This $40,000 Alibaba drone can carry a passenger, but would you risk it?
When I first got into flying quadcopters (back when they were still called quadcopters), I would sometimes imagine what it would be like to shrink myself down Rick Moranis-style and hop aboard. But now thanks to some enterprising Chinese engineers – or perhaps garage tinkerers – I don’t have to imagine it anymore. Instead of shrinking the passengers down, they’ve scaled up the entire drone and added a pilot’s chair.
Now the only question is, how brave are you?
Most of the fun electric vehicles I find for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column seem largely harmless. Most are lumbering and underpowered, with the biggest danger likely being getting cut on an unfinished corner somewhere.
But this is one of the few times where I might not actually volunteer to hop on one of these vehicles myself, mostly out of a healthy sense of self-preservation.
There’s just something about getting into a mail-order aircraft that has “nope” written all over it for me. But if you’re willing to give it a try and you weigh under 100 kg or 220 lb (including your apparently massive coin purse, and I’m not talking about your wallet), then for a mere $39,000 you could have one of these on the way from China.
Or at least, you could have one out the door of the factory. However much extra it costs to ship, insure, receive in the port, clear customs – if that’s even possible, plus brokers fees and local trucking, well that’s all on you as well.
This isn’t the first man-carrying drone we’ve seen in this column. We’ve even gotten a bit creative to get a person up in the air under a drone. But the way the model is hanging onto this drone’s frame for dear life before it’s even left the ground, well that has me an extra bit worried.
The pilotable drone (is it a drone if there’s a pilot in it?) claims an operating ceiling of 120 meters or around 400 feet. I’m not sure why it couldn’t go higher, as it seems like once you’re counting your altitude with triple digits, you’ve basically maxed out the risk already.
Climbing speed is decently quick too, at around 1-2 m/s, meaning you could hit that max altitude in just a minute or two.
The operating speed is a bit faster, clocking in at 10 m/s, or around 22 mph.
Somewhat comically, the only control method is via remote control. That means either you could carry the controller with you and fly like you’re in a video game, or you could let a friend on the ground zip you around. For the latter, I’m not sure what the maximum range of the remote control is, but I suggest you treat that figure with the utmost respect.
I’m also not sure how you’d go about reconnecting that signal on the way down, though I guess you’d have the rest of your life to figure it out.
I wish we had a bit more info on the technical specs. We know it runs on 24s (roughly 88V) lipo batteries, which are the standard chemistry in the RC industry, though are also the most likely to end in a blaze of glory. But we don’t have any info on the motors or controllers.
The limited spec sheet does inform us that the entire thing weighs 220 kg (485 lb), which is frankly more than I was expecting.
Other than a max flight time of 30 minutes, which is around 29 and a half minutes more than I’d care to spend in the thing, the rest of the device is largely a mystery.
So, while it’s kind of awesome that something like this exists, let me end with my typical disclaimer to please don’t buy this. I’m not even sure it’s legal in most areas, let alone all the questions about safety.
There are better ways to blow $40k, like with 40 awesome Chinese electric boats.
Let’s leave these kinds of gravity-defying contraptions where they belong, which is the magical place known as Alibaba’s catalog of weird and awesome EVs.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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