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Our headliner closing out this week’s Green Deals is EcoFlow’s latest RIVER 3 Plus Portable Power Station that has not only gotten its first Amazon discount since hitting the online marketplace over a week ago but is also riding that discount to a new $189 low, alongside its expansion battery bundles. Right behind it is another new low price on Rad Power’s RadExpand 5 Folding e-bike that has fallen to $1,099 in the brand’s latest sale change-up. From there, we have EGO’s 56V 16-inch Cordless Telescopic POWERLOAD String Trimmer with 4.0Ah and 2.5Ah batteries dropping to $330, as well as DJI’s Power 1000 Power Station returning to $419. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals are in the links at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s EcoFlow Monthly Madness savings, or the full lineup of sales from Rad Power Bikes, Blix Bikes, 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.

EcoFlow’s latest RIVER 3 Plus 286Wh LiFePO4 power station gets first Amazon discount to new $189 low

Running alongside the ongoing Big Spring Sale, the official EcoFlow Amazon storefront is now offering the first savings at the online marketplace for its all-new River 3 Plus Portable Power Station at $189 shipped, after clipping the on-page $100 off coupon. Having only released directly from EcoFlow a month ago and just hitting Amazon’s market last week carrying a $289 price tag, this is the very first chance at savings we’re seeing here – with it even starting $10 under its MSRP from the brand’s direct website, which it has also only discounted it as low as $229 so far. Today’s deal saves you $40 from EcoFlow’s lowest rate and a full $110 off its MSRP, signaling a new all-time low price in the process.

Weighing in at just 10 pounds, EcoFlow’s all-new RIVER 3 Plus provides you with backup power support on your camping trips, road trips, or even at home when you need to keep your devices running during emergencies. It starts at a 286Wh LiFePO4 capacity that can expand up to 840Wh with the addition of either the EB300 or EB600 expansion batteries (bundle options below). With seven port options – three ACs, two USB-As, and a high-speed USB-C – it outputs up to 600W of steady power, surging to 1,200W thanks to the X-Boost tech.

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The battery can recharge in just an hour via a wall outlet with its X-Stream charging, or you can hook up a maximum of 220W of solar input to charge via the sun’s rays, which will top it off in 1.5 hours. Not only does it provide extra protections from surges while plugged into an outlet, but it also provides LED and app-based notifications when it happens on top of offering immediate update alerts – all alongside the usual array of smart controls you’ll be getting.

EcoFlow RIVER 3 Plus expansion bundles:

And be sure to check out the many backup power sales we’re seeing through the rest of the month while the savings last, with EcoFlow’s newly launched March Monthly Madness sale taking up to 57% off power stations, while also offering bonus savings, 2x and 3x EcoCredit rewards, and more – all from $169.

Rad Power RadExpand 5 Folding e-bike

Rad Power’s multi-functional, space-saving RadExpand 5 Folding e-bike hits new $1,099 low

Checking back in on Rad Power’s Gear Up for Spring sale, which has continued the RadRunner series lows and brought back the RadCity 5 Plus extra battery bundle, there’s a particular deal amongst the bunch that we want to highlight – namely the RadExpand 5 Folding e-bike that has dropped to $1,099 shipped. Coming off its regular $1,599 price tag, this model is often featured in sales at $1,299, with it only falling lower to $1,199 back in October. The $500 markdown we’re seeing during this new sales period is taking things lower than ever, and drops the costs down to a new all-time low price – just in time to grab yours for spring and summer adventures.

The Rad Power RadExpand 5 e-bike is an ideal model for riders with limited space as its folding design makes it far more manageable when it’s not in use – stowing away in closets, car trunks, RVs, and plenty more. The combination of its 750W brushless geared hub motor and the 672Wh battery provide some solid commuting support at up to 45+ miles on a single charge with its four-level PAS activated and top speeds of 20 MPH. Of course, for shorter commutes where you don’t want to do any manual pedaling, there is a throttle for electric riding that cuts down the travel distance.

The stock features only add to its functionality, especially if you plan to take this on the road with you for camping or other purposes, like the integrated rear cargo rack that has a 55-pound payload for grocery hauling or the paired LED headlight and integrated taillight with brake lighting – as both lights also automatically activate when sunlight drops low enough. Alongside those you’ll also find a 7-speed MicroShift derailleur, fenders over both fat tires, a water-resistant wiring harness, and an LED display.

You can check out the full lineup of offers in Rad Power’s latest round of spring savings running through April 9 by checking out our original coverage here, which includes the ongoing low RadRunner prices, the RadCity 5 Plus e-bike getting an extra battery for 100+ miles of travel, and free gear accompanying other models.

