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Leading today’s Green Deals is the continued clearance sale on Lectric’s XPeak 1.0 Step-Thru Off-Road e-bike that is getting $727 in free gear (including an extra battery for double mileage) at $1,399, as well as the options to start off or upgrade to the latest XPeak 2.0 models that start from the same rate. Next, over at Amazon, Jackery is undercutting its direct sale’s pricing on the Explorer 1000 v2 Portable Power Station and dropping it to $459. We also spotted the EGO Power+ 56V 21-inch Cordless Electric Snow Blower that is equipped with a steel auger and comes with two 5.0Ah batteries down at $599, as well as a one-day-only discount on Rexing’s 20-foot 48A Tesla Extension Charging Cable to $230. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals are in the links at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s various Camplux electric tankless water heater price cuts, and more.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

While Lectric’s Valentine’s Day offers are still live, the brand still has its closeout sale going for its XPeak 1.0 Step-Thru e-bike at $1,399 shipped and coming with $727 in free gear, including an extra battery for double the mileage. This is the biggest package we’ve seen to date on this gen 1 model, with the savings, as is the case with most of the brand’s discounts, being on the free gear that would normally run the cost up to $2,126 in full. Since the launch of the newer XPeak 2.0 e-bikes, the brand has been cutting down the stock on this model by offering larger packages of free gear, with it being discontinued once sold out – but that’s not to say you won’t be able to find replacement parts and the like!

Lectric’s XPeak 1.0 off-road e-bike may not have some of the fancier upgrades as the latest versions, but it still provides a solid commuting experience with the pairing of its 48V battery and 750W rear hub-motor that peaks at 1,310W. You’ll get up to a 55-mile travel range (doubled to 110 miles thanks to the included extra battery) when utilizing the five PAS levels, and at up to 28 MPH top speeds (depending on your state’s laws). It also has some reliable features despite being well under the higher prices of other brands, with 4-inch puncture-resistant fat tires, hydraulic mineral oil brakes, a 7-gear Shimano derailleur, removable pedals, a thru axle wheel attachment system for tool-free installations, kickstand, a hidden cable routing system, an IP65 water-and-dust-resistant LCD display, and several mounting points for any additional add-on accessories you may want to install down the line.

Now if you want to start your Lectric journey with the latest models, the good news is that pricing starts at $1,399 shipped for the standard XPeak 2.0 (and getting $227 in free gear) and bumps to $1,599 shipped for the Long-Range XPeak 2.0 (with $316 in free gear). There’s a bunch of new upgrades along with the increased mileage (60 miles for the standard, 80 miles for the long-range), like the added torque sensor for battery pedal assist pickup, as well as the 750W Stealth M24 rear hub-motor (still peaking at 1,310W). There’s also been structural upgrades, including a new hydroformed aluminum frame, a higher-end RST Renegade front suspension fork with blacked-out fork stanchions for a much sleeker and stealthier look, as well as lock-on hand grips, a larger 203 mm front disc for the hydraulic mineral oil brakes – plus, a new color LCD display too.

Be sure to check out the full lineup of savings as part of Lectric’s ongoing Valentine’s Day sale, with up to $654 in free gear coming along with your purchase while things last.

Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 portable power station

Amazon undercuts sale pricing on Jackery’s Explorer 1000 v2 portable LiFePO4 power station to $459

Jackery’s official Amazon storefront is undercutting its direct Tax Season Savings sale pricing even further for its Explorer 1000 v2 Portable Power Station that is now down at $459 shipped, after clipping the on-page $40 off coupon. This unit normally carries a full $799 price tag, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday having seen the last appearance of its $399 low, and being repeatedly discounted to $499 both on Amazon and direct from Jackery in the time since. You’re looking at $340 in total savings with this deal, which happens to be the best we can find at the moment (and the best since Black Friday), beating out the direct sale’s pricing right now by $40 at the third-lowest overall price we have tracked.

One of Jackery’s newer v2 models, the Explorer 1000 v2 dishes out some serious power output from its compact unit, which houses an upgraded 1,070Wh LiFePO4 battery and delivers up to 1,500W to your devices regularly, peaking up to 3,000W for larger appliance needs. There’s a solid mix of seven port options to connect to/from – with three ACs, two USB-Cs, one USB-A, and a car port. Hooking it up to a wall outlet will refill the battery in 1.6 hours, with that time cut down to just one hour with the emergency charging features activated through the smart controls on the app. You can also take advantage of its 600W maximum solar input to get a full battery in three hours via the sun’s rays – which you can start towards thanks to the discounted bundle with a 200W solar panel for $699 shipped, after clipping the on-page $50 off coupon.

We also spotted Jackery’s Explorer 600 Plus 632Wh LiFePO4 power station dropping at Amazon to $400 while it’s being skipped over during the direct sale entirely. For larger units and especially solar generator bundles, you’ll want to browse through the Tax Season Sale offers direct from Jackery’s site, which is starting with $3,100 in initial price cuts while also offering bonus select 5% off savings and trade-in savings – plus, you can apply for up to a 30% tax rebate too!

