Non-bike bike gear tested: Turning any helmet into a headlight with BioLite
The best way I’ve found to reduce or eliminate car usage in a city is with an electric bike. But in the winter, nights come at you early, and it’s more important than ever to ensure that as cyclists, we’re visible to the biggest danger on the roads: car drivers. I’ve been testing out a new headlamp called the BioLite HeadLamp 800 Pro that isn’t specifically meant for cyclists, but has proven perfect for me as a way to add both front and rear LED lighting to pretty much any helmet.
That’s a major part of this series, often finding cool gear that might not have been originally meant for us as e-bikers, but that works great and can be co-opted to make car-replacing electric bikes even better and easier to use.
I love helmets that have built-in LED illumination. While most electric bikes come with their own headlights, having a higher-mounted LED makes riders even more visible. These are usually lower power be-seen lights, though the ability to actually shine light in an area you want to quickly glance at is a major superpower for those early winter nights on poorly lit trails and bike lanes. Light is good, but directional light is great.
The downside of helmet-based lights is that you’re limited to the few manufacturers that actually do incorporate them, and even then the lights are usually fairly weak. Even though there are great options out there (I love the helmet offered by Electric Bike Company for its 100% customizable paint job and built-in LED lighting), adding lighting to your own helmet can save money and give you a wider range of options for helmet features. I’ve been testing out the HeadLamp 800 Pro from BioLite for use as a cycling light, and this thing is darn near perfect for riding at night or in other low-visibility scenarios like rain/snow storms.
Like most headlamps, it’s easy to adjust it to fit just about any helmet, instantly giving you old-school mining helmet vibes. It’s also got a coating inside the bands that makes it lock onto the shell without sliding around like an old underwear waistband. I don’t ride without a helmet often, but it’s still comfortable right on your head or over a knit hat, if you like to go sans brain bucket.
Unlike my hiking headlamps that have been dancing around in my camping gear bags for nearly a decade, this thing is much lower profile so it doesn’t add a lot of bulk or momentum when turning my head around while cycling. I do a lot of shoulder checks, so not having something heavy out for in front of my face is important to me.
As far as lighting levels, there are plenty. The low brightness mode is just 5 lumens, so I don’t really use that one except when all I want is to be seen by drivers. Usually I like having more light thrown out in front of me to serve as my own headlight. The 250-lumen medium mode and 500-lumen high mode are great for everyday cycling use. There’s an even higher 800-lumen mode, but that’s more than I need and I don’t want to blind drivers, either. And it’s easy to adjust between the front spot light modes, flood light, strobe light, and dimming options.
There’s also a red light on the rear that is perfect for cyclists like us, as it gives you a high-mounted tail light – something you’ll almost never see on a bike. Lower-mounted e-bike lights under the seat are often blocked by backpacks or winter jackets that hang lower, so a high-mounted tail light on the back of your head is a great idea. That one can also either be full-on flood light or a strobe, depending on how you prefer. I like solid lights as opposed to strobes, and your head motion will likely give the rear LED enough movement to catch drivers attention, but the strobe option is there if you like it. The front light also has a red option, which is great for when I’m camping, but I wouldn’t use that front red mode while riding as it could cause some directional confusion for other drivers and is really meant as a night vision-preservation tool outside of cycling. For camping and hiking, it’s great.
As far as run-time, I find that the built-in battery is longer than any typical commuting trip I’ll ever make. The say medium power lasts four hours of constant use and high power lasts for two hours on constant use, which I haven’t really measured because I just try to charge it around once a week to not get too low. It uses a micro-USB port to charge, which I wish was USB-C since I have more of those cords laying around, but it’s not a deal breaker for me.
If you want to keep the power up high and still have an even longer run-time than several hours, the BioLite HeadLamp 800 Pro has pass-through charging that allows you to run the light from a powerbank like you’d use to charge your phone.
I’ve tried it with the Charge 80 PD battery that BioLite sent me with the headlamp, which has massive capacity yet still fits in your pocket. It’s barely larger than a smartphone, yet can recharge a smartphone around 5 times. You could even use it to charge a laptop (which I have also done in a pinch while traveling) with the 18W USB-C PD port. I like my gear to be multi-use, and I try to avoid carrying single-use tools on principle whenever possible. So a power bank that can run my headlight, charge my phone, or come on flights with me to keep my laptop charged is a major force multiplier. (With a note towards travel, I once had to talk my way into not getting my 110Wh powerbank confiscated in a German airport, so this 75Wh power bank is a lot more airline-friendly in countries with 100Wh flight-approved battery limits).
When used with my headlamp, the Charge 80 PD powers the light with a “Run Forever” cord that includes a band clip so that the USB port isn’t put under stress while connected. That means I can keep the battery in my pocket and still have it powering or charging the headlamp. In practice, I tried this to test it out and it works well, but I’m never biking for more than a few hours in a row at night, so I haven’t really needed to run the headlamp off auxiliary power in a real-world use case – at least not yet. But if you’re taking it on a night hike then I can absolutely see that scenario being useful.
