Xiaomi is building some of the best, most capable high-performance electric cars in the world right now – and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun wants you to know that they’re among the safest, too. To prove it, he’s wrapping a watermelon in the company’s “bulletproof” battery armor and dropping it off a six-storey building.

Designed to withstand punctures, tears, and abrasions, Xiaomi says its “bulletproof” battery coating gives its SU7 Ultra EV batteries significantly better safety performance in crash tests when compared to other EVs.

In a video uploaded to some of Jun’s personal social media accounts, Lei threw three watermelons from the top of a six-floor building located in the electric vehicle division on the company’s industrial campus on outskirts of Beijing. The watermelons coated with the grey coating … well, you can watch the video for yourself, below.

Xiaomi CEO vs. watermelon

The company began selling its SU7 Ultra EV last month, with a price tag just shy of $75,000. It’s the company’s latest effort to expand into China’s increasingly competitive luxury car segment. That car reportedly secured more than 10,000 orders in its first two hours on the market, with Lei noting a significant portion of its SU7 buyers were women between 30 and 35.

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Those figures are believed to be driven by the popularity of the Xiaomi CEO, himself. Lei Jun – known as “Leibs” to his fans – has a massive online presence with 44 million followers and more than 210 million likes across his 490 videos.

Xiaomi is best known for its smartphone business, which shipped 168.5 million units last year alone – making it the third largest phone brand with over 10% global market share.

Electrek’s Take

I’ve said it before, but it seems like every new EV that emerges from China’s tech-forward luxury electric car brands makes EVs from Ford and Tesla look the level-three generic offerings from whatever the automotive equivalent of Dollar Tree is – and now the same is true for their fancy fruit coverings.

American car brands should be absolutely quaking.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Lei Jun; via Weibo, CarNewsChina.

MOOG Construction’s energy skunkworks ZQUIP made headlines last year by bringing the cordless power tool battery model to the world of industrial-grade heavy equipment – now, they’re making it even easier for job sites to make every kilowatt count by enabling them to switch from diesel to electric and back, on the same machine. (!)

Battery swapping. The idea is simple enough, and its widespread adoption over the last two or three decades of power tools has proven its effectiveness in some of the toughest proving grounds the world over. Construction sites, demolition crews, and landscapers trust their cordless tools – and they’ve often wondered aloud when the EV industry will catch up with the hardware space.

MOOG Construction’s ZQUIP seemed to be the first Western company to get on the ball, developing a proof-of-concept model built on a Caterpillar CAT 308 8-ton excavator that took the conventional diesel machine into a quiet, 140 kW, zero-emissions excavator ready to go to work on urban projects with strict noise regulation challenges or on environmentally sensitive zero drip job sites. Each of its 140 kWh battery packs Energy Modules could be removed and “hot swapped” with a freshly charged pack without the need to get the machine back to a charging station, or the need to stop work.

But what if you need something different? What if you find yourself in a situation where continuous power is needed and access to grid power and gensets are both limited?

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For that, you need a diesel – and ZQUIP’s latest ZQ140 diesel-powered genset Energy Module works like an EREV to provide a continuous supply of kW to the big CAT’s electric motors, keeping it running 24/7 (or until the tanker runs out of diesel, anyway). The solution eliminates the need for fleet managers or rental companies to carry two assets, and enables buyers to decarbonize where they can without wasting resources on duplicating machinery, or duplicating battery capacity.

“Imagine a construction site with six ZQuip machines,” offers Kathy Wells. “Two need 800 kWh of battery capacity while four require 400 kWh. The total energy for the day equals 3.2 mWh. In contrast, today’s traditional all-electric vehicles might come equipped with an 800-kWh battery on each of the six machines mentioned above.”

In Wells’ scenario, the fleet owner would effectively be paying for 50% more battery capacity than they need. That’s not only capacity that would go unused, it could be argued that the raw materials spent making those batteries could be put to better use elsewhere.

And if fleet managers get the math wrong? Kathy says that’s fine, too. “(Fleets) optimize each machine by installing the appropriate number of ZQUIP Energy Modules — and, if necessary, swap them across any machine on the job site.”

