This new anti-theft device can keep your e-bike protected for up to a year straight

This news is about e-bikes, not home energy upgrades, so it's a bit outside the usual territory here—but worth a quick note if you own an e-bike. A company called Comodule has built a new anti-theft tracking system, called Astra, meant to be installed by e-bike manufacturers on new models. Its main selling point is battery life: while most GPS-style trackers need recharging every month or two, Astra can reportedly keep tracking a bike for up to 12 months, even while it's sitting in storage.

Astra also adds Wi-Fi-based location tracking alongside standard satellite GPS, which is meant to help pinpoint a bike's location more precisely indoors or in dense areas like apartment buildings and parking garages, where GPS signals often struggle. Depending on how a bike manufacturer sets it up, features could include live location tracking through an app, remote locking, theft alerts, location sharing, and even the ability to disable the bike remotely.

This isn't something you can add to your current e-bike. It's hardware built into new bikes at the manufacturing stage, and Comodule says it's currently showing the system to manufacturers working on 2028 model-year e-bikes. So if you're an e-bike owner, this technology is not yet available for your current bike, but it may show up as a feature on new e-bike models in the next couple of years. In the meantime, a good physical lock remains the main line of defense against theft.