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Just under two months ago, we installed the WOLFBOX Smart Slide powered tonneau cover on our crew F-150 Lightning. Since, it's shown itself to be reliable, weatherproof, and silent. But there's one feature we miss from our previous tonneau cover we wish it had: the ability to control its operation from inside the truck.

But after realizing how the cover's BLE stack works, we've been busy designing our own PCB that combines CAN Bus, BLE, and HomeLink to give us the feature we miss — and a whole bunch of extra features we think will enhance our ownership experience.

Meet "Mellon" — a project we're working on that should do it all.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction

Music:

Jozeque - Augmaster: https://soundcloud.com/jozeque/augmaster

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Host, Script, Editor: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

Disclaimer - Transport Evolved received this motorcycle free of charge from HMP Bikes in order to allow us to give you a long-term staff-vehicle review. No money exchanged hands for the review itself, and no editorial control was given or implied. HMP Bikes sees our reviews when you do. Nikki is providing ongoing honest feedback to HMP bikes in addition to producing this series.

We love our Ford F-150 Lightning, even though Ford ended production of it last year. As a work truck, it does everything we need it to. As a smallholder's helper, it happily carries soil, feed, and wood. But for quick trips into town, it's way too large to be safely driven.

Cognizant of that fact, we have two other higher-speed vehicles on our fleet, a far more practical Chevrolet Bolt EV, and a Vectrix VX-1. But as regulars to the channel will know, the VX-1 has been off the road for way too long, and restoring it has proven a pretty slow process.

SO when we reached out to HMP Bikes to ask if we could review its just launched Flash electric maxi scooter, we were offered not one but two vehicles to test long term - not just for a week.

The first one? It's called the Lightning MK II - but as you're about to see, it's very different to the F150 Lightning that shares its name.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction

Links: (Non-Affiliated)

HMP Bikes - https://www.hmpbikes.com

HMP Lightning Series (Including MKII) - https://www.hmpbikes.com/collections/lightning-series

HMP Flash - https://www.hmpbikes.com/collections/flash-series-1

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Last week on the channel, Nikki brought news of how (with some help from F-150 Lightning forum members) she'd been able to gain root access to her Ford Charge Station Pro and fix some of the bugs that had been plaguing its operation, preventing it from getting over-the-air updates, and generally not working as intended.

Yet just after fixing it and getting it working better than it's ever worked - not to mention automatically taking over power transfer after a storm passed through - the fixed unit went ahead and downloaded an over-the-air (OTA) update.

That OTA update, as other F-150 Lightning and Ford Charge Station Pro owners have learned, caused more problems than it fixed. Worse still, it changed the unit's boot loader to prevent the same exploit used the first time around from being used again. And while it might look retaliatory, it's worth noting that OTA update was initially pushed BEFORE Nikki gained access. It's just her timing that sucked.

Luckily, she has not one but two FCSPs... and she'd already blocked the second one from getting the problematic update.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

0:00 — Introduction

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As we head toward Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, we're seeing the start of a really horrific storm season that could set terrifying records. From Hurricanes to tornadoes, floods to wildfires, sometimes the world in which we live can become incredibly hostile to human life.

So today - in the spirit of that airline safety briefing we all sit through - we're reminding you of some of the ways you can keep yourself and your EV safe when a disaster approaches. We'll cover ways to keep your home running with your EV if you're in a shelter-in-place situation - plus ways to be prepared if you need to evacuate with your EV.

00:00 - Introduction

Links:

Colombia Earthquake Relief

GlobalGiving – Colombia Earthquake Relief Fund

Americares – Medical aid and supplies

Wildfire Relief (US West & Europe)

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Hey everybody, happy Sunday! I hope that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you're safe, you are well, and you are with people you care about who also care for you.

I was going to come out and tell you that the air quality here today is measurably better than it was last week when I did my Sunday Musing inside. But in the last half hour or so, the wind has changed and now I can smell forest fire smoke again. It's not as bad as it was last week. It's not a point where I would, you know, I need to feel like I need to be inside for my own safety. But it's definitely, it's definitely not pleasant again. It's that definitely a feeling in the back of one's throat anyway.

That's not why I'm talking to you today. I've had a busy week. We've been working on lots of side projects that have just, I think, kept my brain active and made me feel a little bit more like good things are happening and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It's not the light I wanted to be at the end of the tunnel, and there's still lots of things up in the air regarding my wife's job and our future and all of that stuff. But I think progress is being made. I did a really cool thing this week with a printed circuit board. I did a really cool thing this week discovering a bug on our Ford Charge Station Pro, a bug that I thought I'd got a wrap around. And now I'm realizing that it goes a little bit deeper than perhaps I initially thought. But fingers crossed I'll be able to squish it entirely and make things better for everyone.

