Two years after buying my $2,000 electric truck from China, here’s how it looks now
Back in early 2021, I set out on a journey to buy an electric mini-truck from China and bring it to the US. Yes, I’m that guy. You may have seen my truck before. After tens of millions of views on its viral videos and articles over the past two years, now it’s time to take a closer look at how my Chinese electric mini-truck has held up. And spoiler alert: some of you folks aren’t going to be happy.
First, a brief refresher. Here’s how the whole thing went down.
As part of my weekly series where I scour the internet for weird and awesome electric vehicles from China, I discovered an electric mini-truck that had obviously been designed to imitate American pickup trucks. With the front end looking like a Silverado and the rear having more of an F-150 vibe, the entire vehicle somehow weighed less than just the engine in either of those pickups. Some people called it an “F-1/50th”.
It was listed at $2,000, and I just knew I had to have it. My parents live on a hobby farm and ranch in rural Florida and I figured it’d make a good work truck there, like an alternative to a UTV, so I spent nearly half a year figuring out the logistics to buy and import one of these from China. The price ballooned as I added a bigger battery and accessories from the factory, not to mention the exorbitant sea shipping freight. But after several months it was finally on a boat. And several months after that, the cargo ship eventually tossed a rope onto the docks in Miami.
When it finally arrived at my family’s property after some inland trucking, I was blown away – in a good way.
The mini-truck was obviously not a super high-end vehicle. It topped out at 25 mph (40 km/h) and the interior wasn’t exactly full-grain leather. But it was actually fairly well put together and decently powerful. It even had electric windows/door locks and genuine air conditioning! Though to be fair, that A/C cost me extra for the factory installation.
When I first revealed my mini-truck to the internet, the comments were a mixture of good-hearted chuckling from admirers and a wave of anger you could feel through the keyboard from those who somehow felt personally offended by the truck’s mere existence.
People either loved or hated it, with those in the latter column convincing themselves that it wouldn’t last three months before falling apart. “It’s a good thing it has a bed in the back,” said one commenter. “You can toss in the pieces as they fall off.”
Fortunately for me, three months later I had an update that showed the truck was still doing well. I even put it through a number of tests to demonstrate its power and agility.
Sure, it’s small. In fact, it’s roughly 5:8 scale to a typical American pickup truck, but that’s part of its charm. It also takes up less space, is easy to wiggle around trees and obstacles like a UTV, and can handle a week or more of work on my family’s property with a single charge of its 6 kWh battery.
A year went by and I had another update showing how well the truck was doing. The only thing that had broken was one of the rear reflectors, and that’s only because my dad crushed it while using the dump feature to tilt the bed back on the burn pile. So that’s on us.
Now, it’s been another year and the truck continues to perform the same hard work that it has for just over 25 months. The dump feature is actually working better than ever, as the oversized hydraulic ram they used seems to have worn in to the point that it wants to be at, making it operate more smoothly.
My family frequently uses the electric mini-truck to haul mulch, dirt, sand, compost, lawn clippings, logs, tree limbs, and other loose stuff. The dump feature makes it easy to unload everything – no more shoveling out of a truck bed when you can just tilt the whole thing up and dump your dirt pile.
It’s also a fun trick to show neighbors and visitors to the property. After they’ve oohed and aahed over the electric mini-truck for a few minutes, my dad likes to hit them with the “and there’s one more thing” as he pushes the button to start the bed tilting back.
There have also been several upgrades that my dad and I made to the mini-truck along the way.
We added a small solar panel to the top of the cab for trickle charging the battery, which extended the time between our recharging from around once or twice a week to closer to every three weeks.
The suspension was always a bit stiff, so we replaced the spring coils with lighter 125 lb springs. I don’t know what springs it originally had (they weren’t marked), but I’d guess they were around 400 lb springs – much too stiff for the type of off-road use we perform.
Replacing them with softer springs made a massive difference in the ride quality. There’s a chance it limits the hauling ability since the bed will now squat down a bit more, though we’ve had 700-800 pounds in the back so I think it’s still fine. The springs were also slightly longer than the original rear springs, so we ended up lifting the rear a bit by accident. In the end, it probably evens out.
