Move over, electric Vespa. Get nervous, NIU. There’s a new seated electric scooter in town, and it’s got better performance at a lower price. Meet the CSC ES5, an electric scooter that packs in plenty of power, speed, and range without a sky-high price.
CSC Motorcycles, headquartered in southern California, is no stranger to electric motorcycles and scooters. After several decades of imports and sales of gasoline-powered motorbikes, the company began expanding its lineup into electrics back in 2018.
In the last five years, the CSC badge has graced four unique models offering everything from city commuting to highway riding. Now the CSC ES5 has become the fifth electric model offered by CSC (if you don’t count the company’s several electric bicycles).
The ES5 isn’t a slow scooter like CSC’s retro-styled Monterey, yet it isn’t a fast 80 mph (130 km/h) highway bike like the CSC RX1E either.
At 52.8 mph (85 km/h), this electric scooter splits the difference with enough speed to take riders on pretty much any road in the city. Urban highways might be within the question, though interstates aren’t likely to be a fun experience on a 52 mph scooter.
With urban commuter-level speeds, the CSC ES5 is obviously meant for daily commuting and utility riding, not pleasure cruises. But it’s still quite peppy with a 5 kW belt-driving centrally mounted motor. That’s the continuous power, too. The peak power is rated at 8 kW.
And the ride is likely to last for a while too, thanks to a set of three 60V and 31Ah lithium-ion batteries. Together, that means riders get 5.58 kWh of capacity, but divided into batteries small enough to carry inside for charging if you don’t already have a convenient garage charging option (I see you, fellow apartment dwellers!).
CSC says that the scooter’s range at a steady 31 mph (50 km/h) is around 68 miles (110 km). In my experience, CSC generally gives realistic performance figures that are often even slightly lower than what riders actually achieve in real-world conditions. It’s a nice departure from the industry standard of quoting amazing performance specs measured in a vacuum with an 80 lb. rider going full tuck in a spandex body suit.
Now if you’re cruising at the scooter’s 53 mph top speed all the time, you definitely won’t achieve that full 68 miles of range. But since very few cities are 68 miles across, you’ll probably be fine with enough range to last for a few days of riding.
With a pre-order price of US $4,995 and an MSRP of US $5,295 (not including another $410 in dealer fees), the CSC ES5 is quite favorably priced compared to the competition.
The closest comparison is likely the NIU MQi Sport Extended Range. For US $6,199, you’re getting a top speed of 43 mph (70 km/h), a motor power of 3.1 kW and a battery capacity of 4.03 kWh. Or in other words, for 15% more money, the NIU gives you 20% less speed, 28% less battery, and 38% less power.
NIU has a very nice app with excellent smart features such as GPS location, as well as a wider dealer network, but there’s no denying that the CSC ES5 is taking a major shot at the established players with serious bang for your buck.
And that’s before you consider the ES5’s other features, such as keyless start, full-color TFT instrument display, Bluetooth audio player, and built-in dash camera for recording rides (either for posterity or for legal reasons).
There’s even seating for two with a set of pillion pegs and rear grab bars, just in case your pillion happens to be another dude that needs to preserve his masculinity by not holding your waist. I tell my wife it’s safer to hold me, partly because it’s true, and partly because I like the way it feels.
Available in three colorways, the CSC ES5 is currently taking pre-orders with a fully refundable $300 deposit ahead of deliveries expected to begin later this year.
Electrek’s Take
I’m very excited to see CSC’s latest electric addition. This scooter definitely looks better than the CSC Wiz they first marketed in 2019, and it’s got better specs too.
I’m loving that mid-motor and belt drive, especially at this price. I’m not big on blasting tunes while I’m riding, but I’m sure many people will like that Bluetooth speaker.
At nearly $5,500 all-in, it’s still considerably more expensive than a cheap gasoline-powered scooter or moped. But it’s also got major advantages over a gasoline-powered scooter. Electric scooters are much cheaper in the long term, not just due to fuel savings but also with reduced maintenance and repair. You can rack up thousands and thousands of miles with the entirety of your maintenance consisting of checking tire pressure every few weeks. Then there’s the quieter operation, the lack of vibrations or heat coming off a baking engine at red lights in the summer, and of course the environmental impact of not contributing to pumping more emissions into the air. At this point it’s a toss-up about which is the more immediately dangerous part of those emissions, the carcinogens you’re breathing in or the climate changing impact that your kids will have to deal with.
So at this price, I think CSC has a compelling new bike on their hands. It may not be as much fun as the RX1E, but it’s more affordable and better suited to city rides. So for many people, this will be the attractive, approachable electric scooter to win them over.
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.
It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.
There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.
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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.
Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.
We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.
In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”
Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:
Electrek’s Take
As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.
If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.
It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.
Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.
As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.
If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.
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CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.
The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.
The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.
“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”
Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.
EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.
“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”
Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.
At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.
The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.
Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.
MacKenzie Sigalos
Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.
Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.
Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.
Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.
Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.
“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”
Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.
MacKenzie Sigalos
Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.
Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.
Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.
Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.
BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.
Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.
“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”
Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.
EthCC
“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.
Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”
Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.
“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.
He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”
Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.
Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.
The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.
“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”
He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.
White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.
MacKenzie Sigalos
But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.
White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.
This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.
It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.