Zealot X review: The 30 mph electric skateboard with a surprisingly fun twist
The Backfire Zealot X electric skateboard isn’t just fast and powerful. In addition to both of those traits, it’s also got another fun trick up its sleeve that will have you getting noticed everywhere you go.
The performance is there, of course. It’s a blast to ride. But with the 360-degree surround LED lighting, the skateboard is somehow even more visible to car drivers at night compared to during the day.
You’ve got to check out what it’s like in my video review below, then keep reading for all of the other details, including the build quality and performance.
Backfire Zealot X video review
Backfire Zealot X tech specs
- Motors: Dual rear 1,500W 6358 belt drive motors (3,000W total)
- Battery: 14s 2p (504 Wh) battery
- Range: 34 miles (55 km)
- Top speed: 31 mph (50 km/h)
- Max hill climb gradient: Up to 35%
- Max load: 240 lb. (110 kg)
- Weight: 24.6 lb. (11.2 kg)
- Price: $1,199
How does it ride?
The Backfire Zealot X is a great board for anyone looking for a street ride that combines good speed and power in a fairly lightweight and affordable package. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.
Let’s jump into the feel first.
With a pair of 1,500W motors, it’s much faster and more powerful than most people will need, yet still has the performance to keep seasoned skaters interested.
The higher voltage 14s battery is where that extra speed and power is really coming from. It also uses larger Samsung cells to create a higher capacity pack than a lot of other boards in this price class. Cruising at reasonable speeds can definitely net you a solid 20 miles (32 km) of range, and relaxed speeds can push the range closer to 30 miles (51 km).
But of course it’s the higher-speed riding that will be the board’s claim to fame. I can get up to nearly 30 mph (51 km/h) on it, though I tend to feel better in the mid 20s of mph.
Part of that is because the board is just stiffer than I expected. It’s made of several layers of maple, glass fiber, and ABS plastic, and I have no doubt that it’s rugged. But that also means it doesn’t have the same give to it as a purely laminated maple or bamboo board. At top speed, that translates into feeling more road vibration.
Interestingly, the deck is also fairly flat. It has a slight concavity, but it’s pretty gentle. I would have preferred a bit more of a cupped shape to give me a better feel of the edges of the board, especially when carving. It’s not really an issue, I can ride the board just fine and it’s comfortable, but a slightly more concave deck would have been even better. And let’s get real, I’m not going 45 degrees into the turns either, so it works just fine for me.
What about the remote?
The Backfire Zealot X remote is functionally similar to many pistol-grip electric skateboard remotes out there, but I like the way Backfire molds it slightly differently.
It’s also got some great features built in, like a fingerprint unlock for security. It’s unlikely it will be used as an anti-theft device (just keep your board with you and don’t lock it up outside like a bike), but it would work that way too, just in case. In reality, it’s probably better used as a way to prevent people from messing with your board. Those pesky roommates can’t ride your board if they can’t turn it on.
I also like the one-button wake feature. You can turn on your board directly from the remote, no need to bend over and find another button on the board!
Quite a light show!
Now let’s talk about the light show, which is where this board really shines… literally.
There’s a blue LED light strip wrapped around the entirety of the deck. It’s illuminated from the hand remote and you can turn it on and off at any time.
It’s hard to explain just how cool this looks without seeing it in person, but hopefully the GIF below gives you a sense of the effect. It’s like you’re skating around on a cloud of blue light. There’s 100% no way anyone can ever claim they didn’t see you.
When it comes to safety and night time visibility, this is so much better than any LED dot lights on the front or rear of the board. I usually recommend helmet lights or other LED lights mounted up high when riding electric skateboards since deck lights are mounted so low, but these deck lights are visible enough that they could serve as your only lighting in a pinch.
Is it worth it?
At $1,199, the Backfire Zealot X isn’t the most affordable board out there. Backfire has done a good job though at splitting the difference between super-low-cost electric skateboard companies and the higher-end, more premium models. It’s truly a great Goldilocks option for a middle-of-the-road board.
It’s fast enough for 90% of riders, it’s powerful enough to handle steep hills, and it’s so visible that it wins extra points from me there. The inclusion of larger 120mm wheels is a nice option to be able to ride higher and on more varied terrain, or just not get shaken around as much by sidewalk cracks.
For $1,199, I feel like this board is quite fairly priced for what you’re getting. Budget shoppers may want to pass this one up for a board with less battery capacity and fewer features to find a lower price. But if you can swing the twelve hundred bucks, I think you’ll be very happy with the Backfire Zealot X.
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Environment
The global critical minerals race is heating up — and rare earths stocks are skyrocketing
A wheel loader takes ore to a crusher at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020.