These types of mechanical upgrades also show how easy it is to work on the truck. Many people asked me about getting spare parts if something were to break, but ultimately, most of the parts can be found locally or at least substituted. The coils, for example, came from Amazon.
The truck’s bed was getting pretty scratched up from all of the hauling, though the deep scratches in the paint demonstrated that whatever rust-proofing they performed on the body was largely working. There was almost no rust even where a pitchfork had scratched straight through the paint down to bare metal in the bed in several places. To repair all the wear and tear in the bed’s factory paint, my dad and I put in a bed liner.
I used a paint-in style that worked beautifully, making an even tougher bed lining than it originally had. I bought a gallon of Durabak-18, which turned out to be much more than I needed for the job.
Any work truck will eventually get a scratched-up bed (which is why many people start with a bed liner from day one), but I’m happy to see how simple and easy it was to restore mine to better than new.
You can take a look at the before and after pictures below.
I also decided to upgrade the tires to something knobbier. The original street tires weren’t bad, but we rarely take the mini-truck on the road since it’s not technically street-legal (it doesn’t meet the safety requirements for LSVs). I put on much more aggressive tires meant for an ATV and they give the mini-truck better performance in the pasture land that makes up most of the property. In another example of substitute parts availability, the new tires also came from Amazon.
The most recent addition to the truck was adding a tow hitch. In my opinion, it really should have had one from the beginning. The problem is that the dump bed feature gives this thing a non-traditional frame and so there wasn’t a great way to install a tow hitch into the frame from the factory.
Instead, I just welded up a monstrosity of box tubes and connected it to the rear axle, which is where the electric motor is mounted and thus is basically the truck itself. Everything else is essentially just a body on top of the rear axle.
I don’t use the tow hitch very often (which is also true for most pick-up trucks and SUVs in the US for that matter), but it does come in handy for pulling my electric boat out of the lake when I want to do maintenance or for pulling a utility trailer around the property. It’s nice to have, even if it doesn’t get used as frequently as the other upgrades.
After two years of near-daily use, the truck is holding up admirably. I know that fact is going to drive the haters up a wall and there’s no end to how happy that makes me.
I can assure you that we use this electric mini-truck for heavy hauling tasks; it’s not getting babied. This is a work truck in every regard and probably sees more “truck” use than most mall crawlers in the US.
Yeah, there are some knicks and dings here and there. The driver’s seat upholstery looks a little more worn than the passenger seat since we rarely have two people in it. But for the most part, it’s as good as new.
Even after all of that use and occasional abuse, this mini-truck is still going strong. It’s not necessarily something I’d recommend for most people, largely because it’s a huge hassle to import from China and frankly is of questionable legality. To get it into the country, I had to submit assurances that I would only use it for off-road purposes (since it isn’t street-legal), and that’s exactly how I use it – as a farm truck.
I’ve since heard of several people who have had their own electric mini-trucks turned back at US ports, so apparently those “off-road only” promises might not be enough anymore. Fortunately, we’re starting to see US-made electric mini-trucks that could soon hit the market, though they cost at least 5x what I ultimately paid to get mine here, including all of my sea freight, tariffs, customs charges, etc. Hopefully, those prices for domestic electric mini-trucks come down as production increases.
Plus, back when I bought mine, the idea of an American-built electric mini-truck wasn’t even on the horizon.
For me, I’d say this has been a great purchase. It’s fine if people want to call it a “glorified golf cart”, though I’m not sure I’ve seen a golf cart that can tow a boat, haul furniture, dump mulch, and that comes with creature comforts like air-conditioning, infotainment screen, power windows and locks, and a frunk. Or one that turns as many heads as this one.
So the haters may still laugh, but the rest of us get to enjoy it. Two years later, this little workhorse is going stronger than ever. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
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For years, Tesla has been the go-to EV recommendation for “normals” looking for a painless, low-effort experience from their first electric cars. In light of questionable recalls and its CEO’s recent involvement in controversial politics, however, people are starting to distance themselves from the trailblazing company.
All that begs the question: what should we recommend to EV noobs now?
Despite early quality issues and ongoing service headaches, the groundbreaking S3XY lineup of EVs have always had a secret weapon in the form of the Tesla Supercharger network.
