We tested Waymo’s driverless taxi in the perfect chaos of Venice Beach weekend
Waymo’s completely driverless taxi is coming to Los Angeles, and will be open to the public starting this week. We got an advance ride in these self-driving electric cars and got a sense of what this level 4 system can do in one of the more chaotic driving situations in a city full of chaotic driving situations: a Santa Monica and Venice Beach weekend.
Waymo is the self-driving division of Google/Alphabet, founded in 2009, focusing on delivering fully autonomous driverless taxis.
It has been operating self-driving vehicles on public roads in some way or another since 2017, when it started supervised self-driving robotaxi operations around Phoenix, Arizona. At first it used Pacifica Hybrids, and now it’s using Jaguar I-Paces, festooned with all sorts of additional sensor hardware.
As of now, it has expanded its service area in Phoenix and opened driverless taxi service in San Francisco. At this point these efforts are far enough along that it’s even taking fares for rides in both locations.
In total, Waymo currently covers about 45 square miles in San Francisco (which is basically the whole city of San Francisco proper – it’s quite a small total area) and 225 square miles in Phoenix, which Waymo says is the largest contiguous autonomous car service area in the world.
In the time it has been operating, it has served “tens of thousands” of public riders according to Waymo.
But it hasn’t been in LA, a city that’s full of electric cars, until now. The cars have been roaming around and testing/mapping the region for months now, but public riders couldn’t hail them. That all changes this week.
How Waymo’s driverless taxi works
I brought a friend along to help keep eyes on the car and analyze its decisions (and, well, because it was a fun day out), but the car still had us at a disadvantage – our four total eyes are no match for Waymo’s nine cameras, six radars, and five spinning laser detectors (LiDAR). And Waymo’s sensors are positioned at the corners and above the car, giving more viewing angles than a single driver is capable of.
These sensors were all designed and developed by Waymo, as the company says it couldn’t find hardware to meet its needs when it started looking for them.
Waymo says that these sensors combine to keep track of everything going on around the car, including down to identifying different classes of pedestrian (adult, child, wheelchair-users, etc.) and even identifying pedestrian intent (whether one is about to cross the street, for example).
Autonomous drive systems are ranked from level 0-5, describing how much capability the system has. In general, levels 0-2 are primarily human-driven, and levels 3-5 are primarily autonomously driven.
Most manufacturers selling cars today have some sort of driver assistance system that can be categorized as level 2. There is one level 3 system, Mercedes DRIVE PILOT, coming to the US soon (we tested it in Santa Monica last month). This system can take control of the car in certain limited circumstances and legally can be considered the driver, but you still need to be in the driver’s seat as a fallback driver.
But driverless taxi companies like Waymo and GM’s Cruise are level 4. This means that the cars are validated to run all the time with no fallback driver, and nobody in the driver’s seat – though may still be limited to certain areas, conditions or times of day (level 5 will eventually have none of these limitations).
Waymo’s LA tour
In this case, Waymo’s coverage in Los Angeles is currently limited to Santa Monica and Venice Beach, but is operating 24/7 for now within that area:
But Waymo is “going on tour” around other parts of Los Angeles in the coming months, and will host pop-up events in various locations where the public can show up to learn about Waymo and get a ticket to use the service for free for a week.
The cars will take riders in Santa Monica until November 18th, and then they’ll hop along to five other locations in LA for about a month each. Pop-up events for Santa Monica/Venice are on October 11th at Third Street Promenade and November 11th on Abbot Kinney. Pop-up events for other parts of town will be announced later:
You can also sign up for the waitlist and hope to get invited when the service comes to your area.
Calling your driverless taxi
To order the car, you use the Waymo One app, which functions almost identically to any other ride-hailing app. Up to four total passengers are allowed – just like with other ride-hailing apps, you can sit in any seat you want, except the driver’s seat.
You select where you want to go and the app automatically picks what it considers a good pickup location nearby. This may be a short walk away from where you selected (in our three pickups and dropoffs, it always was), in which case the app will give you walking directions to where to go. As for pricing, it’s free for now in LA, but Waymo is “evaluating pricing models.” In the past, it has said it will use surge pricing, while Cruise said it will not.
Even though the car decides pickup/dropoff locations, you should still use your human brain and not offload all the decisionmaking to the vehicle (even though that’s literally the entire point of this exercise). We noticed that the car occasionally made odd decisions, like thinking it could pick you up in a place that would be hard to find a spot to pull over in, or behind a pay gate at a public parking lot.
So before calling the cab, try to have a look around and find a good spot to get picked up. And if you know you’re going to a tough dropoff spot, maybe help the car pick a spot that’s a block away or so. And it might be a good idea for Waymo to add a note about this to the onboarding process for new users.
You can track the car on its way to meet you the same way you can in any other ride-hailing app – the only difference from other ride-hailing apps is there’s no live graphic showing roaming cars prior to selecting. Waymo wouldn’t tell us how many cars it has operating in the area (merely saying the tour uses a “limited” number of vehicles for now), but we never had to wait more than a few minutes for a car and we did ride in three different cars on our three trips.