Hot swapping modules

In addition to optimizing battery capacity and introducing greater energy flexibility into a job site’s operations, the ZQUIP modules increase uptime by eliminating the need to rotate the machine out of operation for engine maintenance.

“The diesel power modules have a 1.2-by-0.8-meter footprint and stand 1.1 meters high, the same dimensions as a 140-kWh ZQUIP battery power module, or ZQ140. The diesel power module has a 25kW continuous rating, 48-liter tank, and IoT-connected ZQUIP software. “Unlike traditional machines,” reads the ZQUIP release, “ZQUIP vehicle owners do not spend money to take a machine out of service and transport it for engine maintenance. Workers can easily and cost-effectively transport, swap out and maintain the diesel power module while the operator and machine continue working with new power modules.”

ZQUIP will have a presence in two activations at bauma 2025. First, at the Moog Construction booth, the company will have its OG Caterpillar CAT 308-based machine and a new, CASE CX210-ZQ. ZQUIP will also have a presence at the Case Construction booth, where visitors can see a new CASE WX155-ZQ machine, marking the start of an official collaboration between MOOG and Case parent company CNH.

Electrek’s Take

We were lucky enough to have Chris and Rob from Moog Construction, whose innovative new ZQUIP modular Energy Modules are revolutionizing the future of job sites and fleet asset management, as guests on The Heavy Equipment Podcast last year. Here’s that episode again (also available on Apple Podcasts), so check it out as we get started on Season 3.

SOURCE | IMAGES: ZQUIP; via T&D World, Access Newswire.

If you’re a middle-aged suburbanite looking to throw down the landscaping gauntlet on a rival dad, the Elgo-Plus Springer Max-EB battery electric micro excavator is absolutely the one-up yard machine you’ve been waiting for.

Picture the scene. You’ve just put your new wide-deck electric Deere to bed after one of the first mows of the season, and you look across the street and see Electrek‘s own Micah Toll, rolling a freakin’ Chinese electric excavator off a container making you look like a chump. What are you gonna do now? Dig with a shovel?

Imagine what your wife would say – or your kids! Who are you kidding? They’re his wife and his kids now. He has won.

If you’re under forty I’m sure all that seems like crazy gibberish, but I assure you: suburban gardening and landscaping is a subtle, competitive, and brutal determiner of the social pecking order in huge swaths of middle America, and I guarantee at least one of Micah’s neighbors clenched their jaw in rage when they saw those electric excavators and wheel loaders turn up. And for those dear weirdos, my dear weirdos, I have found the appropriate response: the Elgo-Plus Springer Max B electric excavator.

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European design, American hardware

The Elgo-Plus Springer Max is sold throughout Europe with Vanguard V-twin power, but the Spring Max-EB ditches the 14 hp ICE deal in favor of a 3 kW 48V electric motor from Benevelli powered by a pair of 5 kWh Briggs & Stratton Vanguard Lithium-Ion batteries that are Made in the USA, and good for up to five hours of continuous work with a four hour charge time on 220/240V Level 2 power.

And if that’s not good enough for you, there’s a newer model reportedly in development that uses two Vanguard 48V 7.0-kWh fixed battery packs (Fi7.0) capable of fully charging in under two hours.

“Having already worked with Briggs & Stratton for more than three years, we had every confidence in choosing their Vanguard batteries to power our electric mini-digger,” Andrzej Zielinski, CEO of Elgo-Plus told Power Progress. “The Vanguard Fi7.0 batteries answered every requirement and have delivered excellent results in terms of productivity and performance.”

The Elgo-Plus Springer Max-EB electric excavator is available now throughout mainland Europe, and ships with a Danfoss Turolla shhark [sic] 6cc hydraulic pump, Vanguard 1050W onboard charger, along with three buckets (incl. a 70 cm grading bucket), a ripping tool, LED lights, and a charging cable for 20,800 Euro (!).

It’s not cheap, but it’s bound to raise the bar in the suburban landscaping world, while its smooth, quiet, and vibration-free operation will surely make it a favorite on construction sites, as well.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Elgo-Plus.