Steve Marcus | Reuters
The emergence of critical minerals as a new arena of geopolitical competition has coincided with a dizzying rally in U.S.-listed rare earths mining stocks.
Despite paring gains in recent weeks, shares of Critical Metals have advanced 241% over the last three months, while NioCorp Developments, Energy Fuels and Idaho Strategic Resources have all surged well above 100% over the same period.
The eye-watering gains are even more remarkable year-to-date. Energy Fuels’ stock price has quadrupled through the first 10 months of the year, while NioCorp Developments’ shares have nearly quintupled.
Rare earths have come to the fore as a key bargaining chip in the ongoing geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies.
Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals, which has one of the world’s largest rare earths deposits in southern Greenland, described the rally of U.S.-listed rare earths miners as evidence of a major market boom.
“I talk of it like this, I mean, there have been four big booms. You had the gold boom in the 19th century, the oil boom in the 20th century, in the early 21st century you had the tech boom — and now you’ve got the rare earths boom,” Sage told CNBC by telephone.
“But the rare earths boom is the future. It will power all of the above.”
We are going from a philosophy of ‘fill the gap’ through imports to ‘mine the gap’ domestically or regionally.
Audun Martinsen
Head of supply chain research at Rystad Energy
Rare earths refer to 17 elements on the periodic table that have an atomic structure that gives them special magnetic properties. These materials are vital components to a vast array of modern technologies, from everyday electronics, such as smartphones, to electric vehicles and military equipment.
China, which has a near-monopoly on rare earths, recently threatened to expand its export controls on the elements to further leverage its dominance of the supply chain. However, following an in-person meeting in South Korea on Thursday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing agreed to delay the Oct. 9 export controls by one year.
U.S.-listed rare earths stocks rallied on the news, although analysts remain skeptical about whether the apparent trade truce can offer long-term relief.
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they hold a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Busan, South Korea, October 30, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
“As in all booms, there were a lot of oil companies that couldn’t find oil and there were a lot of gold companies that couldn’t find gold. And I’m sure there are going to be a lot of rare earths companies that won’t make it either — because when there’s a boom, there’s hype. And when there’s hype, there’s overexuberance in investing,” Critical Metals’ Sage said.
“It’s not a straight rise up. It’s a jagged line, but the trend is in the right direction if you’ve got the right project in the right place, and you’ve got the right partners,” he added.
‘A much bigger and longer supercycle’
Kevin Das, senior technical consultant at New Frontier Minerals, an Australian-based rare earths explorer, agreed with Sage’s description of a rare earths market boom, while acknowledging the likelihood of stock price pullbacks.
“People are saying we’re in an uptrend on what is a bigger supercycle and some of the evidence behind that is there has been low commodity prices for some time, there’s been underinvestment. And now, with the advent of AI … we’re going to see a much bigger and longer supercycle,” Das told CNBC by telephone.
Das drew parallels between the Biden administration’s support of clean energy projects, which coincided with a rally in lithium-related stocks, and the Trump administration’s backing of rare earths.
Shares of Critical Metals over the last three months.
“In the last nine to 10 months that Trump has been in power, he’s talked about annexing Greenland, he’s talked about doing a deal with Ukraine for rare earths and then the real clincher was this equity deal with MP Materials,” Das said.
“So, I think the runway over the next two to three years is going to be very fruitful,” he added.
Not everyone is as bullish on the outlook for rare earths-related stocks, however.
Audun Martinsen, head of supply chain research at Rystad Energy, said the recent surge in equity prices reflected a mix of geopolitical tension, strategic policy support and speculative momentum.
“Rare earths have clearly moved to the center of global industrial strategy, vital for defense, EVs and clean energy, but this looks more like the early stages of a structural shift than a mature ‘fourth boom,'” Martinsen told CNBC by email.
Neodymium is displayed at the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. factory in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, on Wednesday, May 5, 2010.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“We are going from a philosophy of ‘fill the gap’ through imports to ‘mine the gap’ domestically or regionally,” he continued. “It will be a lengthy, expensive and rocky path forward as adequate, cost-effective resources and element diversity are complex to get full control over.”
Clean energy transition
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University, said there were two clear factors at work as global competition intensifies to secure the supply of critical minerals — one structural and the other political.
“The structural: Despite whatever political attempts there may be to stop or derail things, the clean-energy transition is happening — and it is accelerating — and yes, it depends on a number of critical minerals, whose prices are bound to jump,” Wagner told CNBC by email.
China, for instance, is the low-cost supplier of many of these minerals, Wagner said, noting that the Asian giant’s mineral dominance is by no means an accident.