That network of dependable high-speed chargers, paired with solid app integration that makes it easy for Tesla drivers to find available chargers just about anywhere in the US, gave the brand a leg up – but no more. By opening up the Supercharger network to brands like Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and others, Tesla has given away its biggest competitive advantage.
Add in charging and route-planning apps like Chargeway, that make navigating the transition from CCS to NACS easier than ever with its intuitive colors and numbers and easy on/off switch for vehicles equipped with NACS adapters, and it feels like the time is right to start suggesting alternatives to the old EV industry stalwarts. As such, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Here, then, are my picks for the best Tesla S3XY (and Cybertruck) alternatives you can buy.
Less Model S, more Lucid Air
Developed by OG Tesla Model S engineers with tunes from Annie Get Your Gun playing continuously in their heads, the Lucid Air promises to be the car Tesla should and could have built, if only Elon had listened to the engineers.
With panel fit, material finish, and overall build quality that’s at least as good as anything else in the automotive space, the Lucid Air is a compelling alternative to the Model S at every price level – and I, for one, would take a “too f@#king fast” Lucid Air Sapphire over an “as seen on TV” Model S Plaid any day of the week. And, with Supercharger access reportedly coming later this quarter, Air buyers will have every advantage the Supercharger Network can provide.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model 3, more Hyundai IONIQ 6
Hyundai has been absolutely killing it these days, with EVs driving record sales and new models earning rave reviews from the automotive press. Even in that company the IONIQ 6 stands out, with up to 338 miles of EPA-rated range and lickety-quick 350 kW charging available to make road tripping easy – especially now that the aerodynamically efficient IONIQ 6 has Supercharger access through a NACS adapter (the 2026 “facelift” models get a NACS port as standard).
The company’s sole electric sedan hasn’t seen the same sales success as IONIQ 5, of course – but that has more to do with America’s insatiable lust for crossovers and SUVs than any shortcoming inherent in the IONIQ 6 itself. All the same, Hyundai is helping dealers clear out its remaining 2024 and ’25 models with 0% financing for up to 48 months through June 2nd.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model X, more Volvo EX90
Once upon a time, Mrs. Jo Borrás and I were shopping three-row SUVs and found ourselves genuinely drawn to the then-new Model X. Back then it was the only three-row EV on the market, but it wasn’t Elon’s antics or access to charging, or even the Model X’s premium pricing that squirreled the deal. It was the stupid doors.
We went with the similarly new Volvo XC90 T8 in denim blue, and followed up the big PHEV with a second, three years later, in Osmium Gray. When it’s time to replace this one, you can just about bet your house that the new 510 hp EX90 with 310 miles of all-electric range will be near the top of the shopping list.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model Y, more Kia EV6
If half the fun of driving a Model Y is terrifying your passengers with its straight-line speed, then the Kia EV6 has to be a serious contender for a replacement.
The sporty EV6 GT made its global debut by drag racing some of the fastest ICE-powered cars of the day, including a Lamborghini, Mercedes-AMG GT, a Porsche, even a turbocharged Ferrari – and it beat the pants off ’em. Combine supercar-baiting speed with an accessible price tag, NACS accessibility, $10,000 in customer cash on remaining 2024 models ($3,000 on 2025s) and just a hint of Lancia Stratos in the styling, the EV6 is tough to beat.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Cybertruck, more therapy
It’s not bulletproof, it’s not easy to upfit, it shouldn’t be used for towing, and it won’t win in a straight fight against a vinyl picket fence. By just about every standard “truck” metric, the Tesla Cybertruck falls short against the competition from Chevrolet, Ford, and Rivian. On a more subjective front, the Cybertruck has become a symbol for a conservative movement that is (depending on your point of view) either making America great again or plunging a once-great democracy into an era of fascist oligarchy and widespread stupidity.
In short, it’s probably best to skip the CT.
If you disagree with that statement and feel like driving a new Tesla Cybertruck is the key to happiness, I’m not sure an equally ostentatious GMC Hummer EV or more subtle Rivian R1T will help you scratch that particular itch – but maybe therapy might!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Original content from Electrek.
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Republicans launched multiple attacks against EVs, clean air and American jobs this week, at the behest of the oil industry that funds them. These attacks won’t be successful, and EVs will continue to grow regardless, and inevitably take over for outdated gasoline vehicles.
