Non-bike bike gear tested: HoverAir X1 is the cyclists’ drone I’ve been looking for
E-bikes are my main form of transportation, and so the right gear can make a big impact on my rides. While I normally review e-bikes themselves, in this series we’re exploring some of the helpful tools, gear, and other devices that can help make living a car-free life easier, more convenient, or just more fun! And the HoverAir X1 folding drone has proven to be an incredible camera for my rides, fitting squarely into the ‘fun and conventient’ category.
Because of the work I do (namely this), I’ve long been on the hunt for a super tiny autonomous drone that can shoot decent-quality photos and videos on my rides. I don’t need Planet Earth documentary quality pics and vids, but I’d like something I can still use professionally in YouTube videos and online reviews to capture my solo rides as if I had a cameraman with me.
I not only ride all over the place locally, but I also travel around the world to ride e-bikes. Whether I’m riding down my own street or down an Amsterdam bike lane, I try not to leave home with more than will fit in a backpack. That’s especially true when flying internationally. And that means I often have to leave my pro-level drones behind.
When I can manage to take a drone, it means I can get awesome shots to set the stage or show off cool views of my rides and the places I ride in. And sometimes it’s just nice to grab some third-person shots of myself on the bike, or capture cool drone angles of the places I ride for fun.
When the HoverAir X1 team reached out and asked if I wanted to test their tiny folding drone, I jumped at the opportunity. And I’m glad I did, because this is my new main go-to riding drone. It can literally fit in my pocket – that’s how small it is.
It folds to protect all of its important bits, though I bought a cheap case for a portable hard drive to keep the drone in so it wouldn’t get damaged bouncing around in my backpack while riding or during plane travel.
Even with the additional case I got for it, the whole package takes up half the space of my already small DJI Mini 3 Pro drone.
Despite its small size, the footage it takes is actually decent. It isn’t as good as my DJI drones, but it’s still pretty darn good. To see a sample shot that I worked into my last e-bike review, check out the video below from 1:09 to 1:16.
The HoverAir X1 can shoot 2.7k video, though only at 30 fps. That’s still good enough to give me a roughly 50% crop ability when I output 1080p videos for YouTube. I won’t be doing any slow-motion shots, but I can survive.
It also includes 32Gb of internal storage, so it’s one less memory card I have to worry about. I download the shots and pictures straight to my phone with its wireless connection, and I’m all set.
The video is surprisingly stable, considering the gimbal is only single-axis, but the electronic image stabilization adds to the effect and gives me great footage without the kind of shake you normally see in cheap drones.
The photos it takes are decent, though not amazingly sharp. Of course I’m not going be able to replace my Sony camera with it for pro-level shots, but they’re still surprisingly good. They can also capture perspective shots that my Sony can’t, or at least not without another human holding it while I ride!
The HoverAir X1 also launches and lands from the palm of my hand, which is a weirdly useful feature for cyclists. I often ride off-road in grassy or rocky areas lacking a good landing pad. Even when I can find a spot free of weeds or grasses to take off with my DJI drones, I usually catch them out of the air to avoid landing them on uneven ground and damaging the propellers on grass or rocks. So with the palm launch and landing, the X1 doesn’t care what type of terrain I’m on.
Oh, and I saved the best part for last: there’s no remote control. I know that sounds weird for a drone, but it really just does fly itself. Before you take off, you push a button on the top of the drone to select from different pre-determined flight shots, such as orbit (circles around you), rocket (shoots up and gets a top down view), dolly shot (moves in a straight line), follow mode (follows you around), tripod mode (stays in one spot but rotates to keep you in view as you move), etc. You can also make fine tune adjustments to those modes in the phone app ahead of time, such as how far back you want it to stay while following you or how high to fly during shots.
I assumed this setup wouldn’t work very well, but I’ve tried all of the modes and despite my cynicism, they all worked surprisingly well. The following mode even avoids trees and other obstacles as I ride through them.
You can see working it in the sample videos I cut together below.
If you want to get landscape shots or other non-following shots, you can switch it into manual control mode and fly it from your phone, but that’s not generally the kind of shooting I do when I’m riding. It’s nice to have that option though, especially when you want to grab a few seconds of high-angle scenery to set a scene.
For a roughly $350-ish drone (depending on the combo package), it does an amazingly good job at getting the kind of shots and images I need. If it only came with decent video, or was just a tiny size, or just had excellent autonomous flying and following modes, each of those would be great. But to get it all in one package is quite frankly amazing at this price.