“Beijing has invested heavily in green industrial policy for years, focusing on the full, integrated supply chain. That’s where politics enters,” Wagner said.
“Some attempts to onshore supply chains are eminently justified for national security and other reasons, and those attempts will increase prices and stocks of U.S. mining companies. Some of what we see, of course, is merely the current politics or erratic trade wars and the like,” he added.
For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a sidebar survey about how much Electrek readers think it would cost to add EV charging systems to their homes. After receiving over twenty-four hundred responses, here’s what you told us.
In our previous survey, we asked readers why they chose to install solar panels at home. In the recap, many of our commenters mentioned having their systems systems pull double duty — charging home backup batteries and topping off their electric cars. That got us thinking: as more and more first-time EV owners look into the many benefits of home charging, how much do they expect to pay for home charging?
Based on over 2,400 responses, this is what you told us.
What do you expect to pay for home charging?
The most positive surprise was that more than a third of Electrek readers who responded to the poll already had 240V outlets in their garage, so they expected to pay effectively $0 – their homes are EV ready now!
Of the remaining 64%, 44% were fairly evenly split between a relatively straightforward ~$500-1,000 wiring job with a few wiring or panel upgrades while only about 18% expected to spend over $1,000 due to having an older home, a detached garage, or for some other (apparently pricey and/or inconvenient) reason.
Navigating the questions
Just like you would for home solar, we’d recommend getting a quote from several installers before making a decision. One of our trusted partners, Qmerit, offers a quote-sourcing service called PowerHouse. The service scans pricing from thousands of completed electrification installations across North America to provide the best quotes that take regional variability into account and work with homeowners to “bundle” chargers, installation, and even batteries.
America has arrived at an inflection point in which all of the technical, policy and financial elements are in place to support a societal shift toward whole-home electrification. Now what’s needed is a comprehensive way to assemble these complex elements into a simple, financeable, home-energy retrofit that makes it easier to implement.
QMERIT FOUNDER TRACY PRICE
Qmerit says its new bundling program can flag the potential for federal, state, and local utility incentives like the ones we’ve covered from Illinois utility ComEd and others that can reduce or even eliminate the upfront costs of home installations for many.
Original content from Electrek.
If you drive an electric vehicle, make charging at home fast, safe, and convenient with a Level 2 charger installed by Qmerit. As the nation’s most trusted EV charger installation network, Qmerit connects you with licensed, background-checked electricians who specialize in EV charging. You’ll get a quick online estimate, upfront pricing, and installation backed by Qmerit’s nationwide quality guarantee. Their pros follow the highest safety standards so you can plug in at home with total peace of mind.
Ready to charge smarter? Get started today with Qmerit (trusted affiliate).
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Following a lawsuit brought against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by major heavy truck manufacturers over California’s emissions requirements, CARB has struck back with fresh lawsuit of its own alleging that the manufacturers violated the terms of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership agreement to sell cleaner vehicles.
Daimler Truck North America, International Motors, Paccar and Volvo Group North America sued the California Air Resources Board in federal court this past August, seeking to invalidate the Clean Truck Partnership emissions reduction deal they signed with the state in 2023 to move away from traditional trucks and toward zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). The main point of the lawsuit was that, because the incoming Trump Administration rolled back Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that had previously given individual states the right to set their own environmental and emissions laws, the truck makers shouldn’t have to honor the deals signed with individual states.
“Plaintiffs are caught in the crossfire: California demands that OEMs follow preempted laws; the United States maintains such laws are illegal and orders OEMs to disregard them,” the lawsuit reads. “Accordingly, Plaintiff OEMs file this lawsuit to clarify their legal obligations under federal and state law and to enjoin California from enforcing standards preempted by federal law.”
After several weeks of waiting for a response, we finally have one: CARB is suing the OEMs right back, claiming that the initial suit proves the signing manufacturers, “(have) unambiguously stated that they do not intend to comply.”
They want to sell Americans more diesel
In its lawsuit, CARB argues that monetary damages alone would not make the people of the State of California whole as far as damages are concerned, citing that the stated goal of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership was, “to achieve emissions reductions that cannot be measured strictly in financial terms,” according to ACT-News.
The agency is asking the court to compel the truck companies to perform on their 2023 obligations or, failing that, to allow CARB to rescind the contract and recover its costs. A hearing on the truck makers’ request for a preliminary injunction was held Friday, with another court date set for November 21, when CARB will seek to dismiss the case brought forth by the truck brands. The outcome of these cases could shape how state and federal government agencies cooperation on emissions rules in the future.
You can read the full 22-page lawsuit, below, then let us know what you think of CARB’s response (and their chances of succeeding) in the comments.
SOURCES: CARB; via ACT-News, Trucking Dive.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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