Neerav Bhatts Blog

Yorick Mark from respected Brisbane solar/battery installer MC Electrical showed me something at Smart Energy Sydney 2026 that caught my attention straight away. Solax has a new AC bi-directional EV charger coming to market soon, it could be a much cheaper path to using your car as a home battery. The idea is simple. If your EV has V2L like a Kia, Hyundai or BYD, you plug it into this charger.

My dad has had his Anker SOLIX X1 AC coupled home battery system (6kW Inverter and 25kWh battery) for 101 days. He’s been on the Globird Zero Hero electricity plan for 38 of them. In this video, I walk through exactly how it all works. Honestly it’s simpler than most people expect. The short version: solar charges the battery during the morning. Then from 11am to 2pm, Globird gives him free grid electricity. He runs the dishwasher, the dryer, the microwave, the kettle. He charges his EV.

Six months ago I installed an Anker SOLIX X1 home battery system (10kW Hybrid Inverter + 30kWh battery). I had no idea it would change how I use electricity as much as it changed how much I pay for it. My bills dropped a lot and my household now uses hardly any grid electricity. That was one of the main reasons for getting a home battery, to minimise the amount of dirty coal and gas powered grid electricity we use.

I sat down with Dan Bleakley from New Energy Transport, and this conversation hit different. This wasn’t a chat about the distant future of electric trucks. It was a warning about right now. Dan made the case that Australia is sleepwalking into a fuel crisis. There is a massive hole in global oil supply, somewhere between 9 and 13 million barrels short every single day. That gap is not closing anytime soon. Some analysts say it could take until 2030 to recover.

I had a detailed chat with Phil from Anker at Smart Energy Sydney 2026 to get the full story on their brand new SOLIX XE battery system. This is not a minor update. It’s a ground-up rethink of what a home battery can do and the timing matters. A lot. The federal home battery rebate scheme has changed and Anker has moved fast to build something that fits the new tiers almost perfectly. The XE comes in 7 kilowatt hour modules. Stack two together and you hit the sweet spot for full Tier 1 rebate.

My dad picked up his first electric car purchase recently, A Kia EV3 Air Long Range from Paul Wakeling Kia in Campbelltown. He paid less than the sticker price, thanks to a deal that was only available for a short time. I was there to film the whole thing. Elie from the dealership walked us through the car in detail. A real hands-on handover, not just “here are your keys, good luck.” There were things he showed us that I didn’t even know about, and I’ve driven the EV3 extensively myself.

My dad is in his early 70s, retired, and has been watching me review EVs for a while now. After test driving almost a dozen electric cars he finally decided to buy one. In this video, we drove together to pick up his new Kia EV3 Air Long Range, and on the way I got him to walk through every car he seriously considered and exactly why he said no to each one. He came into this with a clear set of priorities. Reliability, comfort, and value. Not performance, not tech features.

I picked up the BYD Sealion 7 AWD Performance on 9 April 2026 with the Tripmeter A reading 737 km and returned it on 16 April 2026 with the Tripmeter A reading 1030, a total of 293 km travelled during the week. This is one and a half times my typical annual mileage of about 10,000 km. The car was charged to 100% when I picked it up and the range available was 525 km. On return the battery was at 39% and available range 205 km.

I caught up with Alex at two very different moments on his electric car drive from Sydney to Margaret River in Western Australia. The first time, he was pulled up at a fast charger in the middle of South Australia, over 1,300 kilometres already behind him. The Nullarbor was still ahead. He seemed relaxed about it. The second time, he was in Margaret River. He had made it. 4,242 kilometres in five days, solo behind the wheel the whole way.

I own an MG4. Have done for the best part of two years. So when MG invited me to the Australian media launch of the MG4 Urban, I was probably the only reviewer there who could give you a direct comparison from lived experience, not just a day behind the wheel of a press car. That’s exactly what these three videos are.