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Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Warning as photo of $10,000 Tesla item reveals new secondhand trend
Thousands of Australian homeowners and businesses are embracing new technology to provide bankable power to their premises as battery technology continues to evolve. And some are even experimenting with "cowboy" set-ups as batteries from discarded electric vehicles become more common in secondhand markets around the country. It's not the type of thing you expect to buy on Facebook Marketplace, but one current ad, ostensibly from a warehouse in Melbourne shows a number of large Tesla batteries for sale. While the listing states the batteries – on offer for $10,000 each – were from a Tesla Model 3, they are "ready to be used as a large solar storage battery" suitable for large off grid or commercial purposes, the listing says. When approached by Yahoo, the seller was hardly forthcoming with information but said the batteries were "from written off cars mostly very low kms". When asked if the batteries came with any paperwork, they simply linked to a website for a lithium battery business based in Perth. While it's certainly possible to repurpose old car batteries for solar storage, there are serious risks involved and experts caution that it shouldn't be attempted by most people. If there's an exception to the rule, it's probably for someone like Stefan Maric who runs a lighting and electrical business in Greater Melbourne. He recently purchased a written off BYD for a measly $2,500 and used the battery as part of a solar storage system at a business site in Geelong. "We removed the battery, we have a forklift here on site, and we put it in a safe area where we could mechanically protect the battery," he told Yahoo News, stressing the safety measures his team took. That was about six months ago, he said, "and it's been running perfectly." The battery was from a BYD Atto 3 extended range, "which typically has a 60kwh battery and basically there are certain CAN-bus protocols (a centralised communication component known as a Controller Area Network bus) that can be used to communicate with certain inverters which are your typical solar inverters," he explained. "The important thing, from my perspective is to ensure that all of those cells are being charged and discharged within their parameters – and that's what this CAN-bus enables." Avalanche of EV models set to hit Australian market Driveway photo shows major shift Aussie homeowners are making Growing EV graveyards concerns as change looms for EV industry Stefan said the exercise was "a learning curve" and partly about better understanding the potential of repurposing such batteries for commercial means, but admitted it also proved immensely cost effective and saved tens of thousands of dollars compared to buying a comparable system from a wholesaler. He warned that you need to be qualified to embark on such a project, however. "It's still technically considered low voltage when you're talking electrical terms, but you will die if you touch live conductors," he told Yahoo. Warning over 'cowboy' battery market Australian battery refurbishing company InfinitEV, a subsidiary of ASX 200 listed Amotiv Limited, which says its main purpose is to extend the lifetime of batteries has also researched the business case of redirecting EV batteries for solar storage systems. "We do not see a commercial repurposed BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) application at the current volumes," the company's commercial manager Oscar Vall told Yahoo News. "Plain and simple, it's still quite a cowboy space," he said, adding that repurposing batteries in home storage systems is "not encouraged by the manufacturer and not encouraged by us". "There's a lot of people out there that will take the wrecked vehicle, take the battery out, and then try to make a battery energy storage system, bypassing a lot of safety aspects of that battery," he said. Ultimately the battery is being used in an environment it wasn't necessarily designed for and while a storage system is likely to put less stress on a battery than a car, if not done well there can be real risks, he warned. "There's a lot of safety implications of doing this, and I will definitely not like to be the insurer of the property that has a battery like that stuck on the wall." InfinitEV has explored the commercial possibilities of repurposing EV batteries and recently teamed up with Sustainability Victoria and another start-up to redirect multiple Nissan Leaf battery packs to create a 120kWh energy storage system to take a facility off-grid. Related: How recycling EV batteries can power the green transition "We can do it," Oscar said, admitting it's great as a PR exercise or experimental showcase, but currently doing it safely and at scale is not an enticing value proposition, he said. However he noted that could likely change when there electric car market in Australia further develops and there is "more feedstock", or discarded batteries, to supply such a potential business stream. Currently, he said "considering the amount of advanced battery systems coming out of China at a very low cost and already designed for this," it makes sense for most people and businesses to simply use them. Aussie homes embrace battery storage as rates surge As for Australian households, they are installing solar batteries at record rates this year, with more than 19,000 registered in a month. Figures released on Friday by market analysis firm SunWiz indicated consumers could more than double the number of home batteries installed in a single year. The surge, which was largely anticipated, comes after the launch of the federal government's $2.3 billion Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which offers rebates of up to 30 per cent for the installation of the home system, a policy trying to leverage the high rates of rooftop solar already in Australia. On Monday, Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen took to social media claiming his government had delivered 15,325 "cheaper" home batteries in "just four weeks" since the program commenced at the start of July. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
