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 bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
181–190 of 190 posts
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, renting a truck for, say, 2-3 days was something like $250-300 in my case. If I need one more than 2-3x a year it approaches the price point of a cheap truck vs a family sedan or SUV.
I don’t think you’re accounting for other costs like fuel needed for a truck which is an ongoing cost.
there are hybrid and ev large trucks now, as well as 4-cyl turbo. truck doesn’t mean large engine.
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, obviously everything makes sense! Atleast when knowing the reason for that is simply very successful lobbying by established companies to prevent anyone from entering any vehicle or vehicle supplying market without enormous upfront costs .
Imagine hitting a pedestrian at 4mph on the side of the road with one of your headlights. The headlight shatters. However, the light turned out to not actually be safety glass and not shatter in harmless cubes but in nasty long splinters that hit an artery and the pedestrian bleeds out on the side of the road. The Chinese company won't give a shit because they have no certification so nothing to lose. They didn't eve…
> However, the light turned out to not actually be safety glass and not shatter in harmless cubes
You mean like every other headlight? Headlights don't use toughened or safety glass.
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#184> it was about 2:3 scale Lol it's normal size for the rest of the world.
Exactly! This whole article is so pervasively American that it was just about unreadable to me. It's a fairly rare and quite novel experience: it's in my native language, but so completely based on US assumptions and presumption of shared knowledge that I do not have, that it just... doesn't parse. * His parents apparently live on some plot of land the size of a largish city. Presumably alone? * The vehicle is a perf…
> The vehicle is a perfectly normal full-size truck of some kind, but he keeps talking about it as if it were a toy
It's the size of one of those little Kubota ATVs that can carry roughly a 25kg bag of feed and a bale of hay. It's limited to 25mph. If you wanted it to go faster than 25mph, you could load it into the bed of a standard-size Ford Transit.
It's a tiny wee electric buggy that you could *just about* make road-legal under the UK's famously lax laws.
It is not in any sense a "full-size truck".
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a cheap toy truck for pretty much any industrialized country. It’s weird to compare heavy machinery sizes as if it was up to personal preferences. Maybe look past your vitriol towards the US?
It is only toy-sized by US standards. By the standards of pretty much any other country in the world, it's a normal-sized vehicle, even a large one. Go read about tuk-tuks. Visit Asia some time. Vitriol? Pity for a culture so dependent on a machine I personally dislike: the motor car. Distaste and disdain for a culture whose example is destroying the world. I reserve vitriol for more important things.
> By the standards of pretty much any other country in the world, it's a normal-sized vehicle, even a large one.
It's not much bigger than a quad bike. It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down.
> Go read about tuk-tuks.
Tuk-tuks aren't real vehicles either. You can't even make them road-legal in the UK, where the most you need to do is "does it have some sort of brake and some sort of mudguard on all its road wheels, some sort of brake light, and some sort of exhaust silencer?"
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is only toy-sized by US standards. By the standards of pretty much any other country in the world, it's a normal-sized vehicle, even a large one. Go read about tuk-tuks. Visit Asia some time. Vitriol? Pity for a culture so dependent on a machine I personally dislike: the motor car. Distaste and disdain for a culture whose example is destroying the world. I reserve vitriol for more important things.
> By the standards of pretty much any other country in the world, it's a normal-sized vehicle, even a large one. It's not much bigger than a quad bike. It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down. > Go read about tuk-tuks. Tuk-tuks aren't real vehicles either. You can't even make them road-legal in the UK, where the most you need to do is "does it have some sort of brake and some sor…
> It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down.
I submit that a Range Rover is not a normal-sized vehicle, either.
> You can't even make them road-legal in the UK
You had better tell this company quickly, then -- they are already selling them.
https://tukshop.com/buy-a-tuk-tuk
I
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, renting a truck for, say, 2-3 days was something like $250-300 in my case. If I need one more than 2-3x a year it approaches the price point of a cheap truck vs a family sedan or SUV.
I don’t think you’re accounting for other costs like fuel needed for a truck which is an ongoing cost.
Actually I am. Rental trucks are not cheap if you use them for any period of time. If all you need is to get a sheet of plywood from Home Depot a couple times a year, then rent. Fuel is cheap, even at $5/gallon, compared to the costs of a rental, so it only takes a few times per year of renting before you are better off just paying for fuel in the truck.
That is before we account for rentals often being sold out. The fact that you don't have to plan ahead to use your own truck is worth something as well.
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, renting a truck for, say, 2-3 days was something like $250-300 in my case. If I need one more than 2-3x a year it approaches the price point of a cheap truck vs a family sedan or SUV.
I don’t think you’re accounting for other costs like fuel needed for a truck which is an ongoing cost.
My old truck got 22 highway mpg, and the average family size sedan gets somewhere between 27-35 mpg (or up to 45 mpg if you count the Prius), coming out to roughly an extra $1,200 a year at $5/gal assuming 10k miles a year. Additionally, larger and taller vehicles are far easier to work on yourself.
In short, the operating costs are not all that much different. The true cost comes in with overall vehicle price and insurance costs, which heavily favor the family sedans.
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> By the standards of pretty much any other country in the world, it's a normal-sized vehicle, even a large one. It's not much bigger than a quad bike. It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down. > Go read about tuk-tuks. Tuk-tuks aren't real vehicles either. You can't even make them road-legal in the UK, where the most you need to do is "does it have some sort of brake and some sor…
> It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down. I submit that a Range Rover is not a normal-sized vehicle, either. > You can't even make them road-legal in the UK You had better tell this company quickly, then -- they are already selling them. https://tukshop.com/buy-a-tuk-tuk I
So, tuk-tuks very much not like the ones they have in Asia then?
As for the size of vehicles, it kind of depends what you consider normal-sized. What do you think I should get instead?
Re: I bought a cheap electric pickup truck from Alibaba (2021)
#190> 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. Some of this makes sense. Much o…
It won't be, because those regulations aren't in place to ensure safety, they're in place to be a barrier to small manufacturers getting started and competing with the incumbent US Auto makers.