I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)

Pretty hilarious how negative the original article comments are, and it turned out after a year of use the author has nothing but positive things to say: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-holding-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...</a><p>I think there&#x27;s a large education gap surround EVs that needs to be filled. Hopefully more articles and experiments like this continue to appear. If you have an EV, consider spreading the word - good and bad. It&#x27;s important to talk about all aspects to both bring more users into the EV fold, and address existing issues.

Honestly, I think $7,000 delivered for this is a pretty good price. It would make a nice farm vehicle, especially with that dump bed. It&#x27;s in the same price range as a lower end UTV and looks like it would be far more comfortable doing, e.g., snow clearing duty. Swap in a set of BFG Mud Terrain tires and you&#x27;re all set.<p>Some feedback on reliability, the rust issues, etc. would be nice but I&#x27;d seriously think about getting one. As for it not being street legal, well I live out in the country. Golf carts, UTV&#x27;s, ATV&#x27;s, minibikes, on the roads around here are not at all unusual. Not legal, but I only know of one case of someone getting ticketed.

There&#x27;s a sequel article that goes over how well it&#x27;s held up:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-holding-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...</a>

&gt; <i>glass has to come from DOT-registered glass factories, the backup camera has to come from DOT-registered backup camera factories, etc. It’s not enough to simply go 25 mph and have seat belts and blinkers... Even if the cars had all the necessary DOT parts, the factory that produces them in China also has to be registered with the NHTSA to allow the cars to be street legal in the US.</i><p>Some of this makes sense. Much of it doesn&#x27;t, or could be vastly simplified for low-speed use cases.

We have a Toro Workman electric cart on our small farm. It&#x27;s extremely useful even while being quite basic and powered by lead-acid batteries. We bought it used a while ago but a new one would cost 15k€. The new ones are a little nicer but still mostly unchanged over the years. John Deere sells a Gator that&#x27;s almost the same thing. I&#x27;m definitely hoping some of these manufacturers shake up this market. Hopefully the small tractor and skid steer markets as well although that&#x27;s quite a bit more complex because of managing the attachments. Battery weight is irrelevant and so is range for most people, so lead-acid is fine for all these applications. LFP can be a bonus though. A few things have started popping up but nothing really good. A lot of the time it&#x27;s people attaching an electric motor to an overly complicated transmission designed for the shortcomings of gas&#x2F;diesel motors.

Hmm, wonder why the 1 year ago post is posted instead of the new one today that follows up 1 year later: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-holding-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...</a>

&gt; it was about 2:3 scale<p>Lol it&#x27;s normal size for the rest of the world.

Here&#x27;s the followup article about how it&#x27;s holding up a year later:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-holding-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electrek.co&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;25&#x2F;electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...</a><p>The quick summary is that it&#x27;s still doing pretty well.

I have always thought that we need to make a better distinction between neighborhood vs city vs highway vehicles. A cheap compact &lt;30 mph car that I can use for grocery runs and other quick errands around town would be fantastic, but there&#x27;s zero market for something like it (Smart sadly fizzled out), mainly because of the onerous manufacturing and certification requirements mentioned in the article.

Impressive.<p>At this price point they had to cut some features. I wonder if one of those features is &quot;Safety&quot; and another one is &quot;The front won&#x27;t fall off&quot;.

&gt; I also want to add some mounts on the hydraulic lifting bed so my parents can pickup their trash cans and drive them down their country road-like driveway all the way to the public road for trash pickup.<p>Helpful tip for anyone else with a really long driveway like mine: I hooked a couple of straps to the back of my golf cart with extra large carabiners on the loose end that I can easily clip on to my trash cans. Works great and cost me under $40. Initially I kept trying to think of ways to lift&#x2F;mount the trash cans to my cart but the cans can get pretty heavy once full. Since they already have wheels, I just tilt them slightly, clip on the carabiners, and off I go.

What we really need is are manufacturers providing kits. Kit cars aren&#x27;t subject to all these regulations. I think the cap is 2000 model units per year though.

