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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Following a lawsuit brought against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by major heavy truck manufacturers over California’s emissions requirements, CARB has struck back with fresh lawsuit of its own alleging that the manufacturers violated the terms of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership agreement to sell cleaner vehicles.
Daimler Truck North America, International Motors, Paccar and Volvo Group North America sued the California Air Resources Board in federal court this past August, seeking to invalidate the Clean Truck Partnership emissions reduction deal they signed with the state in 2023 to move away from traditional trucks and toward zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). The main point of the lawsuit was that, because the incoming Trump Administration rolled back Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies that had previously given individual states the right to set their own environmental and emissions laws, the truck makers shouldn’t have to honor the deals signed with individual states.
“Plaintiffs are caught in the crossfire: California demands that OEMs follow preempted laws; the United States maintains such laws are illegal and orders OEMs to disregard them,” the lawsuit reads. “Accordingly, Plaintiff OEMs file this lawsuit to clarify their legal obligations under federal and state law and to enjoin California from enforcing standards preempted by federal law.”
After several weeks of waiting for a response, we finally have one: CARB is suing the OEMs right back, claiming that the initial suit proves the