Weird Alibaba: An electric train set so big you can ride it yourself
I like to say that this weekly column finds the coolest and most fun electric vehicles from China that either drive, float, or fly. But with this entry into the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week, I might need to update that list to include things that locomote by rail.
This just may be my new favorite weird thing I found on Alibaba: a life-sized electric train set.
Well, I guess it’s not technically life-sized, as in it’s not the size of an actual honest-to-goodness train. But it’s big enough that you and your friends can still hop aboard and play out your best hobo life fantasy, riding the rail from coast to coast with nothing but a bindle stick and a dream.
There are seven seats, and the weight limit is up to 500 kg (1,100 lb), which means you could fit several friends, colleagues, or kids’ birthday party participants on one train ride.
The motor is fairly weak at just 200 W (1/4 horsepower), though, so perhaps you shouldn’t try and set the tracks up on any significant incline.
Oh, right, and that’s the other cool thing here. You can actually lay out your own track, just like a real train set! The base model seems to come in a circle, but who wants that boring hunk of garbage? Give me something I can be creative with! I want to design my own little train city here, folks. The options for track shapes are listed as “Round shape, Oval shape, 8 shape, B shape, or as customers’ requirements.” That’s perfect because I’m about to have a lot of requirements, sir.
If I were to buy myself a train set like this, I’d need a whole container full of spare track segments so I can really go to town laying down some serious tracks.
Or maybe I’ll just keep the stack of track pieces on the three carriages in the back, laying down segments as I go in a freestyle runaway train scenario.
At a mere $2,200 for one of the coolest train sets I’ve ever seen, I’m dangerously close to needing to find a lawn somewhere to lay this stuff out. Something tells me my apartment complex isn’t going to appreciate me taking over the lobby.
Of course, that price doesn’t include the container ship full of extra track segments I’m going to require, but how much can that stuff cost? If an entire train costs a couple of Gs, then tracks must be practically free.
And look at how many different train designs they offer. There’s more than just a copyright-infringed Thomas the Tank Engine. There’s a little bit of everything, as long as it’s “cheery.”
Ok, ok. Let’s settle down for a minute here. As much fun as we’re having while enjoying the weirdness of Alibaba, please don’t run off and try to buy this thing.
Yes, I know they’ve got it all packaged up and ready for you. But don’t be like my ill-advised readers and jump in with both feet on a crazy train pipe dream. There’s a lot that can go wrong when buying things sight unseen from China. In fact, there’s perhaps more that can go wrong than can go right.
It’s worked out for me a few times, but the stress and complications of the process have surely shaved a few weeks off of my life expectancy and contributed to no fewer than three more gray hairs in my beard.
For now, let’s just enjoy this weirdness from afar, the way it was meant to be. If you really need to take a ride on an electric toy train, consider hitting up the local birthday party scene.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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