But today's Sunday Musing is one that has been on my mind for a while, and it's something that I feel like I'm seeing more and more of. I think partly because I made a video about my truck nearly being written off by the insurance company and what that meant. And people have been reaching out and going, how did you deal with this? You know, how did you keep your vehicle on the road? If you haven't seen that video, go watch it on the main channel. It explains a lot.

But off the back of that is a thought of: do you worry about your EV being replaced? Do you worry? And this is primarily for people who live in the US, I know, because other markets are still getting new EVs launching all the time. We're getting new EVs occasionally here, but kind of the general consensus here, I'm hearing from a lot of people, is this fear that if I get in an accident, if somebody crashes into my vehicle while it's parked or something happens to it, I will never be able to buy another one of those vehicles, or I won't be able to find the specific type of vehicle that I really want.

And I know that's particularly important to a lot of people with the F-150 Lightning. My particular F-150 Lightning is a rare beast because it's the dual charger, extended range battery pack. It's got all the option boxes ticked that could be ticked at the time it was built. And it wasn't a build to order like my first truck, but it was definitely one that I had to look very carefully to find. And very few of them come up for sale, because if you buy the Lariat extended range, all the option boxes ticked, you tend to keep hold of the truck.

And so people who have had accidents, who I know their trucks have been written off for whatever reason, are now having to make difficult decisions about what vehicle do I go with next. Do I try and find a used truck that matches mine, or do I just go for a Silverado, or do I go back to gas? And I know people with other cars — Nissan Ariyas and certain Kia or Hyundai models — are saying the same thing. I'm worried that if something happens to my vehicle, or something has happened to my vehicle, and the vehicle that I wanted to buy is no longer made — worse still, the vehicle I wanted to replace it with is either difficult to get or expensive, or the examples that exist don't have the particular specs that I wanted.

Or perhaps, you know, the actual horrible realisation is a replacement vehicle that is like-for-like is now going to cost more because there are no longer any incentives and automakers are getting rid of all of their discounts. And it's kind of this nightmare scenario for a lot of people. And if you're watching this in other countries around the world, feel free to have a little bit of Schadenfreude at America's part. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I think a lot of America — not many people who watch the show, but many Americans — brought this on themselves. And the rest of us are paying the consequence, which is less, less cool. But I think you get my drift.

We are at this point right now where automakers are pulling out of the EV market in the US. A lot of vehicles are no longer being made. A lot of replacement vehicles are no longer available. Insurance companies are eagerly writing off vehicles willy-nilly, either because they don't fully understand what that vehicle needs in terms of repair, or because the repair skills and the parts are not available. We've talked about that before.

And the thumbnail I'm using for today's is a BMW wrapped up in bubble wrap, because I think a lot of people, some, you know, a lot of people feel like that. They worry. I need to be really careful. I need to treat my vehicle really carefully in case the worst thing happens. And I know from my own experience that when I'm driving either of my EVs right now, the Bolt or the F-150 Lightning, I'm — I'm — I'm ginger. I'm not driving super slowly, but I'm definitely being much more mindful of what other people are doing than I was when those vehicles were still easy to get hold of.

And I don't know, that feels — with a little bit of frustration, a little bit of anger, but also a desire for us as a community to step up and develop our own solutions. It's one of the reasons why I spent a good half of this week developing a printed circuit board that should be arriving next week, and the parts should arrive today or tomorrow, to help me build a module that will allow me to do something cool with my truck that it didn't — it couldn't do with the equipment that I've got in it. So keep your eyes peeled for that one.

And the same reason I tweaked the charging station, you know — and actually, once someone had figured out how to get root access, I'm going to credit them because it wasn't me that got root access. But once I got inside, I was able to do things, and I have done things, and I've learned some things that I'm not ready to discuss that may be related to how the unit operates and some of its bugging and debugging and logs and how they were written. And how having someone nerdy like me around may have actually made it more prone to having this bug that was already in the code surface. But I'm glad it's surfaced, because I've been able to deal with it and squish it, and now we've fixed it. Anyway, that's for another video.

As I said earlier this week, we have a really cool long-time loaner vehicle coming very soon that I didn't see coming. It's kind of blown me away out of the water. But there'll be videos on that this week, hopefully, and also some videos on some other cool stuff we've got planned.

So let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. Tell me if you worry about driving your EV because something might happen to it and you might not be able to replace it. Does that keep you up at night, or am I just weird?

Thanks for supporting the channel. The amazing list of people scrolling by right now support us financially, and you can support us financially from Patreon, from one dollar fifty a month, or on YouTube, or you can send us a Ko-fi. You can send us an old-fashioned check. You can buy swag from our swag store. But you don't have to support us financially. You can also just interact with our content on YouTube or on PeerTube. Reach out to us on Mastodon. Join Mastodon. It's an amazing community. It's getting bigger. It's not owned by any one person, so it's a lot less likely to be subject to the whims and desires of big corporate entities. Let's just leave it at that. It's really cool.

