Remember that $2,000 electric mini-truck I bought from China? Now they’re down to $1,000
In what could either be a sign of the times or perhaps the start of a terrible decision-making chain, that famous $2,000 electric mini-truck I bought from China several years ago has somehow gotten even cheaper.
If you aren’t already familiar with the story, here’s a quick summary. Back in 2021, I ordered an electric mini-truck from China. I paid the factory $2,000 for it, held my breath for months, and then against all odds, it showed up one day in my family’s driveway in the US.
I made a few videos about my Chinese mini-truck that got tens of millions of views, famous YouTubers like Whistlin’ Diesel and Supercar Blondie reached out to me to try to get me to help them rip off my video on their own channels, and the story seemed to circle the world several times over. I even wound up on the state-sponsored news in China – a profoundly strange accomplishment that I probably won’t be adding to my CV anytime soon.
For those wondering, yes, my electric mini-truck is still going strong over three years later. Nothing has broken and my modifications have only made it better.
But the strangest part of all might be that, despite the current trends of rapid inflation and a climate of rising costs mixed with antagonistic tariffs, this electric mini-truck has only become more affordable.
When I bought mine, I paid around US $2,000 to the factory. I’m known to occassionaly peruse Chinese vehicle sites in search of good deals I would be ill-advised to take, and recently I’ve seen prices walking downwards on these little trucks. Now you can buy one for barely over $1,000!
A BIG CAVEAT BEFORE CONTINUING: Dear reader, please note that I am not advising anyone to actually buy one of these. It is a really bad idea. First of all, the Chinese factory price is only the first part of the story. As I described previously, I had to pay around $6,000 in additional costs at various stages before a working truck landed in the US, covering everything from customs to tariffs to US-side transport to a big lithium battery and more. The 400% price increase compared to the Alibaba price that I experienced here is a common real-world landed price estimator, but even that can vary wildly depending on the product. Then there’s the next big issue, that these things are questionably legal. I always advise people against doing what I did, and unfortunately, I’ve still heard from a few readers who reached out to tell me that US Customs seized their mini-truck when they tried to import one like mine. These are 100% not street-legal according to federal motor vehicle laws, and if CBP makes the arbitrary decision that it is “intended” for street use (which is a fair argument to make considering they usually come with turn signals, street tires, and other road-ready features), they can simply seize it at the port. Lastly (as if this bad idea needed more support), you have no guarantee that it will even ever ship to you since many of these vendors are unknown entities that offer almost zero legal recourse from half a world away. So please, please, please don’t read this article and leave with the impression of “Wow, I’m going to buy a cheap $1,000 truck,” because you’re not. You’re either going to get scammed, robbed by customs, or end up with a very expensive “$1,000 truck.” Treat the words in this poor excuse for journalism as educational only, because that’s what it is, if you can even call it that.
Ok, so warnings and disclaimers aside, let’s take a look at what these $1,000 trucks offer.
There are many different vendors for these things in China, and most aren’t even the real factory. It’s hard to determine who is really behind the ads selling these things, but most are trading companies that act as middlemen between the Chinese-speaking factories that don’t have a way to serve foreign customers and the rest of the world. Keep in mind, these mini-trucks aren’t meant for export. They’re primarily designed for use in rural parts of China as an upgrade over the tuk-tuk style electric three-wheelers that have been popular for decades.
Most of these electric mini-trucks feature styling ripped off from Western truck companies. Mine seems to have a Silverado-like front end and an F-150ish rear, based purely on styling. A lot of folks like to call mine an F-50. I think that’s being generous.
These are also often fairly barebones affairs. Several of the features you see in the pictures of my truck are things I upgraded myself. I added that tow hitch, the roof-mounted solar panel, the mud tires, and several other features. The truck did come with factory-standard air conditioning and a dump bed, which I had to pay extra for, but those were basically the only extra features I could find.
These are also fairly low performance. The top speed is barely 25 mph (40 km/h) from its 3,000W rear axle-mounted motor. I don’t know what the true range is (because lord help me if it ever dies too far from a plug). With a massive 60V 100Ah battery in it that I paid extra for, it should theoretically have around 60 miles (100 km) of range, but I doubt it would go that far. And anyway, we just use it around my parents’ homestead as a work truck. Since it’s not street-legal, it doesn’t spend a lot of time on the road.
So despite being around a half to two-thirds scale compared to a full-size electric pickup truck, its performance is significantly lower. That’s fine for the type of general “around the property” use we get out of it, but this is far from a highway vehicle.
I’ve been pleased as punch with my Chinese electric mini-truck, and it has served my family well for over three years. But that isn’t always the case for everyone who gets one of these.
As you can imagine, a truck that costs barely US $1,000 isn’t going to be the most advanced vehicle. Quality isn’t going to match what you’d expect of nicer machines, and there are basically zero options for service and support. I’ve gotten lucky that nothing has gone wrong on mine, but I also went into this knowing that I’ve got a decade or more of light electric vehicle experience and a mechanical engineering degree to fall back on, in case something ever does go wrong with mine.
Others aren’t so lucky. Case in point: a set of four of these Chinese electric mini trucks imported by Hinds Community College for their campus police to use recently went up for auction in non-functioning status. Based on the description, it looks like the college bought four of these, then they all broke and would no longer turn on. The college couldn’t fix them and so they ended up selling the four of them “as-is” for just over $6,000 total. Maybe the 72V batteries were dead. Maybe the motors had burned out. Maybe they had fried their motor controllers. Or perhaps some wiring connection had merely shaken loose and needed to be reconnected. Who knows? Perhaps the guy who wound up with four non-functional mini-trucks. But the point is, there are not a lot of options for fixing these things yourself without some electrical know-how and a healthy disregard for high-voltage electrical safety.
The spread of these interesting and useful electric mini-trucks is evidence of demand for these types of low-cost, low-impact, yet highly useful tools. However, the incredibly low prices seen advertised on Chinese shopping sites don’t tell the entire story.
So while it’s cool to see prices dropping as low as $1,000 to roll one out of the factory, keep in mind that the true cost is likely to approach five figures, and that doesn’t include the potential for issues down the road. Or I should say, down the trail. Remember, these aren’t street legal… unless you happen to be a community college police department, I guess.
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Elon Musk isn’t happy about Trump passing the Big Beautiful Bill and killing off the $7,500 EV tax credit – but there’s a lot more bad news for Tesla baked into the BBB. We’ve got all that and more on today’s budget-busting episode of Quick Charge!
We also present ongoing coverage of the 2025 Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix and dive into some two wheeled reports on the new electric Honda Ruckus e:Zoomer, the latest BMW electric two-wheeler, and more!
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Environment
FERC: Solar + wind made up 96% of new US power generating capacity in first third of 2025
Solar and wind accounted for almost 96% of new US electrical generating capacity added in the first third of 2025. In April, solar provided 87% of new capacity, making it the 20th consecutive month solar has taken the lead, according to data belatedly posted on July 1 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign.
Solar’s new generating capacity in April 2025 and YTD
In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through April 30, 2025), FERC says 50 “units” of solar totaling 2,284 megawatts (MW) were placed into service in April, accounting for 86.7% of all new generating capacity added during the month.
In addition, the 9,451 MW of solar added during the first four months of 2025 was 77.7% of the new generation placed into service.
Solar has now been the largest source of new generating capacity added each month for 20 consecutive months, from September 2023 to April 2025.
Solar + wind were >95% of new capacity in 1st third of 2025
Between January and April 2025, new wind provided 2,183 MW of capacity additions, accounting for 18.0% of new additions in the first third.
In the same period, the combination of solar and wind was 95.7% of new capacity while natural gas (511 MW) provided just 4.2%; the remaining 0.1% came from oil (11 MW).
Solar + wind are >22% of US utility-scale generating capacity
The installed capacities of solar (11.0%) and wind (11.8%) are now each more than a tenth of the US total. Together, they make up almost one-fourth (22.8%) of the US’s total available installed utility-scale generating capacity.
Moreover, at least 25-30% of US solar capacity is in small-scale (e.g., rooftop) systems that are not reflected in FERC’s data. Including that additional solar capacity would bring the share provided by solar + wind to more than a quarter of the US total.
With the inclusion of hydropower (7.7%), biomass (1.1%), and geothermal (0.3%), renewables currently claim a 31.8% share of total US utility-scale generating capacity. If small-scale solar capacity is included, renewables are now about one-third of total US generating capacity.
Solar is on track to become No. 2 source of US generating capacity
FERC reports that net “high probability” additions of solar between May 2025 and April 2028 total 90,158 MW – an amount almost four times the forecast net “high probability” additions for wind (22,793 MW), the second-fastest growing resource. Notably, both three-year projections are higher than those provided just a month earlier.
FERC also foresees net growth for hydropower (596 MW) and geothermal (92 MW) but a decrease of 123 MW in biomass capacity.
Taken together, the net new “high probability” capacity additions by all renewable energy sources over the next three years – i.e., the bulk of the Trump administration’s remaining time in office – would total 113,516 MW.
FERC doesn’t include any nuclear capacity in its three-year forecast, while coal and oil are projected to contract by 24,373 MW and 1,915 MW, respectively. Natural gas capacity would expand by 5,730 MW.
Thus, adjusting for the different capacity factors of gas (59.7%), wind (34.3%), and utility-scale solar (23.4%), electricity generated by the projected new solar capacity to be added in the coming three years should be at least six times greater than that produced by the new natural gas capacity, while the electrical output by new wind capacity would be more than double that by gas.
If FERC’s current “high probability” additions materialize, by May 1, 2028, solar will account for one-sixth (16.6%) of US installed utility-scale generating capacity. Wind would provide an additional one-eighth (12.6%) of the total. That would make each greater than coal (12.2%) and substantially more than nuclear power or hydropower (7.3% and 7.2%, respectively).
In fact, assuming current growth rates continue, the installed capacity of utility-scale solar is likely to surpass that of either coal or wind within two years, placing solar in second place for installed generating capacity, behind only natural gas.
Renewables + small-scale solar may overtake natural gas within 3 years
The mix of all utility-scale (ie, >1 MW) renewables is now adding about two percentage points each year to its share of generating capacity. At that pace, by May 1, 2028, renewables would account for 37.7% of total available installed utility-scale generating capacity – rapidly approaching that of natural gas (40.1%). Solar and wind would constitute more than three-quarters of installed renewable energy capacity. If those trend lines continue, utility-scale renewable energy capacity should surpass that of natural gas in 2029 or sooner.
However, as noted, FERC’s data do not account for the capacity of small-scale solar systems. If that’s factored in, within three years, total US solar capacity could exceed 300 GW. In turn, the mix of all renewables would then be about 40% of total installed capacity while the share of natural gas would drop to about 38%.
Moreover, FERC reports that there may actually be as much as 224,426 MW of net new solar additions in the current three-year pipeline in addition to 69,530 MW of new wind, 9,072 MW of new hydropower, 202 MW of new geothermal, and 39 MW of new biomass. By contrast, net new natural gas capacity potentially in the three-year pipeline totals just 26,818 MW. Consequently, renewables’ share could be even greater by mid-spring 2028.
“The Trump Administration’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ … poses a clear threat to solar and wind in the years to come,” noted the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director, Ken Bossong. “Nonetheless, FERC’s latest data and forecasts suggest cleaner and lower-cost renewable energy sources may still dominate and surpass nuclear power, coal, and natural gas.”
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Tesla has been forced to reimburse a customer’s Full Self-Driving package after an arbitrator determined that the automaker failed to deliver it.
Tesla has been promising its car owners that every vehicle it has built since 2016 has all the hardware capable of unsupervised self-driving.
The automaker has been selling a “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package that is supposed to deliver this unsupervised self-driving capability through over-the-air software updates.
Almost a decade later, Tesla has yet to deliver on its promise, and its claim that the cars’ hardware is capable of self-driving has been proven wrong. Tesla had to update all cars with HW2 and 2.5 computers to HW3 computers.
In January 2025, CEO Elon Musk finally admitted that HW3 also won’t be able to support self-driving and said that Tesla will have to upgrade the computers. 6 months later, Tesla has yet to communicate a plan for retrofits to owners.
Tesla is now attempting to deliver its promise of unsupervised self-driving on HW4 cars, which have been in production since 2023-2024, depending on the model. However, there are still significant doubts about this being possible, as the best available data indicate that Tesla only achieves about 500 miles between critical disengagements with the latest software on the hardware.
The situation is creating a significant liability for Tesla, which already needs to replace computers in millions of vehicles, and it may need to do so in millions more.
On the other hand, many customers are losing faith in Tesla’s ability to deliver on its promise and manage this computer retrofit situation. Some of them have been seeking to be reimbursed for their purchase of the Full Self-Driving package, which Tesla sold from $8,000 to $15,000.
A Tesla owner in Washington managed to get the automaker to reimburse the FSD package, but it wasn’t easy.
The 2021 Model Y was Marc Dobin and his wife’s third Tesla. Due to his wife’s declining mobility, Dobin was intrigued about the FSD package as a potential way to give her more independence. He wrote in a blog post:
But FSD was more than hype for us. The promise of a car that could drive my wife around gave us hope that she’d maintain independence as her motor skills declined. We paid an extra $10,000 for FSD.
Tesla’s FSD quickly disillusioned Dobin. First, he couldn’t even enable it due to Tesla restricting the Beta access through a “safety score” system, something he pointed out was never mentioned in the contract.
Furthermore, the feature required the supervision of a driver at all times, which was not what Tesla sold to customers.
Tesla doesn’t make it easy for customers in the US to seek a refund or to sue Tesla as it forces buyers to go through arbitration through its sales contract.
That didn’t deter Dobin, who happens to be a lawyer with years of experience in arbitration. It took almost a year, but Tesla and Dobin eventually found themselves in arbitration, and it didn’t go well for the automaker:
Almost a year after filing, the evidentiary hearing was held via Zoom. Tesla produced one witness: a Field Technical Specialist who admitted he hadn’t checked what equipment shipped with our car, hadn’t reviewed our driving logs, and didn’t know details about the FSD system installed on our car, if any. He hadn’t spoken to any sales rep we dealt with or reviewed the contract’s integration clause.
There were both a Tesla lawyer and an outside counsel representing Tesla at the hearing, but the witness was not equipped to answer questions.
Dobin wrote:
He was a service technician, not a lawyer or salesperson. But that’s who Tesla brought to the hearing. At the end, I genuinely felt bad for him because Tesla set him up to be a human punching bag—someone unprepared to answer key questions, forced to defend a system he clearly didn’t understand. While I was examining him, a Tesla in-house lawyer sat silently, while the company’s outside counsel tried to soften the blows of the witness’ testimony.
He focused on Tesla’s lack of disclosure regarding the safety score and the fact that the system does not meet the promises made to customers.
The arbitrator sided with Dobin and wrote:
The evidence is persuasive that the feature was not functional, operational, or otherwise available.”
Tesla was forced to reimburse the FSD package $10,000 plus taxes, and pay for the almost $8,000 in arbitration fees.
Since Tesla forces arbitration through its contracts, it is required to cover the cost.
Electrek’s Take
This is interesting. Tesla assigned two lawyers to this case in an attempt to avoid reimbursing $10,000, knowing it would have to cover the expensive arbitration fees – most likely losing tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
It makes no sense to me. Tesla should have a standing offer to reimburse FSD for anyone who requests it until it can actually deliver on its promise of unsupervised self-driving.
That’s the right thing to do, and the fact that Tesla would waste money trying to fight customers requesting a refund is really telling.
Tesla is simply not ready to do the right thing here, and it doesn’t bode well for the computer retrofits and all the other liabilities around Tesla FSD.
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