EGO Power+ 56V 21-inch cordless electric snow blower

Grab the EGO Power+ 56V 21-inch cordless snow blower with a steel auger and two 5.0Ah batteries at $599

Amazon is now offering the 56V 21-Inch Cordless Electric Snow Blower with two 5.0Ah batteries and a steel auger for $599 shipped. Normally this model would run you $750 at its full rate, with discounts since June keeping things above $627, making this unexpected price drop all the more enticing. While we have seen it go as low as $520 in the past (2022) and more recently $524 in April and June, this is still the best price we’ve seen in seven months, giving you $151 in savings at the fourth-lowest rate we’ve tracked.

Snow season often continues through April (depending on your location in the country), so it’s still a ripe time to stock up on reliable equipment. This EGO Power+ model offers greater support through your snow-clearing duties thanks to the addition of its steel auger, which breaks through the ice at faster rates than the non-steel auger model we usually see getting the discount love (and is down at $549 right now).

The two 5.0Ah batteries power the brushless motor to make a 21-inch wide path through snow that’s piled as high as 8 inches with enough juice to cover a 10-car driveway on one charge. The snow is then ejected up to 40 feet out of your way with the chute, with a variable speed control for improved handling and two bright LED headlights for increased visibility at the top and bottom of the day. It also starts up at the push of a button, making pull strings a thing of the past – especially considering having to deal with them in cold weather.

Rexing 20-foot 48A tesla extension charging cable

As part of its Deals of the Day, Best Buy is offering the Rexing 20-foot 48A Tesla Extension Charging Cable for $229.99 shipped through the rest of the day. Normally costing drivers $300 at full price, which its been keeping to since the start of 2025, we did see it go as low as $200 last year during Christmas sales after a slow lead-up from steadily growing discounts before. Today’s deal gives you the first chance in the new year to upgrade your Tesla EV charger at a 23% markdown, saving you a solid $70 and landing things at the third-lowest price we have tracked – $30 above the all-time low.

Tesla drivers are getting a great chance to upgrade their at-home EV charger (or any standard road chargers you come across) with 20 more feet of cable length, which we usually see on its J1772-compatible model during most of these one-day-only discounts and remains at its $200 rate today. This 20-foot Tesla-focused model comes compatible with your Model 3, Y, S, and X EVs and supports up to 48A charging speeds. It’s built to stand up to adverse weather, so don’t fret on that front, but do keep in mind that this is meant for home and road chargers, not any superchargers. It also comes with a carrying case should you wish to keep it in your car as a travel extender.

If you’re still using the mobile connector that came with your Tesla, you might want to consider upgrading to a much sturdier Wall Connector 48A Level 2 charger that runs for $420 (matching at Amazon) and can be installed indoors or outdoors for an average of around 44 miles per every hour in use. Likewise, if you want more universal compatibility for J1772-minded EVs on top of Teslas, there’s the Universal Wall Connector 48A Level 2 charger for $550 (also matching at Amazon).

Best New Year EV deals!

Best new Green Deals landing this week

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.

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Game changer: Harbinger launches a medium-duty EREV with 500 mile range

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May 17, 2025

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Game changer: Harbinger launches a medium-duty EREV with 500 mile range

Harbinger's new MD plug-in hybrid boasts a 500-mile range

The electric box van experts at Harbinger announced a new, EREV version of their medium-duty van that pairs a big battery with a small, gas-powered ICE engine to offer fleets that are hesitant to electrify a massive 500 miles of autonomy on a single charge + tank.

The American truck brand is putting its latest $100 million raise to good use, developing a cost-competitive EREV chassis that marries a low-emissions 1.4L inline four-cylinder gas engine with a close coupled 800V generator sending power to a 140 or 175 kW battery for up to 500 miles of fully loaded range. More than enough, in other words, to meet the needs of just about any fleet you can think of.

That’s a good thing, too, because medium-duty trucks are put to work in just about any circumstance you can think of, as well – a fact that’s not lost on Harbinger.

“Medium-duty vehicles serve an incredibly diverse range of applications, just like the fleets and operators that rely on them, ” explains John Harris, Co-founder and CEO, Harbinger. “There are some fleets whose needs simply can’t be met with a purely electric vehicle—and we recognize that. Our hybrid is designed for use cases and routes that go beyond what an all-electric system typically supports. The series hybrid delivers the benefits of an electric drivetrain, along with the added confidence of a range extender when needed.”

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In addition an up-front cost that should make it an attractive prospect for fleet buyers, the new Harbinger EREV pack performance that should made it attractive for its drivers, too. The new chassis’ electric powertrain delivers 440 hp and 1,140 lb-ft of tq for quick acceleration into traffic and smooth running, even under load. Charging performance is also quick, with the ability to get the big battery from 10-80% charge in just under an hour on a 150 kW port.

