XG Pro is especially interesting with its larger tires and all of those included accessories like the from-the-battery LED lights, the double big-boy batteries, the high-rise bars, etc.
I really like the OG2 Pro’s new orange colorway, and the Army Green is an interesting and likely welcome choice for the XG Pro. I made a couple of jokes about the black colorways in the article above merely due to my preference for the brighter color options that I’ve long enjoyed from JackRabbit, but I understand that not everyone wants to stand out. I don’t understand why, but I at least accept that those people exist. In my opinion though, if you’re going to get a unique ride like this, you want it to pop. If someone buys a Lamborghini, they get it in a fun color like yellow, red, bright blue, etc. You ever see a black Lambo? They exist, but they just don’t look as good. They’re muted and dull. Fun vehicles deserve fun colors, and that’s why I always preferred the original yellow from JackRabbit, though that orange is giving me some lip-biting action as well.
The killer here, though, which is likely to rain on more than a few parades, is the price. At $1,649 and $2,249, these are expensive. Not even a little bit, they’re downright pricey. And I think that’s going to cut into sales. Now I know we’re staring down the barrel of new (and potentially ever-increasing) tariffs, and it is also absolutely fair to say that JackRabbit has an edge with their unique design and one of the few options for such cool micro-rides like these. But JackRabbit also has to spend more money building many of their own parts. They don’t benefit from using the same cookie-cutter e-bike frame chosen from page 325 of a massive Chinese e-bike factory’s catalog. They don’t get to enjoy selecting whatever cheap battery they can purchase off-the-shelf that is already produced by the millions. They have to invest in their own tooling and build their own parts to fit their unique design. And that costs money.
The problem is, that simply might not matter to many folks. In my opinion, too many riders seem to only look at watts and dollars, ignoring dozens of other specs and touchpoints. I’m not trying to look into anyone’s wallet, and which e-bike you can afford is a deeply personal decision. But for the undiscerning folks who merely look for the price-per-watt comparison, JackRabbit will never win. The company simply can’t and won’t compete in that category. But for those who are prepared to pay a premium for a bike that is smaller, lighter, more convenient, and frankly more fun in many aspects, JackRabbit has a leg up. Now the question is whether folks are prepared to pay for it.
Let’s hear your thoughts on the new bikes in the comments below, and stay tuned for my review of the XG Pro coming in the next day or two! Spoiler alert: it’s a wheelie-inducing, tire-spinning, freakin’ incredible ride!
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