The Last Two Feet

The Countries Electrifying Fastest Are the Ones With the Least Fossil Fuel to Undo

DW Planet A builds this around one chart of where each country's energy has come from over time. The shape for the United States and Europe is what the video calls the fossil fuel detour: biomass first, then a long descent into coal, oil and gas, then a slow turn back toward electricity. The video puts electricity at around 20 percent of US energy use today. China, industrializing from the 1950s, turned toward electrification earlier and with a shallower dip. India and much of Sub Saharan Africa, it argues, are moving faster still and dipping less.

Kingsmill Bond, introduced as an energy strategist at the think tank Ember, says emerging economies have less legacy fossil infrastructure to maintain and fewer coal jobs to lose, which makes pivoting cheaper. The figures cited for 2023: roughly a quarter of global electricity was renewable, while solar alone reached at least 6 percent in India and around 10 percent in Vietnam against a 5 percent global average. The video also reports that Ethiopia banned petrol car imports in 2024. The counterweight is what happens where a grid does exist and cannot keep up: Hungary Leads Europe on Solar, and the Grid Is Now the Bottleneck.

Lucid Handed This Family a Gravity for Up to a Year, and the App Drew the First Complaints

Kim Java and her co-host take delivery of a 2027 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring they specified themselves, supplied by Lucid as a long term press loaner for somewhere between six months and a year. They state on camera that Lucid has not paid them and has no editorial input. The household has run five Teslas across roughly ten years, and they say Tesla discontinuing the Model X is what put them back in the market.

They chose staggered 20 inch front and 21 inch rear wheels over the larger set, which they say yields around 450 miles. They quote a 123 kWh pack, an architecture above 900 volts, peak DC charging near 400 kW and bidirectional output.

The complaints are software. In the mountains the app lost connectivity, could not unlock the car, and showed the vehicle traveling at 59 miles an hour while parked, which is why the host says she will not leave home without the key fob yet. Dream Drive is described as Level 2 highway steering and lane changes today, with Lucid telling them point to point Level 2 plus is due in the first half of 2027 on a subscription.

Some New NACS Ports Only Fast Charge, and the Car Will Not Tell You Why

Out of Spec BITS uses a Porsche Cayenne Turbo Electric, described in the video as a roughly $197,000 example, to make a narrow complaint about how the North American Charging Standard is being adopted. The port is there. But on this car and, the host says, on the Mercedes CLA and the new Nissan Leaf, it accepts DC only. AC charging runs through a separate J1772 socket on the opposite side of the car, and the two doors will not open at once.

The technical reason he gives is a real constraint. J1772 carries AC and communications on its own pins, with DC handled by separate pins below it in the CCS1 arrangement, so a car supporting both needs two runs of cable. NACS, standardized as SAE J3400, shares the same two power pins for AC and DC, which means a junction box in the power electronics to switch between them. He says that part was not widely available from suppliers when these cars were engineered.

His objection is what the owner experiences. Plug an AC wall connector into the DC only port and the car shows an error without explaining the mismatch, which he expects to happen at hotels and friends' driveways rather than at fast chargers. He credits Tesla, Rivian and updated Mercedes CLAs with implementing it properly.

Electric Era Grades Itself on First Try Rather Than Uptime, and Puts Itself at 91 Percent

Travis Ketchum interviews Quincy Lee, founder of Electric Era, and the useful part is an argument about metrics. Lee's company measures first shot reliability: the car and charger handshake, the payment clears, and the cloud authorizes the session, all on the first attempt. He puts Electric Era at roughly 91 to 92 percent and says the next generation platform, which he calls RE400, targets two or three nines. He contrasts that with the industry's 99 percent figures, which he describes as site uptime, a measure that can count a location as operational when only one of its ports works. Electric Era reports per port uptime instead.

He describes the company as around 37 employees with roughly three dozen locations and more than 100,000 sessions logged, and credits industry-wide improvement to closer coordination on the ISO 15118 communication layer.

The second half is a charge curve. On 500 amp hardware, an R2 starting near 12 percent took 79.4 kWh from the dispenser with 78.7 kWh reaching the battery. Ketchum reports the peak arriving around 40 percent, a small rise again in the low to mid 70s at close to 120 kW, then 66.5 kW at 80 percent, and he advises pulling off between 75 and 80 percent. Read it against the full R2 curve from zero to 100.

A 450 Watt Folding Panel Hit the Test Rig's 500 Watt Ceiling

UpsideDownFork sets three panels side by side on an EcoFlow Stream Ultra X, which has four independent MPPT inputs, so each panel is metered on its own. The subject is a ZOUPW 450 watt folding panel, which he says the manufacturer sent him free for testing. Against it sit a rigid GCL 490 watt bifacial panel as a benchmark and his previous favorite, a 400 watt folder.

In full sun the ZOUPW pinned the input's 500 watt ceiling, briefly reading 514 watts, so it was never measured at its actual limit. The rigid GCL tracked alongside it, and the 400 watt folder sat near 300 watts. Under heavy cloud the top pair held 77 to 78 watts against 46.

Two design choices explain more than the wattage rating does. Shade one section of the ZOUPW and he still records 376 watts; shading three leaves over 200. It also runs 38 volts at maximum power against 26, which cuts cable and conversion losses. The trade offs are weight, 12.2 kg against 9.8 kg, and a larger folded footprint, at £479 against £469. Laid flat under diffused light the rigid GCL took the lead back, a reminder that this is one afternoon at one orientation.