You’ve heard all this before

THOR Industries and Harbinger Collaborate to Deliver the World's First Hybrid Class A Motorhome
Thor hybrid RV concept; via Thor.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This medium-duty chassis was first shown last year, making its debut under a Thor Class A motorhome concept that we covered in September. That vehicle promised the same great EREV range and capability to a market that values independence and spontaneity more than most, and bringing those values to a medium-duty commercial market that’s lapping up “messy middle” propaganda from Shell NACFE is just smart business.

The new Harbinger chassis’ batteries are manufactured by Panasonic. No word on who is making the 1.4L ICE generator, but my money’s on the GM SGE four-cylinder last seen in the gas-powered Chevy Spark. You guys are smart, though – if you have a better guess who the supplier might be, let us know in the comments.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.

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Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now

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8 hours ago

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May 17, 2025

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Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now

Energy Sec. Wright: Trump's duties provide 'no tariffs on energy'

President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence.

Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation’s tech sector.

Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source.

“They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” the president said.

Trump’s push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies’ environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry’s power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants.

Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change.

For coal miners, Trump’s push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data.

Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump’s executive order ceremony at the White House, said “coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth.” Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S.

Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation’s coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company’s May 6 earnings call.

“We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed,” Grech said. “We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed.”

Tech sector reaction

There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA.

“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,” Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month.

“We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,” Miller said.

Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.

Executives at Amazon, Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference.

“It’s never a simple answer,” Amazon’s Miller said. “It is a combination of where’s the energy available, what are other alternatives.”

Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company’s senior director of corporate sustainability. “Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers.”

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. “We would certainly consider it but I don’t know if I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”

Sahlstrom said Trump’s executive order seems like a “dog whistle” to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and “actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now,” the Tract executive said.

Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. “Coal has kind of found itself without a job,” he said.

“I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants,” the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as “hyperscalers.”)

“I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen,” Sahlstrom said.

Coal retirements strain grid

But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy.

The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM’s installed capacity.

Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody’s report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association.

“If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s “Money Movers” last month.

But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector’s emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said.

“That’s a pretty powerful combination, and it’s hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you’re a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals,” he said.

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Bollinger Motors circles the drain as court cases, debts pull it down

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9 hours ago

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May 17, 2025

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Bollinger Motors circles the drain as court cases, debts pull it down

Bollinger Motors was placed into receivership and could soon face liquidation.

A federal court judge in Michigan has placed the once-promising electric truck brand Bollinger Motors’ assets into receivership following claims that the company’s owners still owe its founder, Robert Bollinger, more than $10 million.

Bollinger Motors first came to fame in the “draw a truck, get a billion dollars” stage of the EV revolution that saw Nikola rise to a higher market cap than Ford for a brief time. Robert Bollinger wasn’t able to capitalize quickly enough to get his trucks into production, though – and a late stage pivot to sell the brand to Mullen Automotive and launch a medium-duty commercial truck doesn’t appear to have been enough to save it.

Now, Automotive News is reporting on some of the more convoluted details of the Mullen purchase deal, with Robert (for ease of distinguishing the man from the brand) claiming that Mullen Automotive owes him more than $10 million for a loan he made to the company in 2024.

Just how Robert ended up giving Mullen Automotive $10 million to take his eponymous truck brand off his hands is probably one of those capitalistic mysteries that I’ll never understand, but Mullen’s response was perfectly clear: they didn’t even bother to show up to court.

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Bollinger claims that at least two suppliers are also suing Mullen for unpaid debts. As such, the Honorable Terrence G. Berg has put the Bollinger brand into receivership, and its assets have been frozen in preparation for everything being liquidated. Worse, for Bollinger, the official court filings reveal a company that is really very much doing not awesome:

The testimony and evidence—which Defendant’s counsel conceded accurately reflected Defendant’s finances—showed that Defendant is in crisis. For months Defendant has owed more than twenty million dollars to suppliers, contractors, service providers, and owners of physical space. These debts are owed to parties who are critical for Defendant’s functioning. CEO Bryan Chambers testified that Defendant was locked out of its production facilities on May 5, 2025, and that the owner of the production facilities was seeking to permanently evict Defendant. The Court heard that Defendant had been prevented from accessing its critical manufacturing accounting system for a short time at the end of April 2025, before making a partial payment to restart services.

US DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN

I’m not sure if you caught all that, but Bollinger’s CEO has been locked out the company’s facilities and getting evicted, the company is more than $20 million in debt, and that debt is owed to people Bollinger absolutely needs in order to keep going.

You can read the full court decision, which I’ve embedded here, below. Once you’ve taken it all in, feel free to rush into the comments to say you told me so, since I really thought hoped the Bollinger B1 had a shot. Silly me.

Bollinger v. Bollinger case

SOURCES: Automotive News, Justia, Yahoo!.

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