Electrek

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss updates to Tesla Robotaxi, Rivian R2 configurator going live, China taking over EU factories, and more.

Today’s episode is sponsored by GM Energy. If you want to experience more resilience and control over your home energy, the GM Energy Home System adds stationary battery power for always-ready backup energy for your home, and the GM Energy PowerBank takes in energy from the grid and stores it for when you need it most. Learn more at gmenergy.gm.com

We are ending this week’s Green Deals with a jam-packed bang, led by the weekend flash sale on Heybike’s flagship Ranger 3.0 Pro Comfort Folding Fat Tire e-bike and a FREE $257 bundle of gear at the $1,399 low for the first time since Black Friday. Right behind that, we spotted Amazon dropping the price on Tesla’s Universal Wall Connector (type J1772 + NACS) Level 2 EV Charger to $550. We also have Anker’s eufy SoloCam S220 Solar Security Camera + multi-packs starting from $60, as well as the two-pack of Eve Aqua Apple Home Smart Water Controllers hitting a new $190 low – plus, even more lows on Bluetti’s 3,840Wh Elite 400 power station, Velotric’s Memorial Day e-bike sale, a new Greenworks 60V 8-inch electric edger low, and more waiting for you below. And don’t forget about the hangover deals at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s 5,120Wh expanded EcoFlow DELTA 3 Ultra Plus power station flash offer that ends tonight, the three continuing ENGWE e-bike lows from $949, 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.

Through its new “preferred pricing program,” BMW and MINI drivers can receive a 20% discount on all EV charging sessions now through the end of September.

Rivian has opened the online configurator for the R2, its critical mid-size electric SUV, giving reservation holders their first chance to spec out the vehicle ahead of deliveries. The Performance trim starts at $57,990 — just under Tesla’s Model Y Performance at $58,880.

The configurator launch comes ahead of Rivian’s previously communicated June timeline, signaling confidence in the R2 production ramp at its Normal, Illinois factory.

The first electric GTI is finally here. Volkswagen unveiled the ID. Polo GTI, a sporty 222-horsepower EV hot hatch that will start at around $45,000.

Tesla has quietly unredacted all 17 of its autonomous driving crash narratives filed with NHTSA, revealing for the first time what actually happened in each incident. The automaker had been the only ADS operator to fully redact its crash reports, marking every single narrative as “confidential business information.”

The data shows what we always suspected: most of Tesla’s crashes were not the fault of the autonomous system. But there are some genuinely concerning incidents buried in there.

Uber is publicly trashing its robotaxi partner Waymo while simultaneously investing more than $10 billion to build its own autonomous vehicle fleet with Rivian, Lucid, and Nuro.

The ride-hailing giant’s executives have spent the last few months taking direct shots at Waymo’s technology and deployment strategy — even as Waymo vehicles still operate on Uber’s platform in Austin and Atlanta.

There’s a tough conversation happening in a lot of households right now. Teenagers want cool, fast electric bikes. Parents see viral crash videos and stories about reckless riding and understandably want nothing to do with it.

And both sides kind of have a point. Group riding and hanging out with friends are an important part of today’s teenage social dynamics, but those same teens can also be a danger to themselves or others when paired with a potent combination of the wrong bike and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. Now though, there’s a new wave of e-bikes coming that might just make the best compromise to keep both camps happy.

Tesla has quietly made it mandatory for drivers to provide feedback every time they intervene on “Full Self-Driving.” The prompt, which used to disappear on its own after a few seconds, now stays on screen indefinitely until the driver selects a reason or sends a voice note.

The change arrived with FSD v14.3.2 as part of software update 2026.2.9.9, which rolled out in late April. Tesla didn’t announce the new behavior — the company retroactively updated the release notes to mention it.

Tesla’s Solar Roof was supposed to revolutionize residential solar. Elon Musk unveiled the product in 2016 with the promise of beautiful solar tiles that would replace your entire roof — and he set a target of 1,000 new Solar Roofs per week by the end of 2019. Nearly a decade later, Tesla has installed roughly 3,000 Solar Roof systems total, stopped reporting deployment numbers, and is now quietly pivoting to conventional solar panels.

The gap between Tesla’s Solar Roof promise and reality is one of the most stark examples of unfulfilled ambitions in the company’s history — and it has left thousands of customers stuck with an expensive product that Tesla appears to have deprioritized.

The ID. Polo GTI is Volkswagen’s first electric GTI. A day before its official debut, images leaked online, revealing the EV hot hatch for the first time.

