Lectric XP Trike launches for pre-order as low cost, folding electric trike
The Lectric XP Trike, which was unveiled with quite a fanfare last month, has now launched for pre-orders at a surprisingly affordable price. The electric trike claims to be the first folding, fully-assembled electric trike in the industry, and it looks set to shake things up for all types of riders.
Lectric XP Trike launches for pre-order
The Lectric XP Trike, which is priced at just $1,499, is built on a similar base as the company’s best-selling Lectric XP series of e-bikes.
It offers a powerful motor, folding design and an approachable price. But in this case, the XP Trike gains a third wheel, a differential rear axle, hydraulic disc brakes and a super-accessible design.
As the company described the new three-wheeler:
“The XP Trike accommodates a wide range of abilities and preferences with our lowest standover height ever of just 13.8 inches. As the industry’s first fully foldable and fully assembled electric tricycle, The XP Trike includes the award-winning features our XP series e-bikes demonstrate, plus a bigger battery, hydraulic brakes, and a third wheel. A sturdy rear hub motor setup with a differential axle provides a whopping 65NM of torque – accommodating even the heftiest of payloads without a problem.”
And they weren’t kidding about hefty loads, as the trike comes with a 415 lb (188 kg) payload rating for rider and cargo. That includes up to 330 lb (150 kg) riders, as well as a max rating of 75 lb (34 kg) on the rear rack and 35 lb (16 kg) on the front basket.
The bike even includes the front and rear baskets as part of a free cargo bundle, though it’s listed as “while supplies last”. The cargo package seems to be part of a launch promotion, so if you’re on the fence but really like the free front and rear cargo baskets, then you may want to consider pulling the trigger on this one before that option is gone.
The XP Trike itself weighs 69.5 lb with the 48V 14Ah battery, though unlocking and removing the battery can probably get the trike down to around 60 lb even. That battery is probably larger than most riders will even need, offering around 60 miles (96 km) of range on pedal assist, and probably at least 40 miles (65 km) on throttle-only riding considering the lower top speed of the trike.
The top speed of 14 mph (22.5 km) is obtainable under throttle or pedal assist, though only in the highest speed setting (level 5).
Lower speed levels can keep the trike from getting away from new riders while they get re-accustomed to being back on a bike (or trike).
The single-speed drivetrain means there is no shifter to deal with, though it also precludes having a lower gear to shift into on hills. But with two-wheel drive from a 500W motor that peaks at an actual 1,092W and puts out 65 Nm of torque, hills won’t be a problem.
And I’m not just saying that — I recently visited the company in Phoenix to test out the first XP Trike on a massive hill up the side of a small mountain. It was tough to walk up the road, which wasn’t even a public road but rather sort of an access road to an antenna at the top of the mountain (I’m not sure public roads are allowed to be this steep). Even so, the XP Trike pulled me up just fine. I was blown away by how much torque it had, even when we added a pile of steel weights into the rear basket to drag up the hill with me. In fact, the road was so steep that I was thankful Lectric outfitted the trike with hydraulic disc brakes so I could make a confident descent. It’s also great to see the the XP Trike has a parking brake, in case you ever need to park on a hill.
Despite that impressive power, keeping the pedal assist in lower speed levels made the power gentle and manageable on startups so that it didn’t feel overwhelming.
I’ll have a complete first ride experience coming soon. But if you don’t mind spoilers, know that I’ll definitely be recommending this trike to those who are looking for an accessible three-wheeler that won’t break the bank. At just $1,499, this is a seriously good deal.
Electric trikes as a new battleground?
Electric tricycles have become a growing category in the e-bike world and even a hot new battleground after Lectric eBikes followed Rad Power Bikes’ launch of the RadTrike with their own Lectric XP Trike announcement.
Other companies are also getting into the trike game, though these are definitely the two major players at the moment.
