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

electrek.co

111–120 of 190 posts

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

#111

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'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're all set. Some feedback on reliability, the rust issues, etc. would be nice but I'd seriously think about ge…

$7k gets you a really nice compact pickup, not anything the average HNer would buy, but nice enough for farm duty and new enough to not need anything for years. And you can drive it down the street. And when you snap something doing farmer stuff (which you will, because farmer) you can go buy a replacement part easily.

As someone that lives on a farm, I was thinking the same, you're getting a reasonable second hand ute "paddock basher" at that price.

At the same time I love seeing this and where its going. I always think of Luke on his uncles farm in star wars and that farm work will increasing change more to fixing the machines doing the job, than the job itself. And I suspect ongoing electric powered will suit farmers more than anyone as they have the space and lack of neighbours to create power themselves.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to agree -- I really want a truck like this in the USA, but unfortunately I need to disagree simply because it is not street legal. I have an old 2001 beater truck I use for the purpose now, but I can't replace it with this EV because it's not street legal. I live in a rural area, but luckily I can drive 2 miles to a dump (transfer station) and 5 miles to a place with bulk mulch, soil, gravel, etc... Bu…

Just hitch it and use it that way. Worst case scenario you pay a little more for gas. Problem solved.

Isn't the entire point to not be using any gas? You want to use a gas powered ICE truck to tow the EV to load contents into the EV's bed, then tow the EV back to where ever just to avoid transferring content from ICE->EV->application?

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

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, but how would I do in crash with an SUV if I were on a motorcycle and are those street legal?

A motorcycle has obvious dangers. An unsafe car has non-obvious dangers. A lot of government regulation is about preventing non-obvious dangers or trying to make them obvious.

How would a car a small fraction of another car have non-obvious dangers in one-on-one collisions? If you think that a smaller mass object vs a much larger mass object is not going to do lots of damage to the smaller mass object, then a basic understanding of physics seems to be lacking. Then, tack on how much faster the larger mass object can be moving in comparison to the lower mass object, and tell me what's so non-obvious about that.

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

#114
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha wow, that's such an adorable car. It's unfortunate that that kind of vehicle won't ever make it to the US though.

The closest thing was probably the electric Smart car that Mercedes makes: https://carbuzz.com/cars/smart/fortwo-electric-drive-cabrio They don’t sell them in the US anymore.

Is the Honda-e available over there?

That's a pretty nice mini electric vehicle.

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

#115
> 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.

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/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.

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

#116

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'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're all set. Some feedback on reliability, the rust issues, etc. would be nice but I'd seriously think about ge…

I really want to agree -- I really want a truck like this in the USA, but unfortunately I need to disagree simply because it is not street legal. I have an old 2001 beater truck I use for the purpose now, but I can't replace it with this EV because it's not street legal. I live in a rural area, but luckily I can drive 2 miles to a dump (transfer station) and 5 miles to a place with bulk mulch, soil, gravel, etc... Bu…

OP uses it to move wood and dirt around the parents ranch. It's basically replacing a wheelbarrow, not the farm truck.

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

#117

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: https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/electric-mini-truck-how-its-h... I think there'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 an…

In this case I think the positive reactions a year later are more a result of having a good use case for the NEV/LSV rather than the truck being a good buy for the general public. There's also arguably limited use cases like the article brings up (off road, not street legal, lots of land) - or at least "limited" in comparison with the average / mean vehicle that gets purchased by consumers. Great that it has a use ca…

Exactly. This looks like a good alternative to importing a Kei car from Japan. With a bigger battery pack and some outlets, could be a be a perfect little runnabout truck for a small farm or ranch.

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A motorcycle has obvious dangers. An unsafe car has non-obvious dangers. A lot of government regulation is about preventing non-obvious dangers or trying to make them obvious.

How would a car a small fraction of another car have non-obvious dangers in one-on-one collisions? If you think that a smaller mass object vs a much larger mass object is not going to do lots of damage to the smaller mass object, then a basic understanding of physics seems to be lacking. Then, tack on how much faster the larger mass object can be moving in comparison to the lower mass object, and tell me what's so no…

You seem quite worked up, and seem to be having a discussion about how a motorcycle would perform in a collision with a large car versus a small car colliding with a large car. To be clear, that's not what I'm talking about here. I was picking up on the parent post's question about why a motorcycle should be road legal, and this thing not, when the collision danger was probably equivalent or higher.

I'm not saying that this car is more dangerous in a collision than a motorcycle. It might be, though. This weighs more than a motorcycle, which means more mass involved in the collision, which means energy to be dissipated. In a basic understanding of physics, this is sometimes referred to as the mass-energy equivalence. It's denoted by the formula E = mc2 which is fairly well known.

It's not just about mass though, is it? It's not even just about collision safety.

Cars have features like airbags, crush zones and impact protection cells to make collisions more survivable. Some of these features are optional, but many are mandated by governments on new cars.

One of the reasons this vehicle would not be road legal is because a passenger getting in to the vehicle, or someone buying it second hand, would reasonably expect it to have these features. This is what I mean by obvious and non-obvious dangers. A motorcycle has obvious dangers. It's clear to anyone that if a car t-bones you, that car will impact your body directly. This car, however, has the appearance of "a newish car". What that means to someone in a developed country like Australia is "a vehicle that meets basic safety standards". This vehicle contravenes that expectation in a non-obvious way.

Regulations also exist around things like handling dynamics in collision avoidance scenarios. How does this vehicle perform if you need to swerve suddenly to avoid a kid that has run out in the street? Will it turn or skid onwards? Will it roll over? Will something else happen? It might perform wonderfully, but the certifying authority doesn't have any reliable information that someone reliable has tested it.

New vehicles sold also have regulations around the reliability of individual components. The master cylinder for the braking system must be manufactured to a given standard of quality. If the plastic casting is crappy and the lid blows off when you hit the brakes, that's a bad thing and someone could be hurt. Preventing things like this happening to unsuspecting bystanders is why we live in a society that has agreed to place restrictions upon itself for the greater good.

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

#119
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to agree -- I really want a truck like this in the USA, but unfortunately I need to disagree simply because it is not street legal. I have an old 2001 beater truck I use for the purpose now, but I can't replace it with this EV because it's not street legal. I live in a rural area, but luckily I can drive 2 miles to a dump (transfer station) and 5 miles to a place with bulk mulch, soil, gravel, etc... Bu…

OP uses it to move wood and dirt around the parents ranch. It's basically replacing a wheelbarrow, not the farm truck.

A $7,000 wheelbarrow

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

#120
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP uses it to move wood and dirt around the parents ranch. It's basically replacing a wheelbarrow, not the farm truck.

A $7,000 wheelbarrow

Worth it for his aging parents tending to a huge property
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