EGO string trimmer

Save $179 on EGO’s 56V 16-inch cordless POWERLOAD trimmer with 4.0Ah and 2.5Ah batteries at $330

As part of its Big Spring Sale, Amazon is now offering the EGO Power+ 56V 16-inch Cordless Electric String Trimmer with 4.0Ah and extra 2.5Ah batteries for $329.99 shipped. Today’s deal is coming in as a 35% markdown from its usual $509 rate, with it only beaten out by a fall to its new $300 low back in the first days of March. While you could save an extra $31 going with the single 4.0Ah battery package, the extra 2.5Ah battery would cost you $180 at full price, with discounts only bringing things down by $36 right now, making this a far better opportunity to save $113 and have that spare battery for longer trimming jobs or to use with other tools in the ecosystem.

Equipped with a high-efficiency brushless motor and just the 4.0Ah battery alone, there’s enough power for this EGO trimmer to tackle jobs for up to 60 minutes, with the additional 2.5Ah battery adding on another 45 minutes to that count. It provides a 16-inch cutting swath that has variable speed control and two different settings. The actual makeup of the trimmer has been given a telescopic shaft for comfortable handling depending on varying sizes of users, while also featuring the brand’s POWERLOAD tech, making reloading the dual line easier with a simple press of its button.

We’ve covered a lot of amazing deals from EGO this month, many of which are still going. Be sure to check them out before the savings end:

DJI Power 1000 Portable Power Station and solar generator

Electrify your outdoor adventures with DJI’s Power 1000 1,024Wh LiFePO4 station at $419

As part of the ongoing Big Spring Sale event, DJI’s official Amazon storefront is offering its Power 1000 Portable Power Station for $419 shipped. Coming down from its usual $999 price tag, this is the lowest price we have tracked outside of Black Friday and Christmas sales when it dropped further to $399 and then $379, though we haven’t seen those rates reappear in the time since. You can score yours today with this 58% markdown that puts $580 back into your pocket – with it beating out DJI’s direct site by $280 too.

If you’re planning to head out into nature more in these warmer months, especially to get in some photography, drone-flying, and more, DJI’s Power 1000 will support you through your adventures with a 1,024Wh LiFePO4 capacity and eight output ports. Among those port options, you’ll be getting 2,200W output through the two ACs (surging to 2,600W), as well as 140W fast-charging speeds from each of its dual USB-C ports.

To take advantage of its solar charging capabilities, you’ll need to pair the station with either a MPPT module or the brand’s Power Car Power Outlet to SDC Power Cable – which will allow for up to 1,600W of solar input to recharge the battery to full in 80 minutes (bundles below). When it’s plugged into a wall outlet, you can regain an 80% battery in 50 minutes or wait 70 minutes to have it back at full capacity.

Now, if you want to skip the headache of tracking down all the appropriate parts for solar charging, there are two bundles that will give you all you need to start. There’s the power station with a 100W panel and the compatible cables down at $669 from $1,247, or you can grab it with three 100W panels for $1,475 over its usual $1,955 rate. There are other options on the same page for the cables, if you already have compatible solar panels, though they’re currently sitting at their full prices.

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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The oddly personal truth about ADAS: self-driving cars are like running shoes

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6 hours ago

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August 8, 2025

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The oddly personal truth about ADAS: self-driving cars are like running shoes

Honda Sensing ADAS in JDM Honda Legend

There you are, motoring along in your Volvo XC90 PHEV with the Pilot Assist engaged alongside a big 18-wheeler at a comfortable 70 mph cruise when the interstate starts to slowly sweep left. From the drivers’ seat, that semi on your right looks awfully close. As the steering wheel turns itself in your hand, you start to wonder if that truck’s a bit too close. The car isn’t doing anything wrong, but it’s too close for your comfort and you give the wheel a little nudge to hug the inside of the lane just a bit more.

These deeply personal preferences are tough to quantify, and highlight a simple fact about Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that the industry at-large hasn’t yet to come to terms with: when it comes to self-driving cars, one size does not fit all.

The Volvo experience I outlined above was very real, happening just as the wife and I were arguing about the relative merits of our very different choice in running shoes. She prefers the supportive, cushion-y ride of the HOKA Clifton 9s, which I’ve become convinced are The Devil™, preferring instead the zero-lift, no-cushion feel of my Xero Prio runners. The intervention with the Volvo interrupted that particular argument and started another. Namely, the one about why I had chosen that moment to “interfere” with the Pilot Assist.

“It was too close to that truck,” I explained. “Freaked me out.”

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“That’s how I feel in the Honda,” she said. “I’m always afraid that it’s going to try and put me into oncoming traffic.”

That’s when the idea for this post came to me. Because, as a car brand, it’s really not possible to just say that your car has ADAS or doesn’t have ADAS in a binary sense. That’s because these systems are not just proprietary to a given brand, they can vary from vehicle-to-vehicle within that brand, and each one can have distinct lane centering behavior, steering feel, lane change aggressiveness, braking distances, timing for its hand-off warnings, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t even thought of depending on what kind of cameras, sensors, and software the specific vehicle you are in is equipped with.

It’s a bit of a mess, in other words.

