Rad Power Bikes unveils 4 new e-bikes & faster speeds in biggest shakeup yet
Rad Power Bikes, the Seattle-based electric bike maker that spent years at the top of the US e-bike sellers list, has occasionally rolled out major updates alongside the launch of a new model. But today the company is announcing the biggest shakeup in its history, simultaneously debuting two brand new e-bike models, two majorly updated e-bike models, and new battery technology that could help push the industry towards safer batteries. The Rad lineup is now welcoming the new Radster Road and Radster Trail e-bikes, as well as the RadWagon 5 and the RadExpand 5 Plus models.
As Rad Power Bikes CEO Phil Molyneux explained:
“With even greater versatility in our fleet and new, innovative e-bike battery technology that will elevate the industry in its entirety, we’re taking a significant step towards a world where e0bikes are built for everyone and have the power to do just about anything. Over the last two years, I have worked closely with our supply chain and quality leaders, overhauling our processes to make this next generation of e-bikes the very best for our riders. This launch marks the latest step we’ve taken to ensure the long-term success of both the e-bike space and Rad.”
In addition to the new e-bike models, Rad Power Bikes is unveiling its new Safe Shield Battery. The redesigned battery was developed to mitigate growing concerns over battery safety by incorporating thermal-resistant technology.
In addition to being UL-certified, the batteries use potted electronics construction to encapsulate the battery cells and better protect them from damage, moisture, and other disruptions that could cause short circuits.
The battery is rated at 48V 15Ah with 720Wh of capacity, making it not only the company’s safest and most advanced e-bike battery, but Rad’s largest capacity and longest-range battery to date.
The Safe Shield Battery will debut on Rad’s newly unveiled e-bike models, but will also be available as an upgrade to many of the company’s existing e-bikes.
The first major addition to the Rad Power Bikes lineup announced today is the Radster family, which consists of the Radster Trail and the Radster Road models.
The two bikes share many similarities, differing largely in their use cases. The Radster Trail has wider 3-inch “mid-fat” tires, while the Radster Road has narrower 2.2-inch tires. The bikes also have slightly different frames and fenders that are each suited to different terrain and styles of riding.
Ultimately though, the Radster e-bikes are more similar than they are different. Each includes several new features, such as a new color LCD displays with USB-C charging port, rear turn signals, a torque sensor for more natural and responsive pedal assist, IPX6 water resistance, hydraulic disc brakes, NFC key-fob for locking the bike without a physical key, a thru-axle front wheel hub for stronger and more robust connection, a more powerful 200-lumen headlight, the new Safe Shield Battery, and come in two frame sizes of Regular and Large.
Perhaps the biggest update of all though is the inclusion of Class 3 capabilities. Both bikes come with multiple speed settings, allowing riders to reach up to 20 mph (32 km/h) on throttle operation, as well as two additional settings that can be unlocked to reach 25 mph or 28 mph (40 or 45 km/h) on pedal assist.
This marks the first time Rad has produced e-bikes that surpass the 20 mph Class 2 speed limit, ushering in a new higher-speed era for the company.
Both the Radster Road and Radster Trail are priced at US $1,999 and are available now on the company’s website.
Rad Power Bikes also launched the new Rad Expand 5 Plus, which takes the brand’s entry-level folding model and upgrades it with several higher-end components and features in line with Rad’s more premium “Plus” family of e-bikes.
The Rad Expand 5 Plus also gets the new Safe Shield Battery, color LCD screen with USB-C charging port, IPX6 water-resistance, rear turn signals, hydraulic disc brakes, torque sensor pedal assist, 200-lumen headlight, and a bolt-on front wheel hub for a stronger connection.
The 20 mph (32 km/h) e-bike includes a 50mm travel hydraulic suspension fork, 20″x4″ fat tires, and features a folding design that makes it easier to transport in a vehicle or store in a tight space.
The Rad Expand 5 Plus is priced at US $1,899.
Rad Power Bikes also unveiled its newest cargo bike, the RadWagon 5.
The new model takes advantage of many of Rad’s feature upgrades, such as that new color LCD display with USB-C charging port, torque sensor pedal assist, IPX6 weather resistance, turn signals, thru-axle front wheel hub, and 3 top speed settings maxing out at 28 mph (45 km/h).
The bike is rated for up to 375 lb (170 kg) of cargo capacity, making it easy to carry passengers or plenty of extra cargo in back. The frame has also been updated with a more “condensed” design that also lowers the center of gravity to improve handling. New running boards and deck pads will also be available, offering a more stylish and comfortable ride for rear passengers.
The RadWagon 5 is priced at US $2,199 and is already available on Rad’s website.
Electrek’s Take
Wow, there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll try to hit these many different points succinctly.
Rad Power Bikes Safe Shield Battery: I think it’s hard to overstate how pivotal this will be for the e-bike industry. Potted batteries are the single safest way to build e-bike batteries. To be frank, UL certification is nice but it doesn’t mean what most people think it does, and several UL-listed batteries have met a fiery end. UL-listing can give added peace of mind, but as we’ve heard from battery experts before, it’s not that hard to achieve and doesn’t mean the battery is actually that safe. Potted batteries are the true best practice for physical safety, and they’re almost non-existent outside of Luna Cycle’s potted e-bike batteries. So today’s debut from Rad is major news.
Class 3 speed: Wow, it’s about time. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see Rad finally get the need… the need for speed. I think their hand was basically forced here, though. Similar to how throttle-less e-bikes are hamstrung in sales among American riders, Class 2 e-bikes are starting to get passed over by many American customers who prefer the option of riding faster when and where appropriate.
New electronics: It’s cool to see major electronic updates like NFC key fob for unlocking, color display with USB-C device charging, rear turn signals, etc. None of this is groundbreaking, and to be honest we’ve seen it all (perhaps except the USB-C device charging) on cheaper e-bikes for years, but it’s great to see Rad hop on board with what is presumably a better quality version of many of these components we’ve seen before. The big new thing though is the torque sensor, which is truly great to see. This is another feature that Rad took its sweet time on, but now it’s here and I think many riders will be discovering just how much nicer a good torque sensor can be.
New mechanics: Hydraulic disc brakes now being employed basically across the entire higher-end Rad line is big, as well as the new more robust front axles – even if they’re largely there because the lawyers like them now. The new frame on the RadWagon 5 looks interesting, I’m excited to review all of these to see how they feel.
To sum up my feelings, here’s what I’d say. The spec sheets all look incredible. The prices are high, but that’s Rad’s new MO. It appears the company doesn’t want to compete on price, which is probably a smart move when Lectric is dominating there and plenty of fly-by-night e-bike companies pop up every week with cheap new e-bikes.
Instead, Rad’s new strategy appears to be competing on substance, namely with higher-end parts and more sophisticated design. That means higher prices, and the jury is still out on how the e-bike market at large will respond to these new models. It’s a gamble since Rad spent years leading in the entry-level price segment before it found itself getting more elbows in its ribs from all the other competition crowding into that segment. So now that the company is aiming for a spot higher up on the quality ladder, we’ll have to see if Rad sticks the landing.
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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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