The only downside that jumps out at me is the price, since the BioLite HeadLamp 800 Pro is rather expensive at $99.95. Since I’m used to my 10-year-old camping headlamp from REI that owes me nothing, that seems steep initially. But then again, this thing lasts so much longer, doesn’t require AAA batteries, is around 8x as powerful, is built out of aluminum for long-lasting ruggedness, and gives me a rear red LED light that’s perfect for cyclists.
It’s also not light, at 5.3 oz or around 150g. That’s a third of a pound or so. But I find that I don’t notice the extra weight after a minute or two, and the low-profile design helps it stay close to the helmet.
BioLite also has other models with some of the same features, though not quite as tricked out, for significantly less. So if you like the idea of adding front and rear LED lights to your helmet and can get away with fewer lumens or other features, they’ve got other options there too.
Lastly, I should probably note that helmet manufacturers usually say not to add things to helmets as it changes how they react in a crash.
Your bike helmet was certified in its naked form, so adding things like lights, GoPro mounts, and other foreign attachments is considered a “no-no” by helmet companies, even if everyone still does it.
The nice thing about adding something like the HeadLamp 800 Pro is that it is merely held on by an elastic band and thus likely has more freedom to move or slide out of the way in a crash. That doesn’t mean it necessarily will, and anything external added to a helmet probably reduces its performance in a crash compared to stock, but I feel like the ability for an elastic band to simply slide off is better than rigidly mounted objects like GoPro mounts that create non-moving stress risers. But hey, that’s just my two cents. Helmet manufacturers will still tell you to keep it clean.
Read more: Non-bike bike gear review: Foldylock Forever is the most secure folding bike lock
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Tesla’s earnings report dropped today, and news isn’t great. But instead of recognizing his failures that have led to Tesla’s downturn, CEO Elon Musk lashed out with conspiracy theories while also hypocritically failing to acknowledge that his company was only profitable this quarter due to regulatory credits.
The numbers are in on Tesla’s dismal quarter, with sales, profits and margins tanking significantly for the company despite a rising global EV market.
You’d expect a drop in car sales to be top of mind for a car company, but instead of talking about this, CEO Elon Musk opened the call by talking about his ineffective advisory role to a former reality TV host.
Musk is heading up the self-styled “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory group that is focused on reducing redundancy in government. The office is not an actual government department and has a redundant mission to the Government Accountability Office, which is an actual government department focused on reducing government waste.
Musk originally claimed that the department would be able to save $2 trillion for the US government, which is actually impossible because federal discretionary spending is $1.7 trillion, which is a (gets out abacus) smaller number than $2 trillion.
He has, of course, failed at this task that anyone with any level of competence would have known was impossible before setting it out for themselves, and now projects that the department will save $150 billion next year, less than a tenth of his original estimate. But even that projection is likely an overstatement, given that most of the supposed savings that DOGE has found are not actual savings at all.
On top of this, the US government’s deficit has grown to the second-highest level on record – with the first happening in 2020, the last time Mr. Trump squatted in the White House. Which means the government isn’t saving money, it is in fact borrowing and spending more of it than ever before.
So, Musk’s tenure in the advisory board has been an unmitigated failure by any realistic account.
But if you listened to Tesla’s call, you wouldn’t have known this, as Musk was quite boastful of his efforts – starting a Tesla conference call with an irrelevant rant about his fake government department, instead of with Tesla business.
He claimed that he has made “a lot of progress in addressing waste and fraud” and that the job is “mostly done,” which is not correct by his own metrics. Musk stated that his purpose is “trying to bring in the insane deficit that is leading our country, the United States, to destruction,” and as we covered above, that deficit has only increased.
But he also went on to spew some rather insane conspiracy theories about the reasons behind his company’s recent failures, all of which of course put the blame on someone else, rather than himself. The buck stops anywhere but here, I guess.
His primary assertion was that the “blowback from the time I’ve been spending in government” (which, again, is an advisory role, not an actual government position) has come mainly from protesters that were “receiving fraudulent money” and are now angry that the government money spigot has been turned off.
Which, of course, he’s provided no evidence for… and he’s provided no evidence for it because it’s false.
Besides, that’s not how protests work. But incorrect claims that protests do work that way are often used by opponents of free speech, with the motivation of putting a chilling effect public participation. Fitting behavior for an enemy of the First Amendment like Elon Musk.
Meanwhile, this assertion also comes from a person who tried and failed to bribe voters to win an election. Perhaps his admiration of Tesla protesters is aspirational – he wishes his ideas were good enough to inspire that sort of grassroots political effort that money, demonstrably, cannot buy.
But this hypocrisy extends beyond Musk’s hatred of free expression, and strikes at the heart of the business he is the titular leader of, Tesla, the organization that has made him into the richest man in the world. Because not only is it not true that Tesla protests are driven by his ineffective government actions (they are, in fact, driven by him doing Nazi stuff all the time), it’s also objectively true that Musk’s companies are a large recipient of government money.
And that’s particularly relevant today, to the very earnings call where Musk made his ridiculous assertion, because in Q1 2025, Tesla only turned a profit due to government credits. Without them, it would have lost money.