The Hill
5 hours ago
- The Hill
US deadlines in Ukraine are a gift to Putin and Xi
President Trump's announcement this week of a shortened window of '10 to 12 days' for Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine reflects a continued evolution in his rhetoric. His growing frustration with Moscow and his willingness to speak plainly about Russia's escalation send a signal that many in the U.S. and Europe have been waiting to hear. But while the shift in tone signals growing frustration, it has not translated into action. Russia reads the action as a continued pause in pressure, which it has used to intensify its offensive against Ukrainian homes and hospitals. Russian forces are now making their fastest territorial gains in more than a year, and their attacks are becoming more sophisticated. Swarm tactics using Iranian-designed Shahed drones, now mass-produced and adapted inside Russia with Chinese parts, are overwhelming Ukraine's air defenses at an alarming rate. In just one day last month, Russia launched 728 drones, decoys and missiles in a single coordinated wave. Ukrainian interceptors and radar crews are doing heroic work, but they are stretched to the limit. The U.S. has tools at its disposal that remain unused. For months, a bipartisan sanctions bill, co-authored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and backed by 85 senators, a veto-proof majority, has been ready to move. The legislation would impose steep secondary tariffs on countries like China, India and Brazil that continue to buy Russian oil and gas, and would significantly raise the cost of doing business with Moscow. But in July, Senate leadership pulled the bill from consideration after President Trump suggested he would act if Russia failed to move toward peace within 50 days. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he would 'hold off' on advancing the bill, signaling that Congress would defer to Trump's timeline. House leaders followed suit. That decision was a mistake. While it is encouraging to see President Trump express increasing resolve, deferring congressional action in the hope that Putin will suddenly negotiate has only given Moscow more time and space to escalate. Every week of delay is a missed opportunity to tighten the financial pressure on Putin's war machine. And the clock is not just ticking in Ukraine. The broader contest involves China, too. Beijing's role in this war has become increasingly visible. Chinese companies are supplying entire weapons systems, not just components. Chinese-made drones and decoys are helping Russia saturate Ukrainian airspace. Chinese officials have even welcomed delegations from occupied Ukrainian territories and continue to sell heavy machinery to companies operating there. European officials report that China's foreign minister recently told the EU that Beijing does not want Russia to lose the war and fears that a Russian defeat would allow the U.S. to focus more squarely on Asia. Ukraine has responded accordingly. In early July, Kyiv arrested two Chinese nationals on espionage charges after they allegedly attempted to steal information about Ukraine's Neptune missile program. Days earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on five Chinese firms accused of supporting the Russian war effort. These are not symbolic gestures, they are signs that Ukraine is increasingly realistic about the stakes and about China's alignment with Moscow. Support for Ukraine is not a distraction from U.S. competition with China. It is a critical part of it. Weakening Putin's military capacity weakens a key pillar of China's global strategy. And allowing Russia to continue its aggression without consequence would embolden Beijing's worst instincts from the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea. To its credit, the Trump administration has begun voicing stronger concerns about Beijing's role. In the recently concluded round of trade talks, senior U.S. officials reportedly raised objections to China's purchase of sanctioned Russian oil and its sale of more than $15 billion worth of dual-use technology to Moscow. These are important warnings — but without follow-through, they risk being absorbed into the pattern of delay that Moscow and Beijing are already exploiting. The Graham-Blumenthal sanctions bill should move forward. It represents the most serious effort yet to impose real costs not only on Russia, but on the network of countries (especially China) helping it survive sanctions. It complements, rather than competes with, the administration's efforts to pressure Moscow. And it sends a message that the U.S. is serious about backing up its warnings with action. Countdowns can be useful. They create urgency. But urgency without follow-through is no substitute for strategy. What matters now is not how many days remain on the clock, but whether we are using each one to act. Jane Harman is a former nine-term congresswoman from California and former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who most recently served as chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. She is the author of 'Insanity Defense: Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe.'