Opinion: Honda Sensing gets it right

I first experienced Honda’s ADAS in 2014, driving a then-new CR-V between Chicago and Bay Harbor, Michigan for an Acura press drive. Even in its early generations, I was impressed with the way it handled stop-and-go traffic, the way it guided you through turns, but didn’t do the turning for you, and the speed and intensity it used in braking very much mirrored my own.

Last month, I had a chance to test out the 2025 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hybrid for a week on Cape Cod. I picked the car up at PreFlight Parking outside Boston Logan, jammed it with luggage, and immediately hit heavy traffic, where the Honda Sensing Low-Speed Follow function took me right back to 2014, ratatouille-style, when my experience in that car had led me to believe that self-driving cars were right around the corner.

In the decade-plus since experiencing that first autonomous Acura, I’ve had the chance to experience Ford BlueCruise, Tesla Autopilot and FSD, and Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT. And all, interestingly enough, in and around the Circuit of the Americas in Austin at one time or another over my three years of hosting Electrify Expo events there.

Each different OEMs’ system had its strengths and quirks. I remember Mercedes DRIVE PILOT as impressively precise, even clinical. The Ford system faded into memory. I couldn’t tell you anything about it, which is probably high praise. The Tesla systems, though, stood out — but for all the wrong reasons. Lane changes came too quickly, it accelerated too late, and too aggressively, and I often found myself bracing for collisions that (in fairness) never came.

More than once in those years I’ve wondered if maybe I’d just got it wrong back in 2014. That the tech was so new, and I had been so wow’ed by it initially, that I had got swept up in the hype of self-driving cars … but that drive in my wife’s XC90, back-to-back as it was with the Civic Hybrid, showed me that wasn’t it. Instead, I just didn’t like the way those other cars drove. Just like I don’t like the way HOKAs feel. And, just like my wife isn’t wrong for liking her gross marshmallow shoes (probably), I’m not wrong for preferring a more restrained digital co-pilot.

It’s a matter of fit, not fact — and that’s going to be a tough sell.

Everyone but me is wrong

Classic Carlin bit.

As the great George Carlin once asked, “Have you ever noticed that anyone who is driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?”

ADAS systems live squarely in that same subjective space occupied by other drivers. If the bots brake too hard, steer too sharply, or get too close to the car head before changing lanes, they might not be technically doing anything wrong, but they’re maniacs – and right now, there’s no real way to know how one car’s ADAS is going to behave until you’ve spent some significant time behind the wheel. Like, “Uh-oh. I bought a thing and I hate it,” amounts of time.

That’s a problem for both buyers and sellers (to say nothing of manufacturers and software developers), because why would you risk demonstrating a system that might scare someone? How do you sell “confidence” and “convenience” when what feels confident and convenient to one driver feels reckless to another, and milquetoast to a third?

Lucky for you guys, I have a solution.

Jojo’s ADAS scorecard *

System Lane centering bias Lane change distance (car lengths) Follow distance (default) Braking force (max Gs) Hands-off time allowed Overall “feel”
Ford BlueCruise Centered ~3.5 Moderate 0.30 G Medium Stable
Honda Sensing Slight left bias ~2.5 Safe 0.35 G Short Balanced
Mercedes-Benz
DRIVE PILOT		 Centered ~3.5 Moderate 0.40 G Long Confident
Tesla Autopilot Centered ~1.5 Close 0.45 G Long (varies) Aggressive
Volvo Pilot Assist Slight right bias ~3.0 Moderate 0.30 G Moderate Cautious

NOTE: THESE ARE NOT REAL VALUES

That asterisk (*) is there because these are completely made up, imaginary values. They’re simply there to illustrate one way for manufacturers and dealers to share objective, quantifiable information about how their different ADAS systems behave. If it’s done right, it might help a car shopper get a better feel for how their next car might drive, and prevent them from spending their hard-earned cash on a car that drives like an idiot. Or a maniac.

That’s my take, anyway – what’s yours? Head down to the comments and let us know what values you’d like to see represented on an ADAS scorecard, and how much you’d be willing to base your next car buying decision on how it drives.

As for me, my X handle might be VolvoJo, but if I’m shopping for a car that’s going to drive me instead of the other way around, I might have to see if “HondaJo” is available.

Original content from Electrek.

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. 

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Fresh TSLA lawsuits, V2X options, and the USAF is blowing up Cybertrucks

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8 hours ago

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August 7, 2025

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Fresh TSLA lawsuits, V2X options, and the USAF is blowing up Cybertrucks

Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!

Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.

An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (most weeks, anyway). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

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. 

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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer looks dead as more execs leave for competing startup

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9 hours ago

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August 7, 2025

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Tesla's Dojo supercomputer looks dead as more execs leave for competing startup

Tesla Dojo Exapod closed

Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.

Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.

Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.

It has been running into delays for years.

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We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.

Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.

For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.

Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:

Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.

DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.

It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.

The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.

While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.

The CEO said in June:

Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.

During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”

Electrek’s Take

It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.

Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.

Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.

I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.

When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.

TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.

I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.

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