We need to talk about Rad Power Bikes’ new e-bike batteries
Electric bikes just may be the biggest transportation revolution of our generation, helping millions replace car usage with more affordable, more efficient alternatives. But there’s no denying that concerns have been swirling about the safety of e-bike batteries, even if such fire fears have primarily been overblown by much of the media.
Leading electric bicycle maker Rad Power Bikes has just unveiled its new “Safe Shield Battery” in an effort to mitigate worries over e-bike battery safety. And it’s something we need to talk about.
The whole underlying issue here is based on the fact that e-bike batteries are usually comprised of dozens of smaller, energy-dense lithium-ion battery cells. Those cells are similar – and sometimes identical – to the battery cells used in everything from electric cars to power tool battery packs.
The individual battery cells store lots of energy and are generally quite safe. However, danger can occur when the cells are punctured or short-circuited, with the latter often happening when water makes its way into battery packs over time. Well-made e-bike batteries use several methods to mitigate these risks, and the result is that battery fires are exceedingly rare. Even in e-bikes, which seem to unfairly receive the brunt of lithium-ion battery fire scaremongering, such fires occur in a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of e-bikes.
To put things into perspective, New York City often gets labeled as the epicenter of e-bike fires, yet New Yorkers are somewhere around 5x more likely to die on the subway than from an e-bike fire.
However rare though, e-bike fires can and do occur in poorly made batteries or in battery packs that have been abused, damaged, or otherwise misused. And that’s exactly what it looks like Rad Power Bikes set out to solve with its new Safe Shield e-bike batteries.
The secret sauce in Rad’s batteries isn’t actually the battery cells themselves. Those are fairly standard cells like you’ll find in many other e-bike batteries. The major difference is how the battery packs are constructed.
They use a method known as potting, which basically encapsulates electronics in a waterproof resin barrier. It’s common in electronics that will live much of their lives outdoors, as it seals the sensitive components from moisture.
Remember that mosquito from Jurassic Park that was encased in tree resin amber? That’s kind of the idea with potted batteries, just with a urethane resin instead of tree sap. The battery pack already uses quality construction methods, but then to top it off, the entire thing is filled with resin that makes it impermeable to water – or intruding fingers, tools, or anything else. It’s forever sealed away from the world (though Rad says it’s still recyclable in their battery recycling program).
But it’s not just any resin, the idea is that it is also thermally insulating, which means that if one battery cell ever did go rouge and start overheating (an incredibly, incredibly rare event in well-made battery cells), the barrier would help protect any nearby cells from joining in and developing what is known as a “thermal runaway” condition that is what ultimately leads to the spread of most battery fires.
We spoke to one of the country’s leading battery experts Luke Workman on our Wheel-E podcast last year, who has often performed forensic evaluations in the aftermath of battery fires. When we asked him if there was anything that could be done to help mitigate the fire risks we were seeing in the e-bike industry, such as the widespread adoption of UL certification, he had a simple answer: “Potting.”
Workman explained that he’s performed post-fire forensic analysis on plenty of UL-certified battery packs, indicating that such certification isn’t a guarantee of safety. “You can pass UL water ingress tests with a bit of strategically placed tape over the battery seams,” he explained at the time. But potting was the truly safest method of building batteries that wasn’t intended to merely pass a certification test, but rather to actually ensure the battery cells were isolated and protected.
At the time, there was just one major company producing potted e-bike batteries, Luna Cycle, but it hasn’t gained significant traction anywhere else in the e-bike industry.
At least not until now.
With Rad Power Bikes adopting potted battery design practices, the entire industry has been put on notice. Until new technologies like fireproof solid-state batteries become commonplace, potted batteries are the single best defense against battery fires. And with one of the largest e-bike retailers in the country hopping aboard the potted train, others are all but sure to follow.