As the car pulls up, you need to have your phone out so you can unlock the car. If you’re having trouble finding your car, or if driverless taxis are so common in the area that you can’t figure out which one is yours, you can set a two-letter monogram in a color of your choice in the app, and your car will be tagged with your monogram. And if you have vision-impairments or just want to have a little fun, you can use the app to honk the car’s horn or play a gentle melody to help you find your chariot.
It even has a pretty substantial trunk, though we didn’t use it. This comes in useful for Waymo’s Phoenix Sky Harbor airport service, and maybe at some point we’ll see the same for LAX (though as far as chaotic airport driving situations go, every Angeleno knows that LAX is world-class terrible, so maybe don’t hold your breath).
Once you’re in the car for the first time, you get a one-minute video giving you basic information of how the system works. Each car has an airline-like informational placard in the seat-back container, and some of the cars we rode helpfully came with wrapped N95 masks and barf bags (perhaps the others were taken as souvenirs… or used).
Then you can play music from the car or from your phone, though the car will only interface with your music through Google’s app ecosystem (I would much rather it be capable of some kind of ad hoc bluetooth pairing without having to download another app, so that audio from other apps, e.g. Apple Podcasts, were usable).
Venice on a weekend: our ride in perfect chaos
With our chance to ride the system early, we decided to give the car a real challenge in one of the most chaotic situations in a city full of chaotic driving situations: Venice Beach on a weekend.
As is the case with many beach communities, Venice Beach can be tough to drive around. There are tons of pedestrians wandering aimlessly, tourists who don’t know the roads and are distracted with the sights, people hunting for parking (or double-parked), generally smaller and older roads, alleyways, one-way streets, bicycles… and sometimes even a person pushing a washing machine on a dolly (yes, the car did recognize this obstruction).
So this was certainly a challenging environment for a driverless taxi, and one which would show off its decisionmaking capabilities (or potential lack thereof?).
Soon after the start of the drive, we witnessed the car’s pedestrian-intent detection in action. It stopped rather abruptly for a pedestrian who, to our human eyes, had not really telegraphed their decision to cross. Personally I think I would have continued through the intersection in this circumstance, since if the car had remained at speed, the pedestrian would have just crossed behind us, and it wasn’t obvious that they wanted to cross in the first place. Nevertheless, I think this was a good decision made by the car.
This suggested to us right off the bat that Google’s algorithm seems to put a premium on being a courteous road user, particularly towards the more vulnerable segments of road users.
We saw this happen again not long after, when pedestrians sauntered across the road against our green light. They saw us coming and stopped to at the median, but the car still slowed down in anticipation and due to their presence near our path (note: in a positive move against car overreliance, jaywalking is no longer ticketable in California, though pedestrians must remain cautious/aware).
As far as other non-car road user interactions go, the car also:
This was all reflected in the in-car display. It’s nice to see reflections of the real world on the screen, to add confidence for passengers that the car isn’t just making it all up as it goes along.
The display is slightly less detailed than other systems, rendering flat squares and circles instead of representations of each tracked object. This looks cleaner and more stable (as opposed to the often-jiggly lines of Tesla FSD), but not quite as bang-pop-wow as seeing tiny trucks and motorcycles properly rendered in a visualization (though we’re guessing washing machines wouldn’t have made the cut for inclusion into rendering).
Getting dropped off in Venice, our driverless taxi was quite hesitant in creeping up to the dropoff point. We noticed the same behavior in each dropoff, while the car did usually pick areas that were good for dropping off (low traffic, wider roads, etc.), it often seemed indecisive for the last 20 feet or so worth of finding a spot to stop.
After a quick walk around, we called another cab, but soon after realized we were standing within a paid parking lot manned by an attendant, which the car would not be able to get to. The car probably would have picked a spot to pull over, but given the gridlock line of cars waiting for the pay lot or to turn down the alley to avoid it, this probably would have caused even more chaos.
So, this is an example of why we should use our human brains and eyes to help ensure good pickup locations, because the map didn’t seem to know about the entry to this parking lot. Luckily, the app lets you adjust your pickup location after calling a cab (though the app did freeze up after we requested adjustment and needed a reboot, but the adjustment was still registered).
But we weren’t able to adjust our destination in the app while the car was in operation – perhaps due to an app bug, because a button does exist to allow adjustments, it just didn’t work for us.
This was related to probably the worst moment of the drive, where our driverless taxi wanted to make an unprotected left from an alleyway into two lanes of gridlock and simply could not find a place to do so. Despite having several options: a “keep clear” section across the way with a second target lane it could have entered, or a right turn, or straight ahead into another alleyway, it wanted to wait for cross traffic to offer lots of space for it to turn left. But that just wasn’t going to happen in weekend beach traffic.