Having ridden both, I can say that the RadTrike felt a bit more stable with an extra wide rear end, though both were more than comfortable in turns and I had to go out of my way to try to get them up on two wheels. With Rad offering what is likely a more elegant ground up design and Lectric coming in with arguably more features (including that key fully-assembled delivery), both e-trikes have strong selling propositions.
I’m definitely excited about the future of electric trikes. Companies like these are pushing the industry forward, and that’s good for everyone.
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Metro Detroit is about to get a big boost of fast EV chargers, with more than 40 new ChargePoint ports set to come online across multiple sites owned by the Dabaja Brothers Development Group.
The first ultra-fast charging site just opened in Canton, Michigan. It’s owned and operated by Dabaja Brothers, who plan to follow it with additional ChargePoint-equipped locations in Dearborn and Livonia.
“We started this project because we saw a gap in our community – there was almost nowhere to charge an EV in Canton, and a similar lack of charging across metro Detroit,” said Yousef Dabaja, owner/operator at Dabaja Brothers.
Each metro Detroit site will feature ChargePoint Express Plus fast charging stations, which can deliver up to 500 kW to a single port, can fast-charge two vehicles at the same time, and are compatible with all EVs. The stations feature a proprietary cooling system to deliver peak charging speeds for sustained periods, ensuring that charging speed remains consistent.
The stations operate on the new ChargePoint Platform, which enables operators to monitor performance, adjust pricing, troubleshoot issues, and gain real-time insights to keep chargers running smoothly.
Rick Wilmer, CEO at ChargePoint, said, “This initiative will rapidly infill the ‘fast charging deserts’ across the Detroit area, allowing drivers to quickly recharge their vehicles when and where they need to.”
Read more: ChargePoint just gave its EV charging software a major AI upgrade
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Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging and Starbucks have officially opened their first DC fast charging hub together, off the I-5 in Red Bluff, California.
The 400 kW Mercedes-Benz chargers are capable of adding up to 300 miles in 10 minutes, depending on the EV, and every stall has both NACS and CCS cables – they’re fully open DC fast chargers.
Mercedes-Benz HPC North America, a joint venture between subsidiaries of Mercedes-Benz Group and renewable energy producer MN8 Energy, first announced in July 2024 that it would install DC fast chargers at Starbucks stores along Interstate 5, the main 1,400-mile north-south interstate highway on the US West Coast from Canada to Mexico. Ultimately, Mercedes plans to install fast chargers at 100 Starbucks stores across the US.
Mercedes-Benz HPC opened its first North American charging site at Mercedes-Benz USA’s headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, in November 2023 as part of an initial $1 billion charging network investment. As of the end of 2024, Mercedes had deployed over 150 operational fast chargers in the US, but it hasn’t disclosed an official number of how many chargers are currently online.
Andrew Cornelia, CEO of Mercedes-Benz HPC North America, is leaving the company at the end of the month to become global head of electrification & sustainability at Uber.
Read more: Mercedes-Benz is deploying 400 kW US-made EV fast chargers with CCS and NACS cables
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The race for autonomous driving has three fronts: software, hardware, and regulatory. For years, we’ve watched Tesla try to brute-force its way to “Full Self-Driving (FSD)” with its own custom hardware, while the rest of the automotive industry is increasingly lining up behind NVIDIA.
Now that we know Tesla’s new AI5 chip is delayed and won’t be in vehicles until 2027, it’s worth comparing the two most dominant “self-driving” chips today: Tesla’s latest Hardware 4 (AI4) and NVIDIA’s Drive Thor.
