This awesome $3,000 electric battle tank from China can fit adult-sized riders
One of the best parts of scouring the depths of Alibaba is finding all of these fun-looking electric vehicles that no one seems to build in the West. And while this is normally an adventure in window-shopping, this week’s find for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week really makes me want to own one of these electric battle tanks.
Realistically speaking, at just $3,000, how can I afford not to own my own electric tank?
Sure, it is technically listed as “kid-friendly”, but that doesn’t mean it’s adult-hostile. At least not if you’re standing on this side of the firing line.
The video clearly shows a late-stage kid at heart driving one of these with plenty of room in the passenger seat, so I think adult drivers are definitely not out of the picture.
Plus, this Chinese electric tank has some decent power as well, so a couple adult riders shouldn’t be a problem.
The tank comes outfitted with a pair of 3 kW motors, one for each track. If my math is correct, that’s 6 kW total, or roughly 8 horsepower.
There’s even a top speed of 30 km/h (18 mph), which seems weirdly fast for a tracked vehicle just 2.15 meters (7 feet) long. There’s a low speed gear that drops the top speed down to as little as 5 km/h (3 mph), which may be better suited for tough hill climbs and beachhead landings.
The vendor even claims it can climb inclines of up to 40º, which the hill climbing video would seem to support.
The craziest thing about it though is that the main cannon is fully functional for firing armor-piercing rounds.
Just kidding! I think it’s a painted piece of PVC pipe. Actually, the real craziest thing about it is the massive battery pack. At 72V and 200Ah, you’ve got 14.4 kWh of capacity. That’s roughly the size of a flagship electric motorcycle battery. And it’s not some cheap lead acid pack, but rather a lithium-ion battery.
The fact that the entire vehicle only costs US $3,000 makes me wonder how good the battery quality can be though. Or perhaps it’s like the electric mini-truck I bought, where the 6 kWh battery wasn’t included in the too-good-to-be-true sounding US $2,000 price.
Just don’t try and say that this electric tank isn’t full-featured! There’s camo netting on the roll bar which is perfect for being inconspicuous. The last thing you want ruining your day is that return missile strike raining on your parade.
One thing that is still confusing me though is the steering control system. As a tracked vehicle, I would have expected a pair of control levers, one for each track motor. But in this case the electric tank has a steering wheel and an accelerator pedal.
There must be some control system that modulates the speed of each track motor based on how far the steering wheel is turned, which is frankly much more complicated than I would have expected.
Regardless of the steering control, this electric tank looks so much cooler than the cheaper toys we’ve seen. This one actually has a huge battery, powerful motors, an impressive top speed and is adult-friendly.
I really don’t need any more weird Chinese vehicles taking up space in the garage, but this one is tempting me mighty hard. Perhaps the only thing keeping me sane here is the experience of getting bent over the fender of my other weird vehicles purchased from Alibaba. Keep in mind that the cheap sounding MSRP on Alibaba is never what you’ll actually pay. My weird purchases have usually ended up costing around 4x the advertised price by the time they land at my home. From ocean freight to customs charges to various taxes and paying brokers/warehouses/ports/anyone who touches the shipment, the fees seriously add up.
So this is another find that I’ll unfortunately have to admire from afar. But that is perhaps for the best, since this is a standoff weapon anyway.
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Tesla (TSLA) is no longer confidently stating growth in its automotive business for 2025, and it has delayed updating its guidance until the next quarter after a disappointing performance in the first three months of the year.
2024 was Tesla’s first year in a decade where its vehicle deliveries went down year-over-year.
Just a few months ago, in January, Tesla was confident in predicting that it would return to growth in 2025:
“With the advancements in vehicle autonomy and the introduction of new products, we expect the vehicle business to return to growth in 2025.”
Today, Tesla released its Q1 2025 financial results, confirming that it had its worst quarter in years to start 2025.
The automaker is now clearly not as confident about returning to growth in its automotive business this year.
Tesla updated its “outlook” section this quarter to highlight the potential impact of trade policies and now no longer discusses automotive growth in isolation. Instead, it bundled automotive and energy businesses together and said that it will “revisit its 2025 guidance” next quarter:
It is difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chains, our cost structure and demand for durable goods and related services. While we are making prudent investments that will set up both our vehicle and energy businesses for growth, the rate of growth this year will depend on a variety of factors, including the rate of acceleration of our autonomy efforts, production ramp at our factories and the broader macroeconomic environment. We will revisit our 2025 guidance in our Q2 update.
Tesla’s vehicle deliveries are already down about 50,000 units so far this year compared to last year.
It will be challenging to catch up in the current macroeconomic situation.
Tesla again guided the start of production of “new affordable models” in the first half of 2025, which could help the automaker to deliver more cars.
However, as we have previously reported, these new vehicles are expected to be stripped-down Model Y and Model 3, which will cannibalize Tesla’s current sales and limit its growth to those products.
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US DC fast charging is becoming more reliable, and charging stations are getting bigger and busier, according to a new Q1 2025 report from the EV data analysts at Paren.
DC fast charging station reliability is on the rise
Paren’s latest US Reliability Index – “Can I successfully charge at this charger?” – increased from 81.2 points in Q4 2024 to 82.6 points in Q1 2025, a notable jump of 1.7%. According to Bill Ferro, CTO at Paren, “This continues a quarterly trend across the US non-Tesla fast charging infrastructure, which suggests that the ongoing efforts to replace or sunset older hardware are having a positive impact on station uptime. In addition, newer entrants into the field are bringing time-tested hardware along with enhanced driver experiences.”
Utah, Alaska, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nevada were the top-ranked states for DC fast charging reliability in Q1 2025.
Growth slows, but charging stations are getting larger
New DC fast charging ports grew to 55,580 at the end of Q1 2025, up 3,667 from last quarter, with total stations reaching 10,839, an increase of 794. This is fewer new additions compared to the surge seen at the end of 2024, reflecting typical seasonal slowdowns due to winter weather. However, there’s a bright spot: the average number of ports per station among non-Tesla networks rose to 3.9, compared to 2.7 year-over-year. The Tesla Supercharger network now averages 13 ports per station.
Utilization rates reflect the urban-rural divide
Average utilization – that’s the minutes of a charging session as a percentage of time a station is open each day – dropped slightly from 16.6% in Q4 2024 to 16.2% in Q1 2025, following typical holiday travel patterns. But overall, charging use is climbing, especially in dense urban areas with significant rideshare and apartment communities that rely heavily on public chargers.
Early days for NACS transition
The Combined Charging System (CCS) remains dominant, with 59% of new ports, and the shift toward Tesla’s NACS (J3400) standard is still in its very early stages. Only 104 non-Tesla NACS ports were added this quarter at non-Tesla networks, so drivers of new non-Tesla vehicles need to use their adapters if they want to use Superchargers.
Fixed pricing prevails
Charging operators primarily use fixed pricing (80%), with Time of Use (TOU) pricing making up 16%. Pay-by-time options are rare, used only 4.2% of the time.
California is the only major state where TOU pricing surpasses fixed pricing, while many states, such as Oklahoma, Vermont, and Arkansas, almost exclusively utilize fixed pricing models.
As for the most expensive places to fast charge your EV? The top four metropolitan statistical areas are all in California, with average rates at $0.60 or $0.61 per kWh.
Rural and low-income areas at risk
The Trump administration’s cancellation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program poses a significant threat to rural and low-income communities. Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, cautioned, “Our data is a harbinger of less expansion in rural and lower-income markets as CPOs will increasingly focus on urban markets, seeing high utilization, often north of 30%, versus markets with less than 5% utilization.”
‘Charging 2.0’ – a new industry phase
McDonald summed up the report by marking 2024 as a pivotal year, stating, “2024 was a year of mixed news in the US DC fast charging industry, but it will be remembered as a pivotal turn to a new era we are calling ‘Charging 2.0’. Charge-point operators and new players in the industry are increasingly focused on creating a great customer experience, improving reliability of chargers, and reaching profitability – a shift from chasing the availability of incentives, racing to get chargers in the ground, and then crossing your fingers that utilization will grow over time.”
Read more: Trump just canceled the federal NEVI EV charger program
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Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the first quarter (Q1) and full-year 2025 after market close today.
We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.
Tesla Q1 2025 earnings expectations
As we reported in our Tesla Q1 2025 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $21.345 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.41 per share.
The expectations had been significantly downgraded over the last month, as analysts were surprised by Tesla’s announcement of much lower deliveries than expected in the first quarter.
Did Tesla meet them?`
Tesla Q1 2025 financial results
After the market closed today, Tesla released its financial results for the first quarter and confirmed that it missed expectations with earnings of $0.27 per share (non-GAAP), and it also missed revenue expectations with $19.335 billion during the last quarter.
This is a big miss for Tesla despite the company admitting to selling a lot more regulatory credits this quarter.
At $595 million in credit sales, Tesla would have lost money without it in Q1 2025:
In short, Tesla is on the verge of being a money-losing company.
We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):
Here’s Tesla’s Q1 2025 shareholder presentation in full:
Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q1 2025 results:
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