This guy bought a wild standing electric ATV from China – here’s what showed up
For those who have had the pleasure of discovering my weekly column on weird electric vehicles from China (or for those with a less robust sense of humor who have had the displeasure of finding it), you’ll know I love trawling through Alibaba’s long list of wacky electric vehicles. I often find some real nuggets of treasure, and sometimes I even go as far as buying and importing them to the US.
Make no mistake: It’s a terrible idea that is fraught with problems. That’s why I always advise against my readers following my lead. But sometimes, just sometimes, some of you foolhardy folks will climb up and over all of my disclaimers to try your own hands at getting the weirdest wheeled vehicles that China can muster.
That’s the case with one Kentucky man who was inspired by my own ill-advised shenanigans and decided to try his hand at a bad idea that ultimately worked out quite well.
I’ll call him Hector, because that’s his name, and he said I could use it. Hector liked the standing electric ATV that I covered in an article last year and fancied the idea of one day having his own. But instead of leaving it at that, he was bitten by the same Alibaba bug as me and sought out a way to make it happen.
And I don’t blame him. This thing looks pretty awesome on paper. It’s an all-wheel-drive design with 6,000 watts of power, full-suspension, and the ability to add a pile of accessories. The top speed of 60 km/h (37 mph) is likely fast enough for most riders, as I’m not sure many people want to involuntarily dismount going any fast than that, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong on a ride.
The design is so cool because it’s not exactly original. In fact, it’s pretty much a rip-off of the Israeli-designed off-road vehicle known as the DSRaider. It’s not quite as rugged, but it’s much cheaper.
Priced at $4,000, the Chinese version is significantly more affordable than the original, which is often used by military and police units in various parts of the world.
Hector messaged the vendor, Zhejiang LVDU Industry & Trade corporation, and resisted their attempts to receive payment for the ATV by wire transfer, which can be problematic if there’s ever an issue with the vehicle or its delivery.
“I contacted them to get the vehicle specs, and they suggested a wire transfer payment that I declined,” explained Hector. “They returned and offered to do it through Alibaba, and I accepted.”
Alibaba’s internal payment platform is safer than a wire transfer since Alibaba offers some marginal buyer protections, though many vendors won’t use it because it delays their ability to receive the funds.
From there, Hector began choosing his desired accessories. “I added some accessories for the vehicle, such as bigger tires, a basket, a beacon light post, and a vertical rack for cargo,” he continued.
The accessories added up to US $322, and the factory threw in a seat for free.
The seller offered Hector a shipping option under terms known as DDP, or Delivered Duty Paid. This is one of many forms of international freight agreements, and it means that the seller is responsible for everything required to get the product to the customer’s door. That means importing, customs clearance, customs fees, trucking to final destination, etc. The charge for DDP was US $1,295. After the added taxes (yes, Alibaba is required by law to collect US sales tax on purchases from Americans), the total that Hector paid came out to US $6,094.29. In theory, the DDP terms mean that this should be the final payment, and everything else should be handled by the shipper.
Hector submitted the payment through Alibaba’s payment platform, which provides some level of buyer protection through escrow (though I’ve still been screwed in the past anyway). That payment started the production of Hector’s new electric ATV, and the factory came back to him with the proof-of-life pictures below.
So far, so good.
The next step was local shipping. The electric ATV had to be packaged up for its journey and sent to a freight forwarder.
The factory took care of these steps, updating Hector along the way.
Hector then received the images below, showing how the ATV was packaged and loaded into a truck to be taken to a freight forwarder for containerization.
The factory created a steel shipping cage for the vehicle and then covered it in a cardboard exterior. This is fairly common, though I try to ask for a wooden crate to ensure better protection, especially when I know my product will be placed in a container with many other customers’ one-off shipments.
It took around six weeks for the ship to make its way from China to California, where it off-loaded the container and Hector’s shipment was stripped and prepared for land transport.
The factory’s freight forwarder handled the customs clearance process and booked the ATV with a trucking service to send it inland on the long journey to Kentucky.
Another week and a half later, a lift-gate truck rolled up to Hector’s driveway and off-loaded the package.
