NIU KQi Air RD Electric Scooter hits new $949 low in anniversary sales
NIU has launched its anniversary sale through June 30 that is taking up to 51% off a collection of its e-scooters, like the NIU KQi Air RD Electric Scooter for $949 shipped. Down from $1,399, this is technically the first discount on this red colorway, although it is not the first discount we’ve tracked on the KQi Air series scooters, which we’ve been seeing drop to $1,049 more regularly at sites like Best Buy. Today’s deal comes in as a 32% markdown that saves you $450 and lands it at a new all-time low, both for the individual colorway and the overall series of scooters.
The NIU KQi Air is now the second-lightest available model under the NIU brand (now that the KQi Air X is officially available and shipping – with a 0.4 pounds difference), coming equipped with a 350W motor (700W peak) and a 451Wh battery that hits up to 20 MPH top speeds for up to 31 miles on a single 5-hour charge. It offers five different riding modes to choose from: E-save, sport, dynamic, pedestrian, and cruise control – with the slower speeds obviously saving you battery juice for longer rides.
It also comes with a variety of features like a front disc brake with regenerative braking, an IP55 waterproof rating, an integrated LED display, a Halo headlight, a taillight with brake light functionality, turn signals on the ends of the wide-reaching handlebar, ambient lighting on its body, a 41% wider deck, 9.5-inch tubeless tires, and an electric horn. You’ll also be able to control the settings via the companion app, which you can lock and unlock your scooter with for added security.
More NIU anniversary discounts:
EcoFlow Father’s Day sale takes up to 56% off power stations, bundles, smart devices, and accessories
Yesterday, EcoFlow launched its Father’s Day sale through June 23 that is taking up to 56% off a lineup of the company’s power stations, bundles, smart devices, and accessories. One of the notable standouts sitting at the top with the biggest discounts is the DELTA Pro Portable Power Station with a 400W Solar Panel for $2,899 shipped. Normally fetching $4,898, we’ve seen it only go $100 lower, with the most recent time being during last month’s Memorial Day sales, and before that it was during Black Friday and Christmas sales. Today’s deal comes in as a 41% markdown that saves you $1,999 and lands it back at the second-lowest price we have tracked. There’s also a few free gift options you can take advantage of, with the company giving you two free 110W solar panels when you place an order of $2,500 before taxes, or you’ll instead receive a free 882Wh DELTA mini Portable Power Station when you place an order of $5,000 before taxes. You’ll also be able to find most of these prices over at Amazon as well, however, there won’t be some of the free additions like on the direct site.
The DELTA Pro provides a 3,600Wh capacity that can be expanded up to 25kWh (which can handle home backup needs) with the purchase of separately sold expansion batteries. It boasts a 3,600W output power and offers 14 ports to cover all your appliance and charging needs: five AC ports, four USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, two DC ports, and a car port. It is able to fully recharge in 1.8 hours with a 240V outlet and 2.8 hours with a 1,600W solar input power. You’ll be able to monitor and control the settings in real-time on the EcoFlow app via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth – you can even use it to break down your energy habits and customize your ongoing usage to fit your needs.
Greenworks CrossoverZ 80V zero-turn riding mower extends coverage to 2 acres for $4,999
Amazon is offering the Greenworks CrossoverZ 80V 42-inch Cordless Electric Zero-Turn Riding Mower with six 5.0Ah batteries and three dual-port turbo chargers for $4,999 shipped. Down from its usual $6,000 price tag, we’ve seen far less discounts on this particular package that includes 5.0Ah batteries instead of the more common 4.0Ah battery combination, with it spending most of 2024 so far keeping around $5,500 (which happens to be the MSRP of the 4.0Ah package). We’ve only seen it fall lower back during Christmas sales when it dropped to the $4,266 low. Today’s deal comes in as a $1,001 markdown and lands at the second-lowest price we have tracked. You’ll also find a 60V model that comes with four 8.0Ah batteries and two dual-port turbo chargers going for $3,797, the lowest price we have seen for it.
The CrossoverZ is the most comprehensive mowing solution from Greenworks to date, and was designed to handle up to 2 acres of land on a single charge with the six included 5.0Ah batteries (an upgrade from the 1.5 acres you’d get from the six 4.0Ah battery package). Sitting atop a 42-inch reinforced 12-gauge steel cutting deck, this mower comes equipped with a 80V TRUBRUSHLESS motor, the equivalent of a 24 horse-power gas motor, that can handle hills and inclines up to a 15-degree slope at a maximum speed of 8 MPH. You’ll be able to sit comfortable in the high-back padded seat with back support, able to adjust the cutting height between a minimum of 1-1/2 inches to a maximum of 4-1/2 inches. The three included dual-port turbo chargers can have the batteries refilled and ready to go in just 45 minutes. You can also upgrade this mower further with the Greenworks 42-inch Bin Bagger Accessory for $729, a dual-bin with a 6 bushel capacity that goes along with any of the Crossover series mowers.
The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.