Time Magazine
8 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Trump's Decision to Fire BLS Chief Echoes Putin's Strategies
President Donald Trump's firing of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday afternoon just after she delivered a negative jobs report echoes the impulse of many leaders to shoot the messenger. Trump declared, 'I've had issues with the numbers for a long time. We're doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony like they were before the election and there were other times. So I fired her, and I did the right thing.' While Trump may or may not be friends with Vladimir Putin, he is clearly following the Russian President's HR staffing guidelines to eliminate lieutenants who bring bad news. As we've documented before, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) has a long history of manipulating official economic statistics to please Putin, 'bending over backward to correct bad numbers and burying unflattering statistics' under the pressure the Kremlin has exerted to corrupt statistical integrity, especially since Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The reliability of official statistics from China has also been brought into question, leading analysts to rely on a wide range of unofficial or proxy indicators to gauge the true state of the Chinese economy. Even China's former Premier, the late Li Keqiang, reportedly confided that he didn't trust official GDP numbers. Read More: What to Know About the Jobs Report That Led Trump to Fire the Labor Statistics Chief Like other strongmen, Trump has repeatedly shown a pattern of manipulating data to suit his preferred narrative. Trump's surprise firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer has quickly caught the attention of technical market analysts and economists on both sides of the political spectrum. One side cheers the push to disrupt a slow, bureaucratic federal agency. The other side shouts in dismay over concerns about yet another example of Trump politicizing an apolitical institution. Both responses are warranted. The accuracy of BLS data has long been questioned as major revisions only come in months later. To their credit, the BLS, in addition to other statistical agencies, has publicly recognized a need to modernize its methodology. Unfortunately, though, the severity of job revisions has worsened since the COVID-19 era, with no successful program to address the issue. The downward revision on Friday of more than 250,000 jobs marked the most significant adjustment since the depths of the pandemic. However, Trump's accusations against the BLS of rigging the job numbers to make him and the Republican base look bad, and his subsequent firing of McEntarfer based on a belief that BLS revisions were politically motivated, are yet another step closer to authoritarianism. Introducing his latest conspiracy theory, the President went even further by suggesting McEntarfer, whose career spans two decades across Republican and Democratic Administrations, rigged the numbers 'around the 2024 presidential election' in then-Vice President Kamala Harris' favor. Trump conveniently fails to mention that his definition of 'around' was back in August 2024. Recall, the 2024 presidential election was a full three months later in November. Revisions are not unusual behavior by the BLS. They are a critical part of the natural process for developing an accurate picture of the largest, most dynamic economy in the world. The average size of job revisions since 2003 is not insignificant at 51,000 jobs. And, despite what Trump may want Americans to believe, his tariff policies have created an unprecedented level of uncertainty in the U.S. economy, comparable only to that of 2020, with many economists expecting a recession to follow as a result. Bloomberg reporting has pointed to a possible connection between the severity of negative job revisions and recessionary economic environments. The BLS has also been subjected to DOGE-led hiring constraints and other resource rescissions. In addition, the Trump Administration's disbanding of the Federal Statistics Advisory Committee in March both eliminated one of the main engines for enhancing agency performance and, perhaps, in what should have been a concerning harbinger, abolished the canary in the data integrity coal mine. Complaints about BLS methods are legitimate, like the reliance on enumerators over scanner data, and deserve attention, but this is not how to fix it. Read More: What Trump's Win Means for the Economy This is far from the first time Trump has subordinated statistical integrity to political theater. From crowd sizes to weather forecasts, vote counts to tariff formulas, Trump has discarded facts for fictions that play to his political favor. Trump doesn't just bend the truth—he twists the numbers until they resemble propaganda and then silences those who disagree. As CBS News titan Edward R. Murrow warned 65 years ago: 'To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful.'