Here’s a table comparing the two chips with the best possible specs I could find. greentheonly’s teardown was particularly useful. If you find things you think are not accurate, please don’t hesitate to reach out:
| Feature / Specification | Tesla AI4 (Hardware 4.0) | NVIDIA Drive Thor (AGX / Jetson) |
|---|---|---|
| Developer / Architect | Tesla (in-house) | NVIDIA |
| Manufacturing Process | Samsung 7nm (7LPP class) | TSMC 4N (custom 5nm class) |
| Release Status | In production (shipping since 2023) | In production since 2025 |
| CPU Architecture | ARM Cortex-A72 (legacy) | ARM Neoverse V3AE (server-grade) |
| CPU Core Count | 20 cores (5× clusters of 4 cores) | 14 cores (Jetson T5000 configuration) |
| AI Performance (INT8) | ~100–150 TOPS (dual-SoC system) | 1,000 TOPS (per chip) |
| AI Performance (FP4) | Not supported / not disclosed | 2,000 TFLOPS (per chip) |
| Neural Processing Unit | 3× custom NPU cores per SoC | Blackwell Tensor Cores + Transformer Engine |
| Memory Type | GDDR6 | LPDDR5X |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | ~384 GB/s | ~273 GB/s |
| Memory Capacity | ~16 GB typical system | Up to 128 GB (Jetson Thor) |
| Power Consumption | Est. 80–100 W (system) | 40 W – 130 W (configurable) |
| Camera Support | 5 MP proprietary Tesla cameras | Scalable, supports 8MP+ and GMSL3 |
| Special Features | Dual-SoC redundancy on one board | Native Transformer Engine, NVLink-C2C |
The most striking difference right off the bat is the manufacturing process. NVIDIA is throwing everything at Drive Thor, using TSMC’s cutting-edge 4N process (a custom 5nm-class node). This allows them to pack in the new Blackwell architecture, which is essentially the same tech powering the world’s most advanced AI data centers.
Tesla, on the other hand, pulled a move that might surprise spec-sheet warriors. Teardowns confirm that AI4 is built on Samsung’s 7nm process. This is mature, reliable, and much cheaper than TSMC’s bleeding-edge nodes.
When you look at the compute power, NVIDIA claims a staggering 2,000 TFLOPS for Thor. But there’s a catch. That number uses FP4 (4-bit floating point) precision, a new format designed specifically for the Transformer models used in generative AI.
Tesla’s AI4 is estimated to hit around 100-150 TOPS (INT8) across its dual-SoC redundant system. On paper, it looks like a slaughter, but Tesla made a very specific engineering trade-off that tells us exactly what was bottling up their software: memory bandwidth.
Tesla switched from LPDDR4 in HW3 to GDDR6 in HW4, the same power-hungry memory you find in gaming graphics cards (GPUs). This gives AI4 a massive memory bandwidth of approximately 384 GB/s, compared to Thor’s 273 GB/s (on the single-chip Jetson config) using LPDDR5X.
This suggests Tesla’s vision-only approach, which ingests massive amounts of raw video from high-res cameras, was starving for data.
Based on Elon Musk’s comments that Tesla’s AI5 chip will have 5x the memory bandwidth, it sounds like it might still be Tesla’s bottleneck.
Here is where Tesla’s cost-cutting really shows. AI4 is still running on ARM Cortex-A72 cores, an architecture that is nearly a decade old. They bumped the core count to 20, but it’s still old tech.
NVIDIA Thor, meanwhile, uses the ARM Neoverse V3AE, a server-grade CPU explicitly designed for the modern software-defined vehicle. This allows Thor to run not just the autonomous driving stack, but the entire infotainment system, dashboard, and potentially even an in-car AI assistant, all on one chip.
Thor has found many takers, especially among Tesla EV competitors such as BYD, Zeekr, Lucid, Xiaomi, and many more.
Electrek’s Take
There’s one thing that is not in there: price. I would assume that Tesla wins on that front, and that’s a big part of the project. Tesla developed a chip that didn’t exist, and that it needed.
It was an impressive feat, but it doesn’t make Tesla an incredible leader in silicon for self-driving.
Tesla is maxing out AI4. It now uses both chips, making it less likely to achieve the redundancy levels you need to deliver level 4-5 autonomy.
Meanwhile, we don’t have a solution for HW3 yet and AI5 is apparently not coming to save the day until 2027.
By then, there will likely be millions of vehicles on the road with NVIDIA Thor processors.
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