Weird Alibaba: You can buy your own electric bumper car to drive around
One of the coolest things about all the weird electric vehicles we find on Alibaba is that many of them seemingly come from objects you’d never expect to see on the road. Take a tiger-shaped bus or a house on wheels. Other times you get things that are technically vehicles but that still should never be near an actual road. And that makes me want to do exactly that, by getting one of these electric bumper cars for cruising my neighborhood’s streets.
Welcome to the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week, bumper car edition!
Here’s the thing — when I was a kid, bumper cars had a giant stick coming out of them. You got to ride around an eerie cheese grater floor while a metallic clothes rod with a tin foil shoehorn created arcing sparks above your head.
Classic kids ride.
But apparently these days the youth will never know the thrill of an amusement park ride that could conceivably electrocute them if they were tall enough.
That’s because there’s a new breed of bumper cars hitting the sad, dried up and money strapped amusement parks barely struggling to hang on. These new battery-powered bumper cars may not carry the same hiss and crackle of the old school models, but they have one redeeming quality: you can drive them anywhere.
Without being stuck in the designated and electrified bumper car thunderdome, you can drive off as far as you please. Or at least as far as your battery will last.
The bumper cars use a 48V system paired with a 500W motor. That means they’re roughly as powerful as an average electric bike that can hit 20 mph (32 km/h).
Unfortunately these things will barely get you to a third of that speed. But you know what happens when you gear down the speed? The torque should skyrocket, meaning these suckers could probably moonlight as airplane tractors. Giddy up!
Surely you won’t be getting anywhere quickly at a maximum speed of 6 mph (10 km/h), but you’re definitely going to be arriving in style.
You’ve probably already lost the race to be the first in town with a fancy new F150 Lightning or Rivian. Why not try to be a different kind of first?
It won’t even cost you that much. What if I told you that I could put you in this bad boy for a cool fifteen hundred bucks? *slaps hood*
That’s right. $1,500 is all it takes to become the proud new owner of a battery powered bumper car.
And that’s not all you get. If the low-budget marketing video below is any indication, the bumper car also comes with a pile of firewood as an “accessory”.
And don’t even get me started on the awesome list of features.
The battery bumper car comes complete with “leather” seats, anti-skid steering wheel, LED lighting, speakers that can play your MP3 mix from an SD card, and an impact-resistant body.
Plus they’re super easy to park thanks to their 360 degree turning ability. And if you ever did accidentally kiss another car while sliding into your spot, you can just shrug at the owner and point to your ride. What did they expect, it’s a bumper car.
As much as I’d love to get a few of these and turn a parking garage into a kids birthday party, I think I’ll take a break from my weird Alibaba orders for now.
I’ve still got my electric boat to unbox and I’m not sure there’s room for a dozen bumper cars. You absolutely shouldn’t buy one either. But if you do, I want to hear all about it!
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Germany’s largest offshore wind farm under construction, EnBW’s He Dreiht, just hit a big milestone: The first enormous turbine is now up in the North Sea.
He Dreiht – which means “it spins” in Low German – is using Vestas’s massive 15 megawatt (MW) turbines, the first project in the world to install them. Just one spin of one of the rotors can generate enough electricity to power four households for an entire day.
When it’s finished, He Dreiht will have 64 mega turbines cranking out 960 megawatts (MW) of clean power – enough to supply around 1.1 million homes. And it’s being built without any government subsidies.
EnBW, one of Germany’s major energy companies, has been working in offshore wind for more than 15 years, but He Dreiht is their biggest project yet. “It will play a key role in helping us to significantly grow our renewable energy output from 6.6 GW to over 10 GW by 2030,” said Michael Class, who heads up EnBW’s generation portfolio development.
The project is a win for Vestas, too. “With the installation of the first V236-15.0 MW, we have reached an important milestone for both the He Dreiht project and our offshore ramp-up, which helps Germany build a more secure, affordable, and sustainable energy system,” said Nils de Baar, president of Vestas Northern & Central Europe.
He Dreiht is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Borkum and 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of Helgoland. At peak times, more than 500 workers will be out at sea building the farm, using a fleet of more than 60 ships. EnBW’s offshore team in Hamburg is running the show.
The installation process is a major operation. The 64 foundations were already set in the seabed last year. Parts for the turbines are loaded onto the installation vessel Wind Orca in Esbjerg, Denmark, and shipped out in a 12-hour journey to the construction site. From there, the turbines are lifted into place. Meanwhile, crews are also working on internal wind farm cabling.
A partner consortium made up of Allianz Capital Partners, AIP, and Norges Bank Investment Management owns 49.9% of the shares in He Dreiht.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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Tesla has released a quick update about its Tesla Semi factory in Nevada. It says that it is on track for volume production of the electric semi truck in 2026.
The Tesla Semi was first scheduled to go into production in 2019, but it has faced numerous delays.
Now, it appears that there is finally some momentum to bring it to volume production.
For the last two years, Tesla has been working to build a new factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where it builds the battery packs and drive units for most of its electric vehicles built in North America.
Today, Tesla released a “progress update on the factory, confirming that it finished building and it’s now working on deploying the production lines:
Tesla had previously mentioned aiming for volume production by 2025, but it is now only talking about starting production toward the end of the year and ramping up next year.
The automaker reiterated its planned production capacity of 50,000 units.
We recently reported that an early Tesla Semi customer, Ryder, stated that the electric truck program is experiencing more delays and a price increase described as “dramatic.”
They now expect to take deliveries of their first trucks later in 2026 and said that the price has increased “dramatically,” leading them to scale back their pilot program from 42 to 18 Tesla Semi trucks.
When originally unveiling the Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker mentioned prices of $150,000 for a 300-mile range truck and $180,000 for the 500-mile version. Tesla also took orders for a “Founder’s Series Semi” at $200,000.
However, Tesla didn’t update the prices when launching the “production version” of the truck in late 2022. Price increases have been speculated, but the company has never confirmed them.
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Vietnamese solar panel maker Boviet Solar just opened the doors to its first US factory — a huge new PV module plant in Greenville, North Carolina.
The company dropped $294 million into the state-of-the-art facility, which will pump out Boviet’s Gamma Series monofacial and Vega Series bifacial solar panels. They’re using advanced PERC and N-Type solar cell tech, which basically means these panels are built to deliver higher efficiency and better performance across residential, commercial, industrial, and utility-scale projects.
The Greenville factory’s first phase is now online with an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). For Phase 2, which is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026, Boviet will invest another $100 million to add 600,000 square feet and ramp up to another 2 GW. It will make high-efficiency solar cells.
Once both phases are complete, Boviet’s campus will cover more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space. It’s one of the biggest clean energy manufacturing projects North Carolina has ever seen.
The jobs impact is significant, too. The first phase will create 460 skilled local jobs. Phase 2 is expected to add another 908, bringing the total to over 1,300 direct jobs, plus nearly 2,000 more indirect jobs across the region. That’s good news for Pitt County’s economy, real estate market, and workforce training programs.
“This facility is not just creating jobs, but creating opportunity, innovation, and a stronger foundation for eastern North Carolina,” said Senator Kandie Smith. Governor Josh Stein added that Boviet Solar’s move shows how North Carolina is leading the way in clean energy growth.
Read more: Thomas Built Buses debuts its next-gen electric school bus
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