And yeah, join Mastodon. Talk to us in Discord. If you're feeling up to it, try Fluxr. We kind of haven't really been in the Fluxr chat room for a while, because I'm waiting for the people behind Fluxr to actually build a stable server, and then I'll migrate everything over, and then I'll be in Fluxr a lot more. Anyway.

Tell the important people in your life that they are important to you, and I will see you this time next week. Keep evolving.

For the last four years of Ford F150 Lightning ownership, we've LOVED our trucks - and HATED the Ford Charge Station Pro that came free with them. Built by Siemens for Ford using a mildly tweaked stock firmware, they're the way in which the Ford F150 Lighting can power someone's home using the optional Home Integration System (as made by Delta Electronics).

Ford's had so many issues with the charging station, with units dying, going offline, and just generally failing to work properly that in 4 years, they've never worked quite as Ford initially promised they would. And as regulars will know, Nikki has gone through so many FCSP units she's lost track.

But after an enterprising fellow nerd on the F150 Lightning Forum figured out how to finally get root access to the units (using a pre-built SD card image with just the right files on it), Nikki was finally able to get root access. And what she discovered shocked her.

The entire reason the TE FCSPs had been falling like flies after months of otherwise loyal service appears to be down to a bug in the software that gobbles up every last bit of data storage, rendering the unit unable to load the software needed to access the rest of the world.

And so, we fixed it 😉

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

0:00 – Intro

Links!

Original thread discussing root access for the FCSP - https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/fcsp-root-access-over-ssh.38675/

Original thread discussing RS485 implementation for FCSP - https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/fcsp-rs485-port-access-success.28688/

Nikki's own post on the FCSP integration built for Home Assistant - https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/home-assistant-local-integration-for-ford-charge-station-pro-passive-only.28997/

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Toyota has a long and complicated history with EVs. Despite being one of the first automakers to produce an EV more than 20 years ago, it's spent much of the time since trying to convince people that EVs aren't a great idea. It's spent years promoting its hybrid technology and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles instead. And it's spent hundreds of millions on ad campaigns that conflate "battery electric", "hybrid electric" and "electrified."

And when Toyota introduced its first EV for much of the world in over a decade, the BZ4X felt like a product designed to feel adequate but not take away customers from its hybrid market. It performed adequately, but it wasn't a competitive vehicle in a crowded marketplace.

Sales of that BZ4X were never particularly high - but for the 2026 model year, Toyota made some sizable improvements to the TGNA platform on which it, the Lexus RZ and Subaru Solterra is based, improving battery pack specs, charging capabilities, and drivetrain.

And the result? As we've just found out - a much more compelling, affordable, and enticing car for someone who wants Toyota Camry-like vibes... but with an electric heart.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown:

00:00 – Intro & Montage

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The world is a terrifying, scary place right now — with the obvious specter of American exceptionalism that has metastasized into hate and ignorance about the world, its peoples, and both science and technology.

If you've watched our TEN news roundup show, you'll be all too familiar with some of the policies on display, the backward steps being made, and the harm being done. And you'll be aware — either as a U.S. citizen or an observer overseas — that the U.S. has a chance to change direction this November in the U.S. midterms. But it's not just the U.S. — other countries across the world face similar important votes this year, nationally and locally.

So today's Sunday Musing poses a simple question: what will influence your voting decisions this year — wherever you are in the world — and will EVs and environmental concerns guide your choices?

Stay safe, stay engaged. Please watch our livestream from January.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKt_APYQug

About The Transport Evolved Sunday Musings:

Presenter: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield.

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CORRECTION

In this video, while she acknowledges she's not a BMW owner, Nikki states the ad auto-played on startup inside customers' vehicles. This is inaccurate. An ad-banner appears, and encourages occupants to click it to launch the full-screen animation with sound and lighting. It doesn't play automatically. And unfortunately, we didn't hear back from BMW after we requested more info, so we had to go on the reporting we had access to at the time. We're sorry for the error.

However, the core point is still the same: this is an unrequested ad taking over your vehicle experience. It's annoying. It's unwelcome for most, and while BMW (and other automakers) may play seasonal messages (which are far less annoying), most people do not want to be advertised to in their vehicles. We're a small outlet. We sometimes screw up. And we're sorry.

If you've owned a car at any point in the last six years, you know the ebb and flow of parts shortages. Starting with COVID-19 — and in some cases the Japan tsunami nearly a decade before that — it's gotten harder and harder to find the right parts to fix your car in a reasonable timeframe. It's tempting to think this is an EV-only problem, but the nuance is different: the parts shortage is industry-wide — EVs are just feeling it the worst. And it's not all down to politics, although politics does play a part.

⏱️ Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

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🎙️ Credits