That network of dependable high-speed chargers, paired with solid app integration that makes it easy for Tesla drivers to find available chargers just about anywhere in the US, gave the brand a leg up – but no more. By opening up the Supercharger network to brands like Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and others, Tesla has given away its biggest competitive advantage.
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Add in charging and route-planning apps like Chargeway, that make navigating the transition from CCS to NACS easier than ever with its intuitive colors and numbers and easy on/off switch for vehicles equipped with NACS adapters, and it feels like the time is right to start suggesting alternatives to the old EV industry stalwarts. As such, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Here, then, are my picks for the best Tesla S3XY (and Cybertruck) alternatives you can buy.
Less Model S, more Lucid Air
Lucid Air sedans; via Lucid.
Developed by OG Tesla Model S engineers with tunes from Annie Get Your Gun playing continuously in their heads, the Lucid Air promises to be the car Tesla should and could have built, if only Elon had listened to the engineers.
With panel fit, material finish, and overall build quality that’s at least as good as anything else in the automotive space, the Lucid Air is a compelling alternative to the Model S at every price level – and I, for one, would take a “too f@#king fast” Lucid Air Sapphire over an “as seen on TV” Model S Plaid any day of the week. And, with Supercharger access reportedly coming later this quarter, Air buyers will have every advantage the Supercharger Network can provide.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model 3, more Hyundai IONIQ 6
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 6 Limited; via Hyundai.
Hyundai has been absolutely killing it these days, with EVs driving record sales and new models earning rave reviews from the automotive press. Even in that company the IONIQ 6 stands out, with up to 338 miles of EPA-rated range and lickety-quick 350 kW charging available to make road tripping easy – especially now that the aerodynamically efficient IONIQ 6 has Supercharger access through a NACS adapter (the 2026 “facelift” models get a NACS port as standard).
Once upon a time, Mrs. Jo Borrás and I were shopping three-row SUVs and found ourselves genuinely drawn to the then-new Model X. Back then it was the only three-row EV on the market, but it wasn’t Elon’s antics or access to charging, or even the Model X’s premium pricing that squirreled the deal. It was the stupid doors.
We went with the similarly new Volvo XC90 T8 in denim blue, and followed up the big PHEV with a second, three years later, in Osmium Gray. When it’s time to replace this one, you can just about bet your house that the new 510 hp EX90 with 310 miles of all-electric range will be near the top of the shopping list.
The sporty EV6 GT made its global debut by drag racing some of the fastest ICE-powered cars of the day, including a Lamborghini, Mercedes-AMG GT, a Porsche, even a turbocharged Ferrari – and it beat the pants off ’em. Combine supercar-baiting speed with an accessible price tag, NACS accessibility, $10,000 in customer cash on remaining 2024 models ($3,000 on 2025s) and just a hint of Lancia Stratos in the styling, the EV6 is tough to beat.
If you disagree with that statement and feel like driving a new Tesla Cybertruck is the key to happiness, I’m not sure an equally ostentatious GMC Hummer EV or more subtle Rivian R1T will help you scratch that particular itch – but maybe therapy might!
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BYD Shenzhen, the world’s largest car transport ship (Source: BYD)
Republicans launched multiple attacks against EVs, clean air and American jobs this week, at the behest of the oil industry that funds them. These attacks won’t be successful, and EVs will continue to grow regardless, and inevitably take over for outdated gasoline vehicles.
However, these republican attacks on EVs will still have some effect: they will diminish the US auto industry globally, leading to job losses and surrendering one of the jewels in the crown of American industry to China, where there is no similar effort to destroy its own domestic EV industry.
But they should inspire worry for Americans, because they will only harm the country’s domestic manufacturing base in the face of a changing auto industry.
Republicans keep trying to kill clean cars
The last time a republican occupied the the White House, we saw similar efforts to try to raise fuel and health costs for Americans, and to block superior EV technology from flourishing. That didn’t work in the end, and EVs continued to grow both during that period and after.
All the while, fossil fuels have maintained their privileged policy position, being allowed to pollute with impunity and costing the US $760 billion per year in externalized costs. Much of that subsidy is accounted for in the cost of pollution from gas cars, which are one of the primary uses of fossil fuels, which means that, in fact, gasoline vehicles receive much more subsidy than EVs do.
And yet, EVs still managed to grow substantially, despite these headwinds. EV sales have continued to grow, both in the US and globally, even as headlines incorrectly say otherwise. The republican party’s attempts to kill them were futile, and will continue to be.
It didn’t work, but it did delay progress
However, anti-EV actions from Mr. Trump and the republican party did manage to delay progress from where it could have been if America actually instituted smart industrial policy earlier.
Surely the American auto industry would be ahead of where it is now if those investments had had time to come online. But instead, republicans are currently trying to kill those jobs, which has already led to several manufacturing projects being cancelled this year, depriving Americans of the economic boost they need right now.
Meanwhile, there’s one place that this sort of stumbling isn’t happening: China.
China is taking advantage
China has spent more than a decade focusing on securing material supply, building refining capacity, developing their own battery technology, and encouraging local EV manufacturing startups.