However, these republican attacks on EVs will still have some effect: they will diminish the US auto industry globally, leading to job losses and surrendering one of the jewels in the crown of American industry to China, where there is no similar effort to destroy its own domestic EV industry.
Republican attacks on clean air this week included moves to block funding that has led to a renaissance in US manufacturing and also to illegally block clean air laws. They also moved forward with a procedural step towards increasing US fuel costs by $23B, an effort which the former reality TV contestant posing as the head of the DOT announced in January.
These moves shouldn’t be a big surprise – republicans have opposed clean air and American jobs for many years now, and they’re doing it because they want to maintain the bribes they get from the oil industry.
But they should inspire worry for Americans, because they will only harm the country’s domestic manufacturing base in the face of a changing auto industry.
Republicans keep trying to kill clean cars
The last time a republican occupied the the White House, we saw similar efforts to try to raise fuel and health costs for Americans, and to block superior EV technology from flourishing. That didn’t work in the end, and EVs continued to grow both during that period and after.
All the while, fossil fuels have maintained their privileged policy position, being allowed to pollute with impunity and costing the US $760 billion per year in externalized costs. Much of that subsidy is accounted for in the cost of pollution from gas cars, which are one of the primary uses of fossil fuels, which means that, in fact, gasoline vehicles receive much more subsidy than EVs do.
And yet, EVs still managed to grow substantially, despite these headwinds. EV sales have continued to grow, both in the US and globally, even as headlines incorrectly say otherwise. The republican party’s attempts to kill them were futile, and will continue to be.
It didn’t work, but it did delay progress
However, anti-EV actions from Mr. Trump and the republican party did manage to delay progress from where it could have been if America actually instituted smart industrial policy earlier.
What if, instead of the bumbling, idiotic nonsense we went through the last time Mr. Trump squatted in the White House, we could have had something more like President Biden’s EV policy, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs and attracted hundreds of billions of dollars of manufacturing investment?
Surely the American auto industry would be ahead of where it is now if those investments had had time to come online. But instead, republicans are currently trying to kill those jobs, which has already led to several manufacturing projects being cancelled this year, depriving Americans of the economic boost they need right now.
Meanwhile, there’s one place that this sort of stumbling isn’t happening: China.
China is taking advantage
China has spent more than a decade focusing on securing material supply, building refining capacity, developing their own battery technology, and encouraging local EV manufacturing startups.
This has paid off recently, as Chinese EVs have been rapidly scaling in production in recent years. It took a lot of the auto industry by surprise how rapidly Chinese companies have scaled, and how rapidly Chinese consumers have adopted them, after having an initially slow start.
But that adoption hasn’t just been local, it’s also global. Last year, China became the largest auto exporter in the world, taking a crown that Japan had held for decades. But the change was even more dramatic than that – as recently as 2020, China was the sixth-largest auto exporter in the world, just behind the US in 5th place.
China’s dramatic turn upward started in 2020, and now it’s in first place. Meanwhile, because of all the faffing about, the US remains exactly where it was in 2020 – still in fifth place. Well, sixth now, since China eclipsed us (and everyone else).
Tariffs won’t fix it
The reaction of the rest of the world’s automaking countries has been to put tariffs on Chinese autos, hoping to forestall the country’s dramatic rise to dominance. (Although, due to Mr. Trump’s idiotic flailing, Europe is already talking about removing these trade barriers with China)
But tariffs have been tried before, and they didn’t work. When Japan had a similarly meteoric rise to global prominence as an auto manufacturer in the 1970s and 80s, largely due to their adoption of new technology, processes, and different car styles which incumbents were ignoring, the US tried to stop it with tariffs.
All this did was make US manufacturers complacent, and Japan still managed to seize and maintain the crown of top auto exporter (occasionally trading places with Germany) from then until now.
Then as now, the true way to compete is to adapt to the changing automotive industry and take EVs seriously, rather than giving the auto industry excuses to be complacent. But instead, republicans aren’t doing that, and in fact are working to ensure the American auto industry doesn’t adapt, by actively killing the incentives that were leading to a boom in domestic manufacturing investment.
US auto industry jeopardized by republicans
Make no mistake about it: destroying EV incentives, and allowing companies to pollute more and innovate less, will not help the US auto industry catch up with a fast moving competitor.