There it was, in all its standing electric ATV glory.
Somehow it had travelled from the factory in China to a Kentucky driveway for a mere $1,295. As someone who has imported more than his fair share of weird vehicles from China, believe me when I tell you how extraordinarily rare that is.
Just trucking alone could easily cost that much for a trip from California to Kentucky. Just the customs charges on this type of vehicle should have cost that much, especially considering this should have been subject to 25% tariffs for Chinese goods imported to the US (and it isn’t on the exclusion list).
Either the factory’s freight forwarder did some shady magic to slip this ATV through for so cheap, or they didn’t realize how much transit charges, arrival charges, customs charges, broker fees and cross-country trucking would cost in the end.
But whatever the reason, Hector managed to land this thing for a total of just under US $6,100.
Unpacking the cage showed very minimal damage to the vehicle from shipping. “The shipping package received some damage on the metal housing, but only the skin of the brake line was damaged,” Hector explained to me. “There was also an issue with the turn signal lights. I communicated with the seller, and they have shipped the rear and front turn lights with the wire assembly and the brake line. They also sent me videos on how to fix it.”
So far, Hector seems quite satisfied with the electric standing ATV. “The vehicle is well made, and I’m happy with my transaction.”
And by the look of his dog, the pup doesn’t seem to mind, either.
A word of caution on Alibaba purchases
I enjoy sharing these stories because it’s fun to see what kinds of things people can find and bring home. Alibaba is full of weird electric vehicles, largely because China leads the world in electric vehicle design and manufacturing. I’ve bought electric mini-trucks, e-ATVs, e-boats, electric construction equipment, e-bikes, e-motorcycles, and more. And with enough experience (and enough mistakes made in the past), it usually goes pretty well for me now.
But I always advise against anyone actually following my lead. Hector was surprisingly successful here, but it doesn’t always go this well. I’ve heard from multiple people who tried to buy electric mini-trucks similar to mine, only to have the shipment stopped by Customs and Border Patrol for one reason or another and not allowed into the country.
I’ve seen batteries shoot sparks and let out smoke the first time I turn the product on.
I’ve had vendors simply ghost me, nowhere to be found anymore.
I’ve had Alibaba auto-approve delivery of my products while they’re still in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, releasing my funds in escrow to the vendor.
It’s a dangerous game fraught with risk and pitfalls. So while it can be fun to live vicariously through people like Hector and myself, I don’t recommend trying this at home. At least not unless you’re willing to lay down $6,000 with the understanding that you might never see it again.
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Autonomous taxi company Waymo faced scrutiny last month when a car was caught on video illegally passing a stopped school bus that was letting children off in Atlanta. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into it.
Georgia State Representative Clint Crowe seemed stunned after being presented with video of a Waymo driverless car illegally passing a stopped school bus on Briarcliff Road in Atlanta last month. “I’m a big fan of new technologies and emerging technologies and I think that driverless cars are going to become more prevalent,” he told local NBC news affiliate WBIR. “But we got [sic] to think about how they’re going to comply with the law.”
WBIR | Waymo illegally passes school bus
Crowe co-sponsored Addy’s Law in 2024. The legislation was named after 8-year-old Addy Pierce, who was killed in Henry County after being struck while crossing the street to get to her bus. The law stiffened penalties for illegally passing a stopped school bus, carrying penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and even jail time.
According to Crowe, those rules still apply to autonomous vehicles. “The majority of our traffic laws, the penalty is usually a fine and or driver’s license suspension. These cars don’t have a driver, so they don’t have a driver’s license and so we’re really going to have to rethink who’s the responsible party, who’s going to be responsible for being in control of that vehicle and who’s going to be the operator of that vehicle,” he said.
Crowe believes manufacturers should face stronger consequences when their vehicles break the law, saying the $1,000 fine doesn’t go far enough.
Now, thanks to pressure from social media and politicians like Crowe and Geoirgia State Senator Rick Williams, who helped co-author Addy’s Law, it seems like NHTSA is getting involved.
Prompted by media reports, the US Department of Transportation issued an investigation regarding Waymo’s AV, which states that, “the AV initially stopped, but then drove around the front of the bus by briefly turning right to avoid running into the bus’s right front end, then turning left to pass in front of the bus, and then turning further left and driving down the roadway past the entire left side of the bus. During this maneuver, the Waymo AV passed the bus’s extended crossing control arm near disembarking students (on the bus’s right side) and passed the extended stop arm on the bus’s left side.”
While it remains to be seen how much work NHTSA is actually doing amid the ongoing shutdown of the Federal government, it’s worth noting that, regardless of the outcome, Senator Williams said he plans to introduce new legislation that would hold driverless car companies accountable with higher fines if their vehicles violate traffic laws. If that passes in Georgia, it could set the stage for politicians across the US and even abroad to use similar fins to halt the spread of autonomous taxis in their states.
“Driverless cars should be stopped until it can be figured out,” said Williams. “We should not have this on the road. It’s too dangerous for our children.”
You can read NHTSA summary, below.
We’re typically pretty tech- and autonomous-forward here, but as a parent I would absolutely lose my s*** if a Waymo or Robotaxi or whatever else ran over my kid. but I’ve also seen plenty of human drivers blow past a school bus with a knee on the steering wheel and both eyes glued firmly to their phones. Let us know who you’d be more ready to trust with your kids’ lives in the comments.
SOURCES: WBIR, NHTSA, via School Transportation News.
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![Lion Electric school bus warranties voided, leaving districts stuck [update]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/07/unforgivable.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Nobody ever says “this is business” before doing something nice, and the recently reborn Lion Electric company is keeping that streak alive by doing the unthinkable to cut costs: they’re going to void the warranties on hundreds of electric school buses.
UPDATE 01NOV2025: two Lion Electric buses caught fire, now they’re in more trouble.
This past summer, the fallout from Lion Electric’s dissolution reached a critical mass, and the company’s new owners — the Quebec-based real estate giants Groupe MACH — decided to cancel the warranties on electric school buses sold in the US, leaving many districts with unsafe or broken down buses and no recourse to get their money back while the brand continued to take orders and make money in Canada.
Now, it seems like even the Canadian fleets have some serious safety concerns. School Transportation News and the CBC report that The Quebec Ministry of Education has ordered Lion school bus models be taken out of service immediately after a pair of LionC electric buses caught fire in Montreal, Quebec on Sept 9th, leading to disruptions across the province and a renewed scrutiny of Lion bus safety (Lion360 diesel-powered school buses, which Lion manufactured prior to only producing electric vehicles in 2017, were also affected by the issue).
Lion Bus (the company’s new, official name), has issued an inspection bulletin detailing a four-hour repair, which reads, “We have identified some potential anomalies in a sub-component of the HVAC system that Lion obtains from a third-party supplier … in the interest of safety above all else, we request that Lion bus operators perform the following inspections and modifications: mandatory inspection of several low-voltage electrical connections, replacement of certain electrical connectors, replace fan fuses with less powerful ones, adding a fuse to an HVAC control panel circuit. This inspection and modification procedure must be carried out on all Lion360 (diesel) and LionC 3rd generation and earlier buses (Gen3, Gen2 and Gen1).”
No word yet on whether the issue impacts any of the few Lion Electric buses still on US roads, but remember: Lion Bus wouldn’t help you if it did.
You can read about Lion’s decision to leave US school districts holding the bag on its troubled products in the original July post, below, then let us know how you feel about Groupe MACH’s handling of the situation in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
The warranty story
In a letter issued to exiting Lion Electric customers last week, Deloitte Restructuring announced that the warranties on all Lion vehicles purchased outside of the company’s home Province of Quebec are null and void – leaving dozens of school districts in the lurch with stranded assets that won’t get fixed, and can’t be sold to generate funds for replacements.
“We are working with alternate vendors at the expense of the school district to help keep our electric buses functional and on the road,” explains Dr. Richard Decman, Superintendent of Herscher CUSD No. 2 district in Herscher, Illinois. “Currently, six of our 25 (Lion) electric buses need some type of repair.”