Of course, no piece of gear is perfect, and I have complaints here as well. The battery is small, meaning I get about 9-10 minutes of flight time per charge. I bought a second battery due to this, so now I swap a battery in when I need to. Though the style of flying where it shoots in clips and then comes back to you to land in your hand means that each flight is rarely more than a minute or so. That allows you to film several clips on one battery in a single session.
Next, it just feels so darn light. It’s held up great so far, but at just 125 grams (barely a quarter pound), it feels like I don’t want to squeeze it too hard or I’ll break it. I guess that’s not really a complaint, especially since it’s only worked great so far. But it definitely just feels like there’s not much meat to it that would protect it in a crash. Yeah, the propellers are protected, but what about the folding mechanism? Considering I haven’t been able to crash it yet, I just don’t know the answer there.
But all told, it’s served me well across many bike trips and in multiple countries so far. It seems like the perfect tiny travel or cycling drone that can fit in your pocket yet still capture nice videos and images all by itself. I’ve finally found the bike trip drone I’ve been looking for!
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Mitsubishi is partnering with Ample and Yamoto Transports to deploy an innovative new battery swap network for electric cars in its Japanese home market — but it’s not just for electric cars. Mitsubishi Fuso commercial trucks are getting in on the action, too!
Despite a number of early EV adopters with an overdeveloped concept of ownership, battery swap technology has proven to be both extremely effective and extremely positive to the overall EV ownership experience. And when you see how simple it is to add hundreds of miles of driving in just 100 seconds — quicker, in many cases, than pumping a tank of liquid fuel into an ICE-powered car — you might come around, yourself.
That seems to be what Mitsubishi thinks, anyway, and they’re hoping they’ll be your go-to choice when it’s time to electrify your regional and last-mile commercial delivery fleet(s) by launching a multi-year pilot program to deploy more than 150 battery-swappable commercial electric vehicles and 14 modular battery swapping stations across Tokyo, where the company plans to showcase its “five minute charging” tech in full view of hundreds of commercial fleets and, crucially, the executives of the companies that own and manage them.
A truck like the Mitsubishi eCanter typically requires a full night of AC charging to top off its batteries, and at least an hour or two on DC charging in Japan, according to Fuso. This joint pilot by Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks, and Ample aims to circumvent this issue of forced downtime with its swappable batteries, supporting vehicle uptime by delivering a full charge within minutes. The move is meant to encourage the transport industry’s EV shift while creating a depository of stored energy that can be deployed to the grid in the event of a natural disaster — something Mitsubishi in Japan has been working on for years.
Trucks like the eCanter already serve a number of roles throughout the global truck market, including municipal waste collection, regional delivery support, and more.
The pilot is backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Technology Development Support Project for Promoting New Energy,” with local delivery operator Yamato Transport testing swappable EVs for delivery operations on both its eCanter light-duty trucks and Mitsubishi Minicab kei-class electric vans.
Electrek’s Take
Electrifying the commercial truck fleet is a key part of decarbonizing city truck fleets – not just here in the US, but around the world. I called the eCanter, “a great product for moving stuff around densely packed city streets,” and eliminating the corporate fear of EV charging in the wild just makes it an even better product for that purpose.
Here’s hoping we see more “right size” electric solutions like this one (and more battery swapping tech) in small towns and tight urban environments stateside somewhat sooner than later.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Mitsubishi, Fuso.
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After becoming the first European brand to offer fully electric versions of every model it sells — and at the same price as the ICE models — Opel is going even further, with a new, AWD electric SUV that should give American Jeep fans hope for a new electric Cherokee!
Now part of the Stellantis, rather than GM portfolio of brands, Rüsselsheim-based Opel showed off the first official pictures of its new Opel Grandland Electric AWD — the company’s first all-electric SUV to feature the “Blitz” performance emblem and all-wheel drive.
“Our top-of-the-range Grandland SUV is a milestone for Opel,” says Opel CEO Florian Huettl. “Customers already have a choice of battery-electric drive, plug-in hybrid and hybrid with 48-volt technology. We are now offering even more choice with the Grandland Electric AWD and thus ensuring that our customers can enjoy maximum efficiency and safety in diverse weather and road conditions, combined with plenty of driving fun.”