Rad has a history of setting examples that are quickly copied throughout the US e-bike industry. New e-bike models like the RadRunner spurred several copycats and jumpstarted the utility e-bike market. Rad’s expansions into several large brick-and-mortar stores pre-empted a major push by several other US e-bike companies to expand dealer networks with independent bike shops. Rad’s electric trike was quickly followed by several other competitors seeking to undercut its price.
In none of these examples was Rad the first e-bike company to make a major move, but it was the first big e-bike company to do so, and thus helped shift the industry each time. And while there’s no guarantee how the industry will react, especially in a year where e-bike sales have lagged behind the post-pandemic boom, there’s no doubt that a major e-bike maker finally adopting potted battery technology is a sign of where the industry is headed. How long it takes us to get there though, that’s anyone’s guess.
resin pouring image via: Pexels
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A new video surfacing from a Tesla demonstration in Miami this weekend shows the Optimus humanoid robot taking a nasty fall. But it’s not the fall itself that is raising eyebrows, it’s the specific hand movements the robot made on its way down, which strongly suggest it was mimicking a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset.
Humanoid robots are all the hype right now. Billions in investments are pouring in, and Elon Musk claims it will be a trillion-dollar product for Tesla, justifying its insane valuation.
The idea has been that with the advent of AI, robots in human form could use the new generalized artificial intelligence to replace humans in an increasingly larger number of tasks.
However, there are still many serious concerns about the effort, both at the ethical and technological levels.
Technologically, most humanoid robot demonstrations have relied on remote control by human operators – pointing to a remaining gap between the software and hardware.
We discussed how the robots at the “We, Robot” event were heavily teleoperated, despite Tesla not explicitly disclosing that fact to the public.
That was more than a year ago, and despite claims that Tesla has made “AI demos” of Optimus since, it appears the company still relies on teleoperation to control them during demonstrations.
The Tesla Optimus Miami Incident
This weekend, Tesla held an event called ‘Autonomy Visualized’ at its store in Miami. The goal was to showcase Tesla’s “Autopilot technology and Optimus.”
However, there was nothing “autonomous” at Tesla’s “autonomy” event.
Many Tesla fans were seen posting videos of a Tesla Optimus robot handing out bottles of water at the event. It was also seen posing for pictures and dancing.
On Reddit, someone posted a different video of the demonstration:
As you can see, Tesla Optimus moved its hands too quickly, causing some water bottles to drop to the ground. It then loses its balance and begins to fall backward.
But the most interesting part is that just before falling backward, both of its hands immediately shoot up to its “face” in a distinct grasping motion, as if pulling an object off its head.
The robot, of course, is not wearing anything on its head.
The motion is instantly recognizable to anyone who has used VR or watched teleoperation setups. It appears the human operator, likely located backstage or in a remote facility, removed their headset in the middle of operating the robot for unknown reasons.
Optimus faithfully replicated the motion of removing a non-existent headset as it crashed to the floor.
Here’s a look at how Tesla trained Pptimus with VR headsets in its lab:
Electrek’s Take
This is embarrassing, but not just because the robot fell. Robots fall; that’s part of the R&D process. Boston Dynamics blooper reels are legendary, and they never really eroded the company’s credibility.
The problem here is the “Wizard of Oz” moment.
The specific motion of removing the “phantom headset” destroys the illusion of autonomy Tesla tries so hard to curate.
Even recently, Musk fought back against the notion that Tesla relies on teleoperation for its Optimus demonstration. He specified that a new demo of Optimus doing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated”:
Musk said again during Tesla’s last earnings call in October:
“Optimus was at the Tron premiere doing kung fu, just up in the open, with Jared Leto. Nobody was controlling it. It was just doing kung fu with Jared Leto at the Tron Premier. You can see the videos online. The funny thing is, a lot of people walked past it thinking it was just a person.”
Musk keeps telling shareholders that Optimus will be the biggest product in history and that millions of units will be working in factories soon. But if they are still relying on 1:1 teleoperation to hand out water bottles right now, it feels like we are still far away from a useful generalized Optimus robot.