Student Transportation News reports that Lion buses represent fully half of Herscher’s overall fleet of 50 buses, and that the district has received nearly $10 million for the purchase of 25 electric buses and the related charging stations from various state and utility incentive programs.
Herscher isn’t the only district having problems with Lion buses. “All four Lion buses that we own are currently parked and not being used,” Coleen Souza, interim transportation director of Winthrop Public Schools, told Clean Trucking. “Two of them are in need of repairs which would cost us money which we are not willing to invest in because the buses do not run for more than a month before needing more repairs.”
More of the same in Maine, where Yarmouth School Department bought two Lion Electric buses in 2023 with the state covering the costs. According to Superintendent Andrew Dolloff, the buses almost never worked. “We’ve had some sporadic service over the past two years, but as soon as the tech leaves, the buses produce error codes again,” explained Dolloff. ” and “Then the technician quits or is released, and we wait a few months for the next response.”
Dolloff added that Yarmouth’s electric buses did not operate during the 2024-25 school year.
Lion’s new owners are seemingly uninterested in their customers’ plight – which might be easily dismissed if those new owners, Groupe MACH, weren’t also the old owners of Lion Electric.
That’s right, kids. Quebec-based real estate company Groupe MACH, which stepped in to “save” Lion Electric earlier this summer, along with Ontario-based Mirella & Lino Saputo Foundation, bought $90 million of equity in Lion Electric back in 2023. And, while the MACH people may not have been the ones who ultimately made the call about voiding the warranties (that decision was made by the Deloitte bankruptcy team), it is absolutely Group MACH who have, to date, not announced plans to continue to honor those warranties, either.
Make of that what you will.
Deloitte Lion letter
SOURCES: School Transportation News, Clean Trucking, Deloitte.
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The first-ever Liebherr MK 120-5.1E electric crane in customer hands has rolled into the narrow, historic streets of Bern’s old town at 20 meters tall with a 45 meter reach and (of course) zero emissions, no vibrations, and almost no noise.
Deployed by Swiss construction firm Zaugg AG Rohrbach, the new Liebherr electric mobile crane is working hard placing temporary roofs above operational construction sites. It’s precise work, since the narrow streets of Bern’s historic old town weren’t even built for cars — much less massive, five-axle construction machinery. The prices controls and smooth operation of the electric drive mean the MK120-5.1E’s operators could confidently navigate the narrow streets without causing damage and creating new, unpaid jobs for themselves.
“The all-wheel steering allows us to manoeuvre easily in the narrow alleyways,” explained Stefan Stettler, head of the crane department at Zaugg AG Rohrbach. In reverse gear, the crane worked its way along the historic Rathausgasse to its construction site, past the arcades typical of the old town.
In addition to on-board power, the mobile crane can also be plugged into on-site grid power where available, or any mobile power sources capable of offering a steady 63 AMP output for lifting work. A mobile Liebherr Liduro Power Port LPO 100 was on hand in Bern, made available to Zaugg expressly for this purpose. With the Liduro LPO 100 fully charged, Liebherr says the stored energy is good for two full days of crane work.
“The low-noise and emission-free crane work is naturally pleasant for (Bern’s) residents, tourists and passers-by,” explained Stettler. “Especially as we only extended the crane support on the side facing away from the construction site by 50 per cent, allowing pedestrians and cyclists to pass through at all times.”
The MK120-5.1E electric mobile crane offers 8,000 kg (~17,650 lbs.) of lifting capacity, and all of the crane’s drives and winches are powered by electric motors, eliminating both the need to “warm up” or service oil-based hydraulics. It can be had with either a 98 kWh on-board battery (shown) or a 544 hp Liebherr diesel genset.
Electrek’s Take
From compact wheel loaders to radical two-wheeled dumper concepts to massive battery electric retrofit excavators, Liebherr is absolutely killing it in the heavy equipment electrification race. Their electric equipment offerings are proving that EVs can get even the heaviest jobs done, and save big fleets even bigger money while doing it.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Liebherr, via Construction Equipment.
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