XPeng (XPEV) is in talks with Volkswagen about acquiring a factory in Europe as the Chinese EV maker’s contract production in Austria runs out of capacity. The company’s exports hit a record 6,006 vehicles in April, up 62% year-over-year.

The move comes just one day after BYD revealed it is also pursuing European factory deals with Stellantis and other automakers, signaling a broader wave of Chinese automakers moving to localize production on the continent.

The new MG4, the world’s first mass-produced EV with a semi-solid-state battery, has quickly become a bestseller in China, with the 100,000th model rolling off the production line in just eight months.

Leading our Green Deals today is EcoFlow’s latest flash sale that is seeing the 5,120Wh expanded DELTA 3 Ultra Plus Power Station bundle with a DELTA 3 Max Plus Extra Battery dropping down to a $1,999 2026 low, among some additional offers. We also noticed that ENGWE is still offering similar deals on three of its e-bikes since its Anniversary Sale ended – all of them at their lowest prices – like the newest M20 3.0 Moped-Style e-bike with $114 in FREE bundled gear starting from its $1,349 low. We also have ALLPOWER’s 256Wh VOLIX Portable Power Station hitting a new $99 low, a returning low on the Gotrax R7 e-bike with up to 50 miles of travel range, a 24V 8-inch Greenworks polesaw deal, and more waiting for you below. And don’t forget about the hangover deals at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s collection of Bluetti Elite 300 power station and bundle exclusive lows, the low prices across Beatbot’s Anniversary Robot Pool Cleaner Sale, 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.

The ID. Buzz is coming back for the 2027 model year. While the electric van is set to return, Volkswagen said the ID.4 is now going on a brief hiatus.

Honda is waving the white flag. The Japanese automaker previewed two new hybrids set to launch by 2028 after taking an over $9 billion hit over its failed EV bet, leading to its biggest loss in company history.

China’s top auto industry group is calling for the creation of a standardized budget electric vehicle category — modeled on Japan’s wildly popular K-car ecosystem — to revive sluggish domestic car sales and bring millions of new buyers into the EV market.

The proposal, from the head of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), would target elderly consumers and rural markets where cheap, unregulated electric vehicles have flourished dangerously for years.

I drove the IONIQ 9 for more than 600 km across a mix of highway and city driving, and I enjoyed the package Hyundai has put together. The E-GMP platform, the cabin space, and the seat quality are all class-leading or close to it. A few software-layer gaps keep it from being perfect, but for a family that covers distance, the IONIQ 9 is one of the most complete three-row EVs on the market today.

Here is the full review and Electrek EV score for the Hyundai IONIQ 9 2026:

An 82 year old Congressional representative is getting heat for an embarrassing letter she wrote to a well-meaning 10 year old constituent on the topic of electric cars and climate change, where she seems to brag about saddling his generation with debt through a recent climate rollback she voted for. And she’s up for re-election for the 12th time, by the way.

When I first got into e-bikes, I treated them exactly as they felt at the time: tiny electric motorcycles with pedals attached. This was back around 2009 or 2010, years before the 3-class system was even a twinkle in the eye of an e-bike industry lobbyist. I had one of maybe a half-dozen e-bikes in a city of 400,000 people, and they were so new and hard to find that I had to build mine myself from mail-order parts and an old bike frame.

Juiced Bikes is officially back – and now it’s bringing its aggressive value pricing strategy to the electric dirt bike market.

The newly revived company, now backed by the same leadership team behind Lectric eBikes, has just launched Juiced Powersports, a new expansion focused on high-performance electric off-road motorcycles. And its first model, the Juiced Nomadix, looks like it’s a shot across the bow of the Sur Ron-style market with pricing that could seriously shake things up.

Or perhaps more accurately, with these specs and pricing, it’s a shot right through the bow and out the other side.

The Trump Administration’s decision to repeal of the 30% home solar tax credit in 2025 looked like the end of the road for subsidized residential rooftop solar projects, but homeowners can still get it under certain circumstances – until America’s 250th birthday, that is.

An equipment rental company in the UK is making it easier than ever for construction and groundskeeping crews to test out electric equipment options by adding more than 100 electric machines from JCB to its Leicestershire rental fleet.

Kia officially entered the forbidden land after launching its first EV in Japan. The PV5 will spearhead Kia’s “full-scale attack” on the Japanese market as it looks to take on Toyota, Honda, and Nissan on their home turf.