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After images of an the new mid-sized electric crossover were leaked by the Chinese MIIT, Nissan pulled the wraps off its all-new NX8 – and it looks so good, I’m wondering if it couldn’t spearhead the brand’s American turnaround.
Nissan has had a rough go of it in the US, if not, well – everywhere of late. And while we may all have our own ideas about what Nissan needs to do to turn its ship around and get back to its winning ways, one thing just about every auto industry analyst seems to understand is that, at its core, Nissan’s problem is a product problem.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Despite what the optics of cynically slapping a Nissan badge on a decade-old Mitsubishi platform and calling it a new Rogue might have you believe, Nissan happens to have fantastic, modern new products in its production pipeline – including the all-new NX8 BEV and EREV crossover shown here. There’s just one problem: Nissan’s comeback cars are all in China.
The “N” stands for Nice
Dongfeng Nissan, a Chinese-market automotive joint venture between Dongfeng Motor Group and Nissan, has been rolling out hit after hit in recent months, like the N6 (above), which sits between the Altima and Maxima, size-wise, and offers 112 miles on a full charge of its 21.1 kWh LFP battery before its 1.5L gas engine kicks on to keep the odometer rolling.
The N6’s stablemate, the all-electric Dongfeng Nissan N7 sedan, debuted a few months earlier to rave reviews and hot sales, too – moving more than 10,000 units in the model’s first three weeks on the market.
Like its sedan siblings, the all-electric version of Nissan NX8 crossover rolls on an 800V system architecture and features a CATL-sourced LFP battery pack with 5C ultra-fast charging technology (xC is how many you can charge in an hour, effectively, so 60 minutes divided by 5 = it can charge in as little as 12 minutes). That battery reportedly sends power to a single electric motor putting out either 215 kW (~290 hp) or 250 kW (~335 hp), depending on model.
EREV version of the NX8, meanwhile, features a similar setup to the N6, pairing a 1.5L ICE producing 109 kW (~145 hp) with a 195 kW (~260 hp) electric motor. Expect the NX8 EREV to get slightly less than the N6’s claimed 112 miles of electric-only range (Chinese cycle).
The NX8 is expected to reach its first customers in April 2026. Take a look at some of the firs official photos of the new Nissan crossover, below, then let us know how you think this would do in the US in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Dongfeng Nissan NX8
SOURCE: Dongfeng Nissan, via CNEVPost.
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This week, BYD crossed a major manufacturing milestone as its battery production crossed 113 GWh in the first three quarters of 2025 – but instead of celebrating, the company is doubling down with a new “Zero Defects” initiative to bring battery quality to an even higher level.
CarNewsChina reports that the new “Zero Defects” plan at BYD was launched internally at the start of Q3, with a focus on minimizing manufacturing defects across all stages of the battery’s life, from the manufacturing line to the end user.
The initiative coincides with BYD’s growing role as a battery supplier to other automakers and its expanding battery energy storage system (BESS) business, which are giving BYD both an international footprint and global benchmarks.
In its ongoing bid to prove itself even further in the global battery market, BYD will reportedly emphasize operational efficiency, error reduction, and standardization across manufacturing, process control, and customer service, with the end goal believed to be, “management practices comparable to those of Toyota.”
BYD on a charge
The Chinese automaker seems to be going from strength to strength in 2025, having overtaken EV sales leader Tesla in China back in June and repeating the trick again by overtaking Tesla sales in Europe in August.
Combine those EV sales with the fact that its domestic traction battery production reached 113.42 GWh in just the first three quarters of the year (with 23.65 GWh, or ~20%, being supplied to outside customers – including Tesla), and you might agree that betting against BYD seems to be a bad idea.
Note that BYD has not released official details regarding performance metrics or milestones for its new Zero Defects goal, but the message is clear: BYD plans to keep getting better.
SOURCE: CarNewsChina; images via BYD.
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.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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