This has paid off recently, as Chinese EVs have been rapidly scaling in production in recent years. It took a lot of the auto industry by surprise how rapidly Chinese companies have scaled, and how rapidly Chinese consumers have adopted them, after having an initially slow start.
But that adoption hasn’t just been local, it’s also global. Last year, China became the largest auto exporter in the world, taking a crown that Japan had held for decades. But the change was even more dramatic than that – as recently as 2020, China was the sixth-largest auto exporter in the world, just behind the US in 5th place.
China’s dramatic turn upward started in 2020, and now it’s in first place. Meanwhile, because of all the faffing about, the US remains exactly where it was in 2020 – still in fifth place. Well, sixth now, since China eclipsed us (and everyone else).
But tariffs have been tried before, and they didn’t work. When Japan had a similarly meteoric rise to global prominence as an auto manufacturer in the 1970s and 80s, largely due to their adoption of new technology, processes, and different car styles which incumbents were ignoring, the US tried to stop it with tariffs.
All this did was make US manufacturers complacent, and Japan still managed to seize and maintain the crown of top auto exporter (occasionally trading places with Germany) from then until now.
Then as now, the true way to compete is to adapt to the changing automotive industry and take EVs seriously, rather than giving the auto industry excuses to be complacent. But instead, republicans aren’t doing that, and in fact are working to ensure the American auto industry doesn’t adapt, by actively killing the incentives that were leading to a boom in domestic manufacturing investment.
US auto industry jeopardized by republicans
Make no mistake about it: destroying EV incentives, and allowing companies to pollute more and innovate less, will not help the US auto industry catch up with a fast moving competitor.
As we at Electrek have said for years, you cannot catch up to a competitor that is both ahead of you and moving faster than you.
It also applies to nations, which could have spent the last decade doing what the Chinese auto industry has been doing, but instead non-Chinese automakers have been begging their governments for more time, even though it’s not the regulations that threaten them, it’s competition from a new and motivated rival that is moving faster and in a more determined manner towards the future.
The way that we get around this should be clear: take EVs seriously.
But that’s not what republicans are doing, and in doing so, they are signing the death warrant for an important US industry in the long term.
Another thing republicans are trying to kill is the the rooftop solar credit, which means you could have only until the end of this year to install rooftop solar on your home before the cost of doing so goes up by an average of ~$10,000. So if you want to go solar, get started now, because these things take time and the system needs to be active before you file for the credit.
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International equipment manufacturer Vermeer has unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Interlune excavator, a machine designed to ingest 100 metric tons of rocks and dirt per hour, extracting valuable helium as it makes its way across the surface … of the Moon.
Helium plays a critical role in the manufacturing of semiconductors, chips, optics, and all the other stuff that makes EVs, autonomy, the Internet, and the rest of twenty-first century life possible. The problem is that, despite being the second-most common element in the universe, helium is pretty rare on Earth – and we are rapidly running out. As such, there are intense economic and political pressures to find new and reliable sources of helium somewhere, anywhere else, and that demand has sparked a new modern space race focused on harvesting helium on the Moon and getting it back home.
To that end, companies like American lunar mining startup Interlune and the Iowa-based equipment experts at Vermeer are partnering on the development of suite of interplanetary equipment assets capable of digging up lunar materials like rocks and sand from up to three meters below the surface, extract helium-3 (a light, stable isotope of helium believed to exist in abundance on the Moon), then package it, contain it, and ship it back to Earth.
“When you’re operating equipment on the Moon, reliability and performance standards are at a new level,” says Rob Meyerson, Interlune CEO. “Vermeer has a legacy of innovation and excellence that started more than 75 years ago, which makes them the ideal partner for Interlune.”
The company showed a scaled prototype of the machine at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (above), emphasizing the need to develop new ways to operate equipment assets in the extreme temperatures of extraplanetary environments beyond diesel or even hydrogen combustion.
On the airless surface of the moon, it would be impossible for an internal combustion engine to operate on the moon’s surface because there is no oxygen for combustion. Electrically powered machines seem the obvious solution with solar power generation supplying the electricity. But the answer is not that simple.
Temperature changes on the surface of the moon are extreme. They can soar to 110° C and plummet to -170° C. Developing electric construction machinery to perform in this environment is no easy task, but Komatsu is tackling issues one by one as they appear. Using thermal control and other electrification technologies, we are engineering solutions.
Despite Komatsu’s apparent head start, however, Vermeer seem to pulled ahead – not just in terms of machine development, but in terms of extraction potential as well.
“The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the Moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,” said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO. “Vermeer’s response to such an ambitious assignment was to move fast. We’ve been very pleased with the results of the test program to date and look forward to the next phase of development.”
Interlune is funded by grants from the US Department of Energy and NASA TechFlights. In 2023, the company received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research award to develop the technology to size and sort lunar regolith (read: dirt). Interlune has raised $18 million in funding so far, and is planning its first mission to the Moon before 2030.
Electrek’s Take
Interlune helium harvester concept; via Interlune.
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