Stellantis gets it right in Europe
Opel says its new, AWD Grandland is its most aerodynamically efficient model yet, with a drag coefficient (Cd) of just 0.278. That efficiency, paired with similarly efficient electric motors and a 73 kWh li-ion NMC battery give the electric crossover a 501 km (311 mile) WLTP range, while a combined 325 hp and 375 lb-ft of torque should make for suitably spirited acceleration to go along with all that green cred.
Suspension and handling, too, are promised to deliver on what Opel claims is a “typical” Teutonic driving experience in the Grandland AWD:
Both driving pleasure and comfort are further emphasized by dampers with frequency selective damping technology. This unique technology comes as standard on the Grandland Electric AWD and incorporates a second hydraulic circuit in the damper chamber to mechanically adapt the damping force in relation to the frequency. Depending on the situation, road surface conditions and driving style, it enables different damping characteristics for comfortable gliding at high frequencies – i.e. with short impacts such as on cobblestones or a manhole cover – as well as for a sporty, ambitious driving style with more direct contact with the road at low frequencies. The Grandland reacts even more immediately and directly to any command from the driver and, as is typical for Opel, remains stable when braking, cornering and at high speeds on the Autobahn.
OPEL PRESS RELEASE
The Opel Grandland Electric AWD ships with four standard drive modes that include “normal,” eco, sport, and 4WD mode, which simulates locking axles and true 4×4 off-road performance. The ESP and traction control systems adopt specific settings to enhance grip in 4WD mode as well, and maximum power and torque are instantly available.
Electrek’s Take
As you maybe could tell by now, feeding European Stellantis EVs into an AI image generator and asking it to “make them into Jeeps” is one of my new favorite things to do. This new Opel is no different, and the resulting image (above) paired with the models’ stated specs give me hope that the next wave of Jeep EVs will do better than the Wagoneer S at attracting buyers. All they really need, I think, is the right name — and the right price, to be winners.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Opel.
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Like a 90s “gifted” kid that was supposed to be a lot of things, the electric Jeep Wagoneer S never really found its place — but with dealers discounting the Jeep brands forward-looking flagship by nearly $25,000, it might be time to give the go-fast Wagoneer S a second look.
SKIP THE STORY: get straight to the deals.
Whether we’re talking about Mercedes-Benz, Cerberus, Fiat, or even Enzo Ferrari, outsiders have labeled Jeep as a potentially premium brand that could, “if managed properly,” command luxury-level prices all over the globe. That hasn’t happened, and Stellantis is just the latest in a long line of companies to sink massive capital into the brand only to realize that people will not, in fact, spend Mercedes money on a Jeep.
That said, the Jeep Wagoneer S is not a bad car (and neither is its totally different, hideously massive, ICE-powered Wagoneer sibling, frankly). Built on the same Stellantis STLA Large vehicle platform that underpins the sporty Charger Daytona EVs, the confusingly-named Wagoneer S packs dual electric motors putting out almost 600 hp. That’s good enough to scoot the ‘ute 0 to 60 mph in a stomach-turning 3.5 seconds and enough, on paper, to convince Stellantis executives that they had developed a real, market-ready alternative to the Tesla Model Y.
With the wrong name and a sky-high starting price of $66,995 (not including the $1,795 destination fee), however, that demand didn’t materialize, leaving the Wagoneer S languishing on dealer lots across the country.
That could be about to change, however, thanks to big discounts on Wagoneer S being reported at CDJR dealers in several states, according to our friends at the Car Dealership Guy podcast.
- Jimmy Britt Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Georgia, has a Wagoneer S with an MSRP of $67,590 listed at $43,104 ($24,486 off)
- In Florida, Taverna Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Fiat has a $67,590 Wagoneer S slashed to $43,138 ($24,452 off)
- Chris Nikel Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Fiat in Oklahoma has a Wagoneer S listed for $43,425 ($24,165 off)
“Stellantis bet big on electric versions of iconic American brands like Jeep and Dodge, but consumers aren’t buying the premise,” writes CDG’s Marcus Amick. “(Stellantis’ dealer body) is now stuck with expensive EVs that need huge discounts to move, eating into already thin margins while competitors focus on [more] profitable gas-powered vehicles.”
All of which is to say: if you’ve found yourself drawn to the Jeep Wagoneer S, but couldn’t quite stomach the $70,000+ window stickers, you might want to check in with your local Jeep dealer and see how you feel about it at a JCPenneys-like 30% off!
Jeep Wagoneer S gallery
SOURCES | IMAGES: Car Dealership Guy, CarScoops, and CarsDirect.
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