The Busbar

Expion360 reported Q2 2026 net sales of $2.0 million, down 32% year over year but up 30% on Q1, with gross margin expanding from 20.8% to 32.4% — which CEO Joseph Hammer attributed to dropping resale of low-margin accessories rather than to any pricing move. Net loss was $1.3 million; cash stood at $1.5 million at 30 June. The company completed a 1-for-12 reverse split on 21 July and regained Nasdaq bid-price compliance on 4 August.

The part that matters outside the ticker: Forest River — a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary and one of North America's largest RV builders — extended its use of Expion360's UL 1973-certified lithium systems to the Georgetown and Dynamax Grand Sport motorized brands, on top of existing Dynamax and East to West programs. Factory-fit certified lithium in motorhomes is still the exception rather than the rule; each OEM win moves it closer to default. Expion360 also said it remains on track to launch the first of its next-generation batteries in the second half of 2026, with VHC internal heating, SmartTalk Bluetooth and CAN bus — though the August release did not restate the model-by-model capacities given in February's announcement.

The firmware itself shipped on 30 May; what's new is that the settings are reachable, via JK BMS Android app v6.0.10, and that someone has now tested them. Off-Grid Garage walked through all three on 29 July. Manual SoC override matters when a bank sits through a winter without a full charge and the BMS estimate drifts; manual SoH (floor: 50%) matters when you swap in a replacement BMS, which otherwise assumes the pack it has just met is brand new.

The third one has a catch. Andy found that JK's cycle capacity figure counts only amp-hours discharged — charge current is never added. On a 314Ah pack, entering 314Ah registers one cycle, and 628Ah registers two, when 628Ah discharged-plus-charged is physically one full cycle. He confirmed the same behaviour on B-series and PB-series units, so it isn't specific to V19. The arithmetic still works if you divide cycle capacity by pack capacity — you just have to know the label means discharge capacity, not cycles.

Off-Grid Garage unboxed the Thor 5000 on 7 August: 5.1kWh, 51.2V, 100Ah, REPT cells, a JK Inverter-BMS (JK_PB1A16S10P V19) with 1A active balancing, and an integrated 100A DC breaker rated to 250V DC. Gobel quotes 6,000 cycles to 80% SoH at 80% DoD, 3,000 at 100% DoD, and a 10-year warranty; list price is $1,382, with stock in both China and Germany warehouses.

The story is the enclosure. At 135mm deep it undercuts comparable 100Ah rack batteries at around 180mm, and at roughly 41–44kg it's a one-person carry — Andy notes he carried it from his front gate to the garage, which is not the usual experience with a 5kWh pack. Steel case as standard, 201 stainless optional. On the "German designed" billing: the design work is credited to Autong in Germany, but Gobel Power is a Shenzhen manufacturer founded in 2012, and the cells are REPT. Designed there, built here — worth reading the phrase precisely.

The Paoweric 5kWh unit costs $699 and is nominally rated 200A. Prowse ran it at 200A on the cycler and it lasted 54 seconds — the integrated DC breaker is marked 100A. At 100A it delivered a measured 104.8Ah on discharge, which he called mid-pack and better than he expected for the money. It's also only 13in wide against the 17.5in standard, so it will not fit most server racks.

The teardown is where it turns. No inductor on the BMS, so no current throttling; solder blobbed onto a nickel sheet welded to an aluminium busbar; six wires landed on a single busbar; both temperature sensors attached with tape; fibreboard at the ends of the cell stack but nothing between cells. Prowse's summary was blunt — not a good battery — and his framing is the useful bit: for about $150 more you can buy a pack listed to UL 1973 and UL 9540, which is what permitting and insurance actually turn on. The gap between certified and uncertified used to be wide enough to explain itself. It's narrowing.