So this is $3500 EV vehicle that has 40 miles range and 25 mph max speed. Few tweaks here and there and these will be perfect to sell in US or anywhere else. Tesla needs to up their game on getting $5k&#x2F;$10k EVs delivered or their dream of fossil fuel vehicles would be fulfilled by someone else.

He says it cost 7k. Compared to the price of a new golf cart thats actually not bad at all. Might be useful in places where golf carts are street legal, which seems to be getting more popular in the US.

I chuckled at this “F-50” but also wonder if this could be the start of a classic Clayton Christensen style disruption curve [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Disruptivetechnology.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;commons.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Disruptivetechnology...</a>

What a cute little truck. It&#x27;s crazy the stuff you can import from China.

This is exactly the thing that I want. Too bad it&#x27;s so hard to import. I am not willing to put up with any hassle. I just want a tiny open-bed vehicle that I can take around SF and the Bay Area. I&#x27;m happy to avoid freeways and stuff, though it will legitimately suck that I can&#x27;t get over to the other side of the Bay with this.

Pretty much what you&#x27;d expect. I&#x27;m impressed. Also, the guy made more than his money back from youtube revenue

&gt;the backup camera has to come from DOT-registered backup camera factories<p>Does that mean you can&#x27;t have a street legal car in the US without a backup camera? Or if it does have a backup camera it has to come from a DOT-registered factory? If the latter then why not just disable it? Or that&#x27;s not even enough?

&gt; It sure beats a gas-powered UTV since I never have to fill it up or choke on exhaust.<p>I don&#x27;t know much about this site or the article author, but I have a hard time believing that this is anything but a dramatic exaggeration.<p>I own a farm. I (and no one I know) would never seriously rely on an electric vehicle for utility. In general the batteries just aren&#x27;t there and the rate at which they lose capacity is just too high to justify the cost. For $7,000 you could have a used UTV&#x2F;SXS or a quad with a trailer in most markets. Both would handily outdo this Alibaba amalgamation.<p>I won&#x27;t even get into all the horror stories about uncaught grounds and battery safety for things on that site or the fact that preferring electric to ICEs is more of a virtue signal than net benefit for the planet. Cool experiment though.

They don&#x27;t have the required Amazon affiliate disclosure before their affiliate links. It&#x27;s just asking for trouble. Having it at the bottom is not enough for Amazon and they don&#x27;t even use the correct wording either

Decent deal. Probably &lt;4k if purchased and assembled within China. Cheaper than most electric mountain bikes.<p>Looks like electric ATVs&#x2F;UTVs are around 15k, which would be a rough comp.<p>Electric bikes &#x2F; scooters &#x2F; etc will hopefully become much more commonplace. Way cheaper than cars, and potentially more exercise. Hopefully more special purpose trails for bikes &#x2F; pedestrians are created to accommodate demand. Certain places like the Netherlands do a great job at accommodating non-vehicle commuting.

Street legal and insurance (even driving to neighbour and dump rubbish as in the articles) existed for a reason. The cost might not. But the item is needed in case any accident happened.<p>It is not your home project with Bluetooth chip. It is moving machine that can hurt and kill.<p>Good fun I guess and help the totalitarian country one more us$ dollars. God bless America.

This seems pretty cool for all the reasons the author said, but what about long-term?<p>Getting replacement parts seems like a nightmare, if not impossible. What happens when the shocks wear out? When you bend a wheel rim on a rock? etc.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m just not informed, and it&#x27;s easy to get parts. Or maybe these things are so mechanically simple that it&#x27;s no big deal.

I&#x27;m confused by street legal thing. How do people register cars they make themselves if there are all these requirements?

If those were imported massively in usa or canada [and take a chunk off the 2k shipping and other extra fees that could be averaged down], they would sell tons even if not street legal, awesome base for hacking or small vehicle for small farms or woodlands.

I want this—but street legal and with a top speed of 35 mph—to go run errands around my neighborhood.

Step 1: Have sufficiently big property to drive around your future mini truck. :)

It&#x27;s outrageous! Love it, what fun!

It does not look like it would outperform UTVs at similar or lower price points.

I wonder if he was supposed to pay the chicken tax? 25% for light pickups.

It’s insane people buy stuff like this just for moving a few things around the farm. What a waste.