So it waited. Through two traffic light cycles. Until a car pulled up behind us and started honking, then two cars pulled in around us and started honking at the first honking car. Then, the car reached out for help, and “the team” intervened to get things back on track.
Waymo has a “fleet response team” who can respond in situations like this where things get unpredictable. The car still stays in control, but the fleet response can “provide guidance” to the vehicles. Here’s how Waymo described it to us:
Waymo’s fleet response team is like the air traffic control for our fully autonomous cars. Our fully autonomous system is designed to recognize unexpected situations and contact our fleet response team, who can confirm what the car is seeing and provide additional contextual information.
For example, if a Waymo vehicle detects that the road ahead is closed due to construction, it may pull over and request confirmation from our fleet response specialists before taking an alternate route. Our specialists can then confirm that the vehicle correctly perceived the construction zone and communicate the lane closure to the rest of the fleet.
Waymo’s fully autonomous cars are responsible for making every driving decision on the road and do not rely on a human driver, either in the car or remotely.
Input requests from Waymo’s fleet of autonomously driven vehicles are distributed amongst the fleet response team who can provide the Waymo Driver guidance when prompted.
Soon after “the team” chimed in, we took a right turn, which probably would have been the right thing to do to begin with, and then continued through the rest of Venice. Then, just a minute after the worst moment of the trip, we had the best moment.
Our car came up on a diagonal merge into a construction-affected intersection with closed lanes on the right causing traffic to have to merge into oncoming lanes. Behind us, there was a bus parked and a large “tree work ahead” sign obstructing view of traffic coming behind into the lane we were meant to merge into. The car intended to turn left through the half-closed intersection, but there were two stopped vehicles in the way.
So the car pulled out and around the two stopped vehicles into the median left-turn lane, yielded momentarily for oncoming traffic, then turned left into a space in front of an oncoming bus that was definitely enough space to move through, but we also wouldn’t have been surprised if it had waited.
This, I thought, was a particularly clever move in a tough situation, which respected rules and other drivers enough, while still doing what would get us to our destination more quickly than waiting forever for things to clear up. It felt competent, confident and planned. It almost felt human.
But then another tough situation soon followed. I had asked the car to drop us off on Santa Monica Pier, knowing that there is a parking lot on the actual pier itself. The car sagely decided that this was a ridiculous idea, and picked a parking lot just beside the pier, which took a bold move to get to.
But it turned out the parking lot was full, and the arm for the lot was down, and cones were laid out on the street stopping people from turning and getting stuck down there.
As the car pulled up (after momentarily avoiding an oncoming cyclist in our lane), it noticed the cones in front of its desired lot and rerouted to another dropoff spot a few minutes down the way. But then a fellow electric car, a Model X, drove around the cones, and our car wanted to be with its zero emission friend so it followed the cardinal rule of parking: if other people are going there, it must be fine, right?
So it re-re-routed back onto the original route, avoided the cones, and… got stuck. We pressed the “drop off” button, which accidentally connected us to support, so we quickly explained the situation and got out. To be fair to the Waymo, we saw several other human drivers go down the same coned-off path, only to get stuck and have to turn around, though they had a much easier time doing three-point turns than our car did.
We stood around waiting and talking to some onlookers who were quite amused at the sight of a driverless taxi. Eventually, either through contact from “the team” or because it got spooked by a wheelchair-accessible van that hopped the curb to get around the stuck Waymo, our car backed up, realized it could make the turn, and went along its way.
Speaking of onlookers, throughout the ride, our car was a matter of public interest to everyone around. It was interesting witnessing the mix of reactions – surprise, joy, bemusement, annoyance, and so on. And it made for an easy conversation piece – we could roll down the window and talk to pedestrians waiting at a light, or talk to anyone nearby after being dropped off, because everyone was interested in seeing it (and several took photos/video as well).
Our next leg back was, in comparison, relatively tame. Other than once again having to adjust the pickup location – the car thought it could pick us up in the busy intersection in front of Santa Monica Pier and right at the edge of the coverage area, and we decided to take it easy on the car and walk a block down, near where the car got stuck before – there was a lot less chaos on the way back.
And by “a lot less chaos” I mean only one car blatantly ran a red light directly in front of us. Our car told us it was “slowing down for vehicle on the left” when this happened, but then continued on as the car cleared the intersection, and when it noticed the cars behind it were thankfully not running the same red light.
Then, with little else eventful beyond waiting for a passing train and finding our way to a nice wide and empty street to carefully creep up to a once-again-quite-cautious dropoff, our driverless taxi day was over and we had to go back to using our hands and feet like chumps again.
Electrek’s Take
In terms of my autonomous drive experience, I’ve spent a good amount of time driving Teslas on Autopilot and FSD and in various other manufacturers’ Level 2 systems, have driven Mercedes’ Level 3 Drive Pilot system on Santa Monica freeways (but not surface streets – it only works on freeways), and ridden in another trial geofenced Level 4 system with a backup driver and engineer in the car.