As we at Electrek have said for years, you cannot catch up to a competitor that is both ahead of you and moving faster than you.
This applies to individual companies, which took their sweet time responding to the challenge from electric upstarts like Tesla, and have now lost market share to said upstarts and let a competitor establish itself in a big way (even though Tesla’s CEO is now trying desperately to harm his own company specifically, and the US EV industry as a whole, by being the largest funder of the party working to destroy said industry).
It also applies to nations, which could have spent the last decade doing what the Chinese auto industry has been doing, but instead non-Chinese automakers have been begging their governments for more time, even though it’s not the regulations that threaten them, it’s competition from a new and motivated rival that is moving faster and in a more determined manner towards the future.
The way that we get around this should be clear: take EVs seriously.
But that’s not what republicans are doing, and in doing so, they are signing the death warrant for an important US industry in the long term.
Another thing republicans are trying to kill is the the rooftop solar credit, which means you could have only until the end of this year to install rooftop solar on your home before the cost of doing so goes up by an average of ~$10,000. So if you want to go solar, get started now, because these things take time and the system needs to be active before you file for the credit.
To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
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International equipment manufacturer Vermeer has unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Interlune excavator, a machine designed to ingest 100 metric tons of rocks and dirt per hour, extracting valuable helium as it makes its way across the surface … of the Moon.
Helium plays a critical role in the manufacturing of semiconductors, chips, optics, and all the other stuff that makes EVs, autonomy, the Internet, and the rest of twenty-first century life possible. The problem is that, despite being the second-most common element in the universe, helium is pretty rare on Earth – and we are rapidly running out. As such, there are intense economic and political pressures to find new and reliable sources of helium somewhere, anywhere else, and that demand has sparked a new modern space race focused on harvesting helium on the Moon and getting it back home.
To that end, companies like American lunar mining startup Interlune and the Iowa-based equipment experts at Vermeer are partnering on the development of suite of interplanetary equipment assets capable of digging up lunar materials like rocks and sand from up to three meters below the surface, extract helium-3 (a light, stable isotope of helium believed to exist in abundance on the Moon), then package it, contain it, and ship it back to Earth.
“When you’re operating equipment on the Moon, reliability and performance standards are at a new level,” says Rob Meyerson, Interlune CEO. “Vermeer has a legacy of innovation and excellence that started more than 75 years ago, which makes them the ideal partner for Interlune.”
Enter: Japan
America isn’t the only spacefaring nation eyeing a helium mine on the Moon. Japan announced similar plans back in 2023, with Japanese construction giant Komatsu announcing plans to develop a fully electric excavator capable of operating on the lunar surface.
The company showed a scaled prototype of the machine at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (above), emphasizing the need to develop new ways to operate equipment assets in the extreme temperatures of extraplanetary environments beyond diesel or even hydrogen combustion.
On the airless surface of the moon, it would be impossible for an internal combustion engine to operate on the moon’s surface because there is no oxygen for combustion. Electrically powered machines seem the obvious solution with solar power generation supplying the electricity. But the answer is not that simple.
Temperature changes on the surface of the moon are extreme. They can soar to 110° C and plummet to -170° C. Developing electric construction machinery to perform in this environment is no easy task, but Komatsu is tackling issues one by one as they appear. Using thermal control and other electrification technologies, we are engineering solutions.
Despite Komatsu’s apparent head start, however, Vermeer seem to pulled ahead – not just in terms of machine development, but in terms of extraction potential as well.
“The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the Moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,” said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO. “Vermeer’s response to such an ambitious assignment was to move fast. We’ve been very pleased with the results of the test program to date and look forward to the next phase of development.”
Interlune is funded by grants from the US Department of Energy and NASA TechFlights. In 2023, the company received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research award to develop the technology to size and sort lunar regolith (read: dirt). Interlune has raised $18 million in funding so far, and is planning its first mission to the Moon before 2030.
Electrek’s Take
We’ve got space travel, weird mineral extraction from another planet that’s essential for our technology, and a rapid, unchecked proliferation of AI. All we need now is big worms, a whole bunch of hallucinogenic narcotics, and the will to smash up a bunch of data centers with baseball bats – then we’ll have a pretty decent Dune LARP going. Yee-ha!
SOURCE | IMAGES: Interlune.
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