Tesla only profitable in Q1 due to regulatory credits
Per today’s earnings report, Tesla earned $595 million in regulatory credits in Q1. But its total net income for the quarter was $409 million.
This means that without those regulatory credits, Tesla would have posted a -$189 million loss in Q1. It was saved not just by credit sales, but credit sales which increased year over year – in the year-ago quarter, Tesla made $442 million in regulatory credits, despite having higher sales in Q1 2024 than in Q1 2025. So not only were credits higher, but credits per vehicle were higher.
This is a common feature of Tesla earnings, and we even said in our earnings preview that we expected it. While Tesla had a bad quarter, nobody expected it to become actually unprofitable, because there was always the possibility of increasing regulatory credit sales to eke out a profitable quarter.
And this has been the case many times in Tesla’s past, as well. In earlier times, Tesla’s first few profitable quarters were decried by the company’s opponents as an accounting trick, suggesting that regulatory credit sales weren’t “real” profits, and that the cars should have to stand on their own.
This is a silly thing to say – businesses do business in the environment that exists, and every business has an incentive structure that includes subsidies and externalities. If we were to selectively write off certain profits for certain businesses, we could make a tortured case that any business isn’t profitable.
Plus, these opponents didn’t extend the same treatment to the oil industry, which is subsidized to the tune of $760 billion per year in the US alone in unpriced externalities, yet that is somehow never mentioned during their earnings calls.
Musk has even claimed, probably correctly, that if all subsidies were eliminated both for EVs and for oil & gas, that EVs would come out ahead compared to the status quo (more recently, Musk has become one of the biggest funders of anti-EV forces, allying himself with a bought-and-paid oil stooge who is giving even more preferential treatment to the oil industry).
But, setting aside the debate over whether credits are valid profits (they are), for years now we’ve been well beyond Tesla’s reliance on credits. The company has produced significant profits, regardless of credit sales, for some time now.
At least, until today. That’s no longer true – Tesla did rely on credits to become profitable in Q1. And Musk starting the call with a ridiculous rant about government handouts not only shows his hypocrisy and projection on this matter, but his detachment from reality itself. He is, truly, too stuck in the impenetrable echo chamber of his self-congratulating twitter feed to realize what an embarrassment he’s being in public – to the point of inventing shadow enemies to explain the very real, very simple explanation that people aren’t buying his company’s cars because he sucks so much.
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No matter how badly a fleet wants to electrify their operations and take advantage of reduced fuel costs and TCO, the fact remains that there are substantial up-front obstacles to commercial EV adoption … or are there? We’ve got fleet financing expert Guy O’Brien here to help walk us through it on today’s fiscally responsible episode of Quick Charge!
This conversation was motivated by the recent uncertainty surrounding EVs and EV infrastructure at the Federal level, and how that turmoil is leading some to believe they should wait to electrify. The truth? There’s never been a better time to make the switch!
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Vermont’s EV adoption has surged by an impressive 41% over the past year, with nearly 18,000 EVs now registered statewide.
According to data from Drive Electric Vermont and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, 17,939 EVs were registered as of January 2025, increasing by 5,185 vehicles. Notably, over 12% of all new cars registered last year in Vermont had a plug. Additionally, used EVs are gaining popularity, accounting for about 15% of new EV registrations.
To put it in perspective, Vermont took six years to register its first 5,000 EVs – and the last 5,000 were added in just the previous year.
Rapid growth, expanding infrastructure
In just two years, Vermont has doubled its fleet of EVs, underscoring residents’ enthusiasm for electric driving. To support this surge, the state now boasts 459 public EV chargers, including 92 DC fast chargers.
The EV mix in Vermont is leaning increasingly toward BEVs, which represent 60% of the state’s EV fleet. The remaining 40% consists of PHEVs, offering flexible fuel options for drivers.
Top EV models in Vermont
Vermont’s favorite EVs in late 2024 included the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Ariya, Toyota RAV4 Prime PHEV, Tesla Model Y, and the Ford F-150 Lightning. These vehicles have appealed to Vermont drivers looking for reliability, performance, and practical features that work well in Vermont’s climate.
Leading the US in reducing emissions
This strong adoption of EVs earned Vermont the top ranking from the Natural Resources Defense Council for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in transportation in 2023. “It’s only getting easier for Vermonters to drive electric,” noted Michele Boomhower, Vermont’s Department of Transportation director. She emphasized the growing variety of EV models, including electric trucks and SUVs with essential features like all-wheel drive, crucial for Vermont’s climate and terrain.
Local dealerships boost EV accessibility
Nucar Automall, an auto dealer in St. Albans, is a great example of local support driving this trend. With help from Efficiency Vermont’s EV dealer incentives – receiving $25,000 through the EV Readiness Incentive program – it recently installed 15 EV chargers for new buyers and existing drivers to use.
“Having these chargers on the lot makes it easier for customers to see just how simple charging an EV can be,” said Ryan Ortiz, general manager at Nucar Automall. Ortiz also pointed out the growing affordability of EVs, thanks to more models becoming available and an increase in pre-owned EVs coming off leases.
Read more: Vermont becomes the first US state to pass a law requiring Big Oil to pay for climate damage
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