So this is the “most autonomous” drive I’ve taken yet, my first truly driverless taxi ride, with nobody watching over the car. Same goes for my co-passenger, whose experience was previously limited to level 1-2 systems.
In the end, despite the several bizarre situations we encountered, we came out impressed at the capability of the system to handle all of them – in some way or another.
While sometimes the decisions were a little hesitant, or late, or the car got paralyzed with indecision, at no point did it actually feel like a danger. Was it an inconvenience, to other drivers? Yes, certainly a few times, primarily on side streets.
But more importantly, was it a problem for pedestrians or other road users? In our limited (but chaotic) testing, it didn’t seem so. While at one point we encountered pedestrians who were worried about crossing once they noticed the lack of driver, the car still seemed to show significant deference to them, probably moreso than the average driver does.
And that’s an important thing. Frankly, our roads need a realignment towards non-car users, so if this system nudges the line a little in that direction, that’s great.
Now – would I take it again, and could I rely on it, enough to get rid of a car or other ride-hailing apps (putting aside for the moment my refusal to use those apps for political reasons)? I’d take it again certainly, and would prefer it over other ride-hailing apps if it were cheaper.
If it were the same price, then my internal desire to chat with every ride-hailing driver would have to compete with my internal desire to try out new technology (and chat with random passersby who are excitedly filming my headless chariot). My decider would probably be whether there’s currently a COVID spike happening (having the car to oneself is nice, in this instance) – or, for people with other personal safety concerns or who have social anxiety, I could see the system, as it is, being a great boon for them.
And the fact that I’m sitting here balancing a driverless taxi relatively evenly against a professional human driver is telling. While it’s clearly not as good as a good driver (and not as confident as even an average one), it’s better than a bad, overly aggressive or distracted driver, and is much better than learning or unfamiliar drivers I’ve been with (for example, a European friend was terribly unconfident at driving when he first moved to California, and I would pick Waymo over how he used to drive – he’s better now, thankfully).
But as for getting rid of a car? Here in SoCal, it’s hard not to own a car, but Waymo says that in other service areas some two-car families have gone down to being one-car families, knowing that Waymo could be relied upon as a backup.
With only one day of testing in a temporary service area, that overall reliability is not a question I can answer. We didn’t have long waits, but we were riding on a media preview weekend and weren’t on any particular schedule.
So it would probably be hard for a SoCal driver to eliminate a car completely from their life for now – especially given the limited coverage areas, but perhaps even if the area covered the entirety of the LA basin, due to the lack of other non-car transportation infrastructure here.
But in cities that are more walkable or which actually have other public transit methods available (*cough* thanks GM…), like San Francisco, I could certainly see Waymo as more than just a novelty, even with its current capabilities, and slot it in as another effective transportation method to be used routinely when situations call for it. Even above other ride-hailing apps. In fact, I know someone who has done this – he moved to SF, sold his Tesla, and is using Waymo as one of his essential transportation options, along with BART and Muni.
That replacing a human driver with a robot one is even a question at this point seems like a triumph for Waymo’s driverless taxi operation. Now, we just need to see if they can scale up with more testing, more cars, reasonable fare structures, more coverage areas, level 5… you know. Nothing much.
But hey, the finish line at least looks like it exists, right? Even if you need to squint a bit to see it. And that’s something.
(Over the course of this article I’ve included timestamped links to a 33 minute lightly-edited video of all the drives of the day, but if you want to watch the whole thing and scrub around for yourself, you can do so below or over on YouTube)
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
The eBike space is crowded in 2025, but the Kingbull Jumper Go stands out with a rare combination of features: a compact 20” frame, full suspension, a step-through design, and a powerful Class 3 motor capable of hitting high speeds. Whether you’re commuting through the city, riding off-road trails, or just looking for a versatile, approachable ride, the Jumper Go delivers serious performance, especially for the price.
Key specs
On paper, the Kingbull Jumper Go has all the hardware you would want and need for its size and price. It blends commuter-friendly features with the components you’d expect from more premium off-road eBikes. These specs on paper translate to real-world use amazingly. Here’s a quick rundown of the key specs:
- Motor: 750W Bafang rear hub motor
- Top Speed: 28 MPH with pedal assist (up to 40 MPH unlocked; check local laws)
- Battery: 48V 20Ah Samsung removable battery
- Max Range: Up to 80 miles per charge
- Gearing: Shimano 8-speed drivetrain
- Brakes: Tektro hydraulic disc brakes
- Suspension: Front 80mm fork + rear mid-frame air shock
- Tires: 20” x 4.0” Kenda fat tires (puncture-resistant)
- Frame: Step-through aluminum frame with internal cable routing
- Display: Integrated LED display with speed, assist level, and battery status
- Lighting: Integrated 48V headlight and rear brake light
- Included Accessories: Rear cargo rack, full fenders, mini tool kit, zip ties, tire pump
Together, these features make the Kingbull Jumper Go a rare all-in-one package: powerful, approachable, and ready to handle daily commutes and adventures without compromise.
