Near the village of Buttes in western Switzerland, 48 solar panels lie flat between the rails of a working railway line. Laid that way they generate less than panels on a tilted frame, they collect brake dust, and they have to be lifted out whenever the track needs work. Just Have a Think still thinks the idea deserves a hearing, and its reason is the thread running through the day. The panel is no longer the expensive part. The ground under it is, along with the wire from it and the plug at the end.
Fortescue has already paid for all three at a scale nothing else here approaches. Its CEO tells Everything Electric the miner burns close to a billion litres of diesel equivalent a year, shipped in from Asia, and that replacing it with sun, wind and batteries is a hard economic decision rather than a moral one. The generation is the short part of his account. The long part is nearly 800 km of high-voltage line to move the power to the pits, and more than 700 machines rebuilt to take it. When Fortescue went to suppliers for six-megawatt chargers, he says, the answer was that they could build them. No one had ever asked.
Scale it down to one driveway and the problem is the same. A Kilowatt Half Hour listener choosing between a BMW i5 and the plug-in hybrid 5 Series is afraid of being stranded with his family. The presenters answer that range is rarely what goes wrong. What changes the experience is where you charge. One of them, a month into running cars with no home charger, calls it expensive rather than stressful. Another paid 56p per kWh at a supermarket rapid charger, then heard from another driver there that an app was showing 30p at that moment. Same electrons, same car park.
The two cars in the set handle energy from opposite ends. Skoda's Peaq is a tall seven-seater that, by Autogefühl's measurements, buys its motorway range back with a big 86 kWh pack rather than with slipperiness. Formula E's Gen4 car is built to recapture energy, with the series quoting up to 700 kW of regenerative braking, 100 kW more than the car it replaces. One carries more. The other wastes less.
What to watch is who pays for the address. Sun-Ways reports its panels coming through more than 11,000 trains, but it has not shown that they can be maintained cheaply enough to beat a field, and the video says so plainly. Fortescue says its new truck arrives in December, and rival miners will read its operating costs far more closely than its speeches. For the i5 buyer, the decision that matters will not be made in a showroom. It will be made by an electrician looking at his driveway.
Skoda's Peaq Buys Its Range With a Bigger Battery
Autogefühl calls the Peaq an electric Kodiaq: Skoda's new flagship, a 4.87-metre SUV with five or seven seats. The entry battery is 59 kWh with rear-wheel drive only and up to 160 kW DC charging. The test car had the larger pack, which host Thomas gives as 86 kWh net, with a peak near 200 kW and 28 minutes quoted for 10 to 80 percent. The all-wheel-drive version is quoted at 6.7 seconds to 100 km/h. In his efficiency tests he recorded 19 kWh per 100 km at 100 km/h, 23 at 130 and 36 at 160, for real-world ranges of 450, 370 and 240 km, with a drag coefficient of 0.249. That 23 at 130 km/h is the same figure the channel recorded in the 4.35-metre new Nissan Leaf, covered in our Sept 20 edition. He singles out the optional DCC adaptive suspension and acoustic front glass, and says wind noise stays low until about 170 km/h. His criticisms are software: a centre screen that flickered on one drive, which he attributes to the wider VW group platform rather than to Skoda, and a fan button that wipes manual climate settings. Pricing is given as from €50,000, €63,000 for a big-battery Sportline, and past €70,000 fully optioned. He found the third row too tight for himself, with no ISOFIX.
Fortescue Is Rewiring an Entire Mining Operation
Fortescue exports about 200 million tonnes of iron ore a year from Western Australia's Pilbara, and its CEO tells Everything Electric that producing it means moving nearly 700 million tonnes of earth. The company publicly committed in 2021 to eliminate hydrocarbons from its operations by 2030. He gives three reasons: climate, cost, and sovereignty, since its diesel arrives from Asia and before that the Middle East, exposing it to price shocks it cannot pass on to customers. The host cites 2.4 million solar panels and five gigawatt-hours of battery storage. The CEO describes almost 800 km of high-voltage lines and more than 700 machines, from excavators to graders, to be converted over the next two years. Its haul trucks carry 240 tonnes, and he says the electric versions' power systems weigh around 20 tonnes, store energy in the megawatt-hours and charge at up to 6 MW through a robotic connector. He claims the first generation already competes with diesel on total cost of ownership. For a sense of scale, the BYD articulated lorry discussed in today's Kilowatt Half Hour carries a 651 kWh pack and charges at 1.5 MW, according to its presenters. The cost claim is his, and the December truck delivery he promises is where it gets tested.
Formula E's Gen4 Era Brings 600 kW and Points for Qualifying
Formula E's Gen4 launch trailer is the championship talking about itself, so every figure in it is the series' own. It quotes 600 kW of power, four-wheel drive, 0 to 100 km/h in 1.8 seconds, up to 700 kW of regenerative braking, energy capacity up by almost half, two aerodynamic setups, new tyre compounds and ultra-fast charging. The regeneration figure compares with 600 kW for the outgoing Gen3 car, according to Formula E's own published Gen3 specifications. The trailer closes the Gen3 era at 65 races in 14 countries with four champions. New venues include the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Zandvoort in the Netherlands and Brands Hatch in the UK, alongside returning rounds such as Mexico City, São Paulo, Berlin, Tokyo and Monaco. Double-header weekends will split into two formats: a high-downforce sprint, and a strategy race with extended Attack Mode and a mandatory Pit Boost. Qualifying duels will now score championship points. The trailer also names Disney+ as the series' new home from next season without saying in which countries, which fans should confirm locally before changing a subscription.
The i5 Question Is Really a Driveway Question
Episode 124 of Electrifying's Kilowatt Half Hour covers a Peugeot e-208 GTi drive still under embargo, a wave of Chinese electric vans at the Hannover commercial vehicle show, and a ride in a Wayve self-driving car in London with a safety operator behind the wheel. The most useful segment is a listener letter. Paul drives a diesel BMW 5 Series and is choosing between the electric i5 and the plug-in hybrid, worried about his family being stuck with a flat battery. The presenters all back the i5. One presenter says they have never run out of charge in three and a half years of driving only electric. Another warns that plug-in hybrids face heavier UK company car tax, plus a per-mile charge on top of fuel, within a couple of years. Another, a month into charging only in public, calls it expensive but not stressful, apart from one broken 50 kW unit. One presenter paid 56p per kWh on MFG at a supermarket rapid charger while another driver said an app was showing 30p there at that moment. The letter does not say whether Paul can charge at home, and on the presenters' own figures that is where the cost of running either car varies most.
Swiss Solar Panels Between the Rails Pass 11,000 Trains
Just Have a Think examines a 100-metre demonstration by Swiss company Sun-Ways: 48 panels laid between the rails of a working line near Buttes, rated at about 18 kW peak. Since the trial began in April 2025, the video says, more than 11,000 trains have passed over them without significant problems. Sun-Ways reports no vibration cracking, no significant ballast damage and no glare complaints from drivers, and says the airflow from passing trains helps clean the panels. The company's national estimate is 5,000 km of Swiss track, 2.5 million panels and just over a terawatt-hour a year, about a fifth of Switzerland's solar PV output. Italy is considering a pilot, the video says, with interest in France and South Korea. The channel's wider point is land. It cites US Department of Agriculture work finding more than 70 percent of rural utility-scale solar built between 2009 and 2020 sat on farmland, and a 2025 study in Earth's Future linking 13 to 16 percent of ground-mounted PV worldwide to cropland conversion. The host accepts the panels will likely cost more per kWh than a solar farm. What the video does not settle is where the power goes, whether to the trains above it or to the grid, and that answer shapes who would pay for it.
Bottom line: Fortescue is the story to keep from today, because it is the only one where somebody paid for the whole chain, from panel to wire to machine, and says the numbers still work. Judge it by the December truck, not the interview. The Peaq is the sensible family EV of the day, but I would buy it on smaller wheels with DCC and the closed roof, and wait for the software fixes. Rail solar is a good idea still looking for a cost figure. And any first-time EV buyer should price a home charger before choosing the car.
Commentary on third-party videos. Figures and claims are as presented in the sources and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.