Real-world experience
I have been living with the Kingbull Jumper Go for two weeks now and have been using it as my daily driver. I have used it for pretty much everything, from small grocery runs, to running a quick errand, to just taking me from place to place. Here is what you need to know.
The setup
The setup was surprisingly simple. The bike has everything needed for assembly, including a mini tool kit, zip ties, and even a tire pump. The Kingbull Jumper Go comes about 80% pre-assembled, with the rear tire and monitor intact. I had to install the front tire, front fender, handlebar, headlight, and seat. Assembly took roughly 20 minutes, and I am someone who does not do this often. It was great that I did not need any of my own tools to get the bike ready. The final thing I did was ensure it was fully charged before getting on it.
The ride
On the road, the 750W motor gives you quick acceleration and plenty of torque, easily handling hills and the urban terrain I live in. The five levels of pedal assist and throttle control give you full flexibility in how much effort you want to put in. I got the bike to almost 30mph with the pedal assist and to 22mph using the throttle. The suspension system, which features an 80mm front fork and a rear mid-air shock, makes city potholes and light off-road trails smooth and manageable.
I live in New Jersey, and if you know anything about our roads, they are terribly maintained and have potholes everywhere. The Kingbull Jumper Go kept the ride very smooth and managed those potholes perfectly. I also took it through some gravel roads, trails, and through some wet terrain, and it was great. The fat tires gives you a strong sense of confidence both on road and when you are dealing with a more challenging terrain.
The design
The step-through frame is especially helpful for beginners and for riders who are sharing this bike with someone who is a different height. The step-through frame also makes it easy to dismount or quickly react by easily putting your feet down without feeling like you are going to tip over.
The 20” Kenda fat tires provide great traction and comfort on surfaces ranging from pavement to grass and gravel. The Tektro hydraulic brakes are responsive and reliable, offering solid control even at higher speeds. You also get a fantastic LED display with real-time speed, distance traveled, and battery life. It is also plenty bright, so the display is easily visible even in the brightest conditions.
After riding this for two weeks in both urban and off-road settings, the Kingbull Jumper Go proved to be equally capable as a commuter eBike, urban cruiser, and all-terrain bike. Its compact frame makes it easier to handle and store compared to larger full-size fat-tire bikes, but without compromising on performance.
Kingbull Jumper Go Pricing and availability
The Kingbull Jumper Go is currently available through Kingbull’s official website for just under $1,699. However, they have a limited-time summer promotion offering $100 OFF with code Electrek, bringing the price down to $1,599. That discount makes it one of the best values on the market for a full-suspension, Class 3 fat-tire eBike. Kingbull’s 2-year warranty also backs it and offers local test ride availability in California, giving potential buyers added peace of mind and confidence in the brand.
Check out the Kingbull Jumper Go today!
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Yep, I did it again. I bought something weird and crazy from China. It’s a mini electric jet boat. “What’s a mini electric jet boat?” you might be asking. Think: comically small one-seater boat with an electrically powered jet ski drivetrain.
Basically, I plopped down a not insignificant amount of money online and then crossed my fingers. Here’s what happened next.
Firstly, this is kind of par for the course for me. If you’ve been following my writing for any significant period of time, you’ll have learned two things about me. I like e-bikes and I like buying weird electric vehicles from China that I don’t need. It’s a problem, I know. I’m going to get help one day. But that day is not today.
Because today I’ve got a new electric jet boat. You can see my unboxing and testing video of this aquatic miracle here, or keep reading below for the full story of how this happened.
So here’s how it went. I’ve spent years writing a mostly-weekly column on the fun and weird Alibaba electric vehicles I find in my time-wasting window-shopping searches. A couple of years ago, one of them was a mini electric jet boat. And I’ve wanted one ever since.
So I started researching factories in China that build these things and talked to a number of them. Some seemed fairly new. Others seemed like fronts or merely trading companies. And they all seemed pretty shady. But this isn’t my first rodeo and so I chose the one that seemed the least risky and started talking details. I use a Chinese messaging service similar to WhatsApp that makes it a lot easier to communicate with the factories, and the lovely girl who works their sales office showed me several models and features. Together, we worked through the details and specs until I had planned out basically what I wanted.
Then it came time to pay.
This is always the scariest part and so I wired to China more money than a bad idea should cost. Over there, it’s common to do a 30% down payment and 70% balance payment upon completion, so that’s what I offered. I’m glad I did because production took several months longer than I expected, and I was starting to get worried, but fortunately, the factory was sending me fairly regular pictures and video updates of progress, which was comforting. After a few months, my order was finally ready, and so they packaged it up and shipped it off to me.
I should also mention that while I normally use FOB (free on board) or CIF (cost, insurance, freight) terms for these kinds of deals where I get some new toy in from China, this particular case was a bit riskier, and so I went with DDP (delivered duty paid) terms. The two former options leave most of the work on me to ship and import the thing, while the last option means the seller basically handles everything until there’s a janky wooden crate dropped in my driveway. DDP terms are always more expensive, and many factories don’t want to mess with it since it leaves most of the work of shipping and importing on the seller or their freight forwarder, which I preferred in this case.
This was also before all the new Trump tariffs this year, and so duties were much lower (somewhere around 27-28% total, I believe. Now they are probably 2-3x that much).
But with all of the work of actually dealing with getting the thing now finished, it was time to crack open the box. Inside was my shiny blue electric jet boat! I had it shipped to my parents’ place in Florida because they have a decently large pond where I could test it. There I got it open and hauled it back to the pond in what else but my electric mini truck that I bought from China nearly four years ago. It has since lived a loving but not easy life as a farm truck, and this isn’t even one of the weirdest things that has graced its bed in the last few years.
The little boat is so small that it actually fits nicely in the little bed of my mini-truck, and it was a great example of why I even wanted this thing to begin with: it’s small enough to fit in a car, so you can take it to the lake or ocean without needing a boat trailer.
Even a jet-ski needs a trailer, but you could take this little vessel to the shore with a kayak rack on your Tesla, or even on a decent car! Just kidding, I don’t even own a car… unless you count that mini-truck that I gave to my parents.
At the pond I dropped the boat down onto the grass, dragged it the last bit of the way down the bank and splashed it right into the drink. From there, I just needed to plop the 5 kWh LiFePO4 battery into the underseat compartment and I was ready to go.
There were no instructions, so it took me a couple of minutes to figure out the right combination of buttons to push and key turns to actually start it up, but from the first push of the accelerator, I knew this thing was wild!
It was supposed to be just over 30 mph capable (50 km/h or 27 knots), but the pond is only around 300 feet long and so the opposite bank comes at you mighty fast. I think I only got it up to around half its top speed because 1) I didn’t want to run aground, and 2) I was legitimately scared to go faster.
The boat comes with these weird stainless steel mounts on the side, and it turns out they are for this ridiculous looking inflatable bumper thing that reminds me of a big toilet seat. I didn’t install it because I hate how it ruins the sleek look of the boat. But I instantly discovered why they designed it, since the jet boat feels horribly unstable at slow speeds. As soon as you turn sharply and let off the throttle at slow speeds, you start heeling over significantly. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling since you’re sitting at the water line and feel like you’re going to be thrown out of the boat. The ballast of the huge battery sitting so low, plus whatever actual ballast they build into these things, probably means you won’t really capsize. But it sure feels like you’re going for a swim soon.
Turning at speed is much nicer, but if you’re not yet planing (going fast enough to rise out of the water and glide over the surface instead of just floating due to water displacement), it just feels like you’re going to rock yourself right out in a turn. The boat was obviously designed to handle at high speeds, not low speeds. It doesn’t have the wide beam of a jet ski for stability, so that inflatable toilet seat gives it low-speed stability.
But alas, I just couldn’t bring myself to install the nautical version of training wheels on that beautiful thing, so I pushed through it and just kept it at fairly high speeds in the pond. It was a blast, and with my dad there watching me, I was excited to give him a turn too.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I actually bought two of them.
With my dad’s boat unboxed, we both got in our own mini jet boats and had a blast ripping high-speed loops around his backyard pond.
These things are insanely powerful for what feels like a stubby kayak when you sit inside it, and the performance gives you an ear to grin.
Just be prepared for your face to turn to terror the first time you let off the throttle too abruptly and take a sharp turn.
As fun as they were though, we still weren’t even past half way down on the accelerator pedal, and so I knew that a larger body of water was going to be in our future.
These are motorized vessels and so they require registration to use them in public waterways in most states. It’s not like a kayak or canoe where you can just put in anywhere and pretty much be alright with the law. And in Florida, where the state makes a lot of its money from its waterways, they actually enforce this stuff.
I imagine I can get the boats properly registered with hull numbers for use in public waterways, but for expediency’s sake, I set my sights on a big private lake in a local eco-friendly planned community. The cool thing is that these huge lakes are off-limits to combustion engine watercraft, which means they’re basically only for kayakers and canoers, or the rare person who has an electric boat.
I’m a rare person.
So with the entire lake empty, I brought my jet boat over in the back of my family’s car and put in at the kayak dock.
If you watched my video above, you’ll already know how that went (complete with Beach Boys-style song montage). But for those who prefer to read instead of watching an awesome little jet boat rocket around a big lake, just know that it was an absolute riot. The mini electric jet boat is insanely fast and skipped the glassy surface of the pond like a pebble with a rocket engine on it.
Of course, the surface didn’t stay glassy long with the massive wake I was sending out, and that meant soon I was getting airborne, hopping my own wake while pulling tight figure eights.
With around 25 minutes of boating and filming, I had dropped the battery from 100% to 70%. Despite the high power, that big battery was impressively lasting!
The whole experience proved to me how right I was about the convenience of this boat format. This whole exploit was simple, a word that is almost never used when discussing boat ownership. To get to the water, I simply loaded the boat in the back of the car and then used a cheap Amazon kayak trailer to waddle it the 100 feet or so from the parking lot to the dock. The boat is still quite heavy – I’d guess at least 150 lb (70 kg) or so. But lifting one side at a time is doable by one dude, and the kayak trailer made it easy enough to move on my own across land.
There was no boat trailer necessary. No searching for a boat ramp. No hoping to stay off of Miami Boat Ramp YouTube channels lampooning people who don’t know what they’re doing with a trailer, etc. It was the boating experience of a jet-ski meets the ownership experience of a kayak.
For anyone who lives along the water, this would be an amazing toy to own. There are so many people with lakefront property who could have their own mini electric boat to tool around on whenever they want. Or if you live close to the coast, you could keep the boat in the garage with a kayak hoist and just drive it on down to the coast for fun. These things practically sell themselves. Cheaper than an electric surfboard and nearly as portable.
Which brings me to cost. I ended up paying around $5,500 for each boat, which is a lot to risk on this stuff, with only a hope that it would work out and that I could make some of the money back on my video and writing. And if you’re thinking, “Wow, this guy plopped down $11k on this stuff,” then I have two things to tell you. First, a Jet Ski would have cost more and been a huge hassle. And two, I didn’t spend $11k; I spent a lot more.
In fact, I couldn’t stop myself at the time (and considered it something of a business expense – hey, I’m working right now, people!), so it turns out that I actually bought three of these things. I know this sounds like an excuse, but it just made sense with how much shipping was already costing me! I mean, c’mon – I couldn’t afford not to.
Though I still have the third one in the crate and I’ll probably end up selling it new in box, if someone wants to find my email and make me an offer.
That also means I have two boats that I plan to keep, and I need names for them. Please hit me with your suggestions in the comment section. One of my subscribers suggested an absolute banger of a name with Sunny Side Up for my yellow and white solar-powered Chinese electric pleasure boat, and that’s what I went with.
Now I will say that as fun as these things are, they aren’t perfect. One of the boats arrived with its bilge pump motor always running due to a faulty float switch (oh yeah, they even have a bilge pump!). The factory also told me that they couldn’t install real cleats through the hull, though at least they did give me a bow eye that helps with tying it up.
I’ve technically been sitting on this story for a year, and I can tell you that after a year of living out in the Florida elements, one of the boat’s paint is a bit cracked near the hinges of the seat where it gets stressed from lifting the seat up to remove the battery.
The boats are also surprisingly loud. These are the loudest EVs I’ve ever seen, and I thought the F-150 Lightning was loud! A neighbor has one and I once remarked that it sounded like a jet turbine in the summer because of all its fans running, but now I know what an EV with an actual jet turbine sounds like, or at least a water jet turbine. To be more accurate, it’s not the boat that’s loud, but rather the cavitating water inside the jet turbine that is constantly screaming as its vacuum cavities repeatedly expand and collapse as they shoot out the back of the boat’s vectored thrust nozzle. It sounds like a wet, angry bat out of hell. A guy watching me from the shore of the lake actually asked if it was a two-stroke! So don’t think this is going to be a silent boat. The motor is silent, but the shooting water is loud.
Then there’s the battery. It weighs nearly 80 pounds and you have to pull the battery out to charge it – you can’t leave it in the boat and charge it since the charge and discharge port are one and the same.
I also burned out one of the chargers when I accidentally let the charger tip fall on some wet grass while it was plugged in. Poof. The magic smoke was out of the charger, and it wasn’t going back in. I’ll have to find another 84V charger and solder this massive and unique charging connector onto its output wire.
Speaking of the chargers, they are 2,500-watt chargers. They’ll impressively fill the batteries in just over two hours, but they are so powerful that they won’t run on any normal household 120V outlet. I got lucky that my dad’s garage had an RV outlet with a 30A breaker; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to use the charger.
But downsides aside, the rest of the experience was incredible! I love these things! They’re just so much fun, and they bring a smile to everyone’s face. Since I bought them a year ago, I’m seeing many more options on Alibaba for other factories starting to make and sell mini jet boats. I can all but guarantee you that within a year or two, there will be people re-selling mini jet boats in the US. Just make sure you go with a reputable company that has done its homework and can stand behind these things. A couple of years ago, I started an electric tractor company based on making a long list of improvements to what was originally a German-designed and Chinese-produced electric loader. We developed it (and subsequent models) into our own new design, offer full warranties, and keep a US warehouse stocked with replacement parts. That’s the only way to do business right, so don’t get hosed a few months from now by some fly-by-night company that read this article and then thought it would be a good idea to start hawking Chinese mini jet boats in the US. These things are quite rough around the edges (literally and figuratively) and would take some significant work to make them safe and reliable for a Western market.
And in the same vein, I don’t actually recommend anyone try and buy one of these from China, either. There’s just too much risk and too big a chance that you’ll get ripped off in the end, or you’ll get bent over a shipping container by customs and end up paying several times the purchase price in shipping and import fees.
I don’t have any plans to import and sell these, largely because of the liability (imagine how much I pay in business liability insurance just to run a tractor company) and the fact that there are too many design changes I’d need to make to turn it into something I’d be proud to stand behind and put my name on. I mostly go on these real-life Alibaba escapades because 1) I enjoy testing the weird and fun things you can find in a country that has certain product safety and manufacturing advantages compared to the West (i.e. less of the first and more of the second), and 2) so that I can share these experiences with my audience, most of whom will never have the ability to try these things themselves.
But hey, as a neat toy for my parents’ pond and the local lakes or Gulf of Mexico fun days, these are going to be perfect for us!
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
With just under two months until the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles expires, automakers are pushing the savings. We’ve put together a list of all the EVs you can still lease for under $300 a month in August.
Which EVs can you lease for under $300 in August?
Over 607,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US in the first half of 2025, but sales are expected to pick up over the next month or so.
With the EV tax credit set to expire, auto brands are offering generous discounts to lure buyers. According to Cox Automotive, average EV incentives reached an all-time high of 14.8% of the ATP (average transaction price), or nearly $8,500.
The discounts are boosting sales with several brands announcing record EV sales over the past two months. GM and Honda are leading the growth, with the Chevy Equinox EV and Prologue at the forefront.
Who would’ve thought two affordable, long-range electric SUVs would sell? Both EVs are still available to lease for under $300 a month this August.
Chevy is offering Equinox EV leases as low as $249 for 24 months with $6,149 due at signing. You can also opt for 0% APR for 60 months in addition to the $7,500 EV tax credit, which Chevy is offering across its entire EV lineup.
Chevy Equinox EV, Honda Prologue, and Acura ZDX
| Lease From | Term (months) |
Due at Signing | |
| 2025 Chevy Equinox EV | $249 | 24 | $6,149 |
| 2025 Honda Prologue | $159 | 24 | $1,099 |
| 2024 Acura ZDX | $299 | 24 | $2,999 |
The Honda Prologue is listed for lease as low as $159 per month in California and other ZEV states. The offer is for a 24-month lease with $1,099 due at signing. In other states, leases still start as low as $229 per month.
You can even snag Acura’s luxury ZDX electric SUV for $299 a month right now in California and other ZEV states.
Hyundai and Kia August EV lease deals
| Lease From | Term (months) |
Due at Signing | |
| 2025 Kia Niro EV | $129 | 24 | $3,999 |
| 2025 Kia EV6 | $179 | 24 | $3,999 |
| 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 | $209 | 24 | $3,999 |
| 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 6 | $169 | 24 | $3,999 |
| 2026 Hyundai IONIQ 9 | $299 | 36 | $4,999 |
Hyundai’s new 2025 IONIQ 5 may take the cake with leases starting at just $129 per month in California. In other states, the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 is available to lease starting at $179 per month for 24 months. That’s with $3,999 due at signing.
The 2025 IONIQ 6 is listed at $169 per month for 24 months with $3,999 due at signing with up to $11,750 in lease cash.
Hyundai’s new three-row electric SUV, the IONIQ 9, is one of the best EV lease deals available right now, starting at just $299 per month for 36 months with a $4,999 due at signing.
Hyundai’s sister company, Kia, is offering deals on the 2025 EV6, with leases starting from $269 per month. The offer is for a 24-month lease with $3,999 due at signing.
VW ID.4, Tesla Model 3, and Ford Mustang Mach-E
| Lease From | Term (months) |
Due at Signing | |
| Ford Mustang Mach-E | $269 | 36 | $4,369 |
| Volkswagen ID.4 | $129 | 24 | $2,499 |
| Tesla Model 3 | $299 | 24 | $3,000 |
| 2025 Toyota bZ4X | $189 | 36 | $3,999 |
| 2025 Subaru Solterra | $279 | 36 | $279 |
The Ford Mustang Mach-E is a pretty good deal right now, with leases starting at $269 per month for 36 months and $4,369 due at signing.
Volkswagen is offering 2025 ID.4 leases starting at just $129 per month for 24 months. However, the offer is limited to California, Arizona, and Nevada. In other states, the ID.4 is available from $209 per month.
After cutting lease prices earlier this year, the Tesla Model 3 Long Range RWD is now listed at $299 per month. That’s for a 24-month lease with $3,000 down.
Other EVs you can still lease for under $300 a month in August include the 2025 Toyota bZ4X and 2025 Subaru Solterra. The bZ4X starts at $189 per month, while the Subaru Solterra has leases starting from $279 for 36 months.
Looking to snag the savings while they are still available? You can use our links below to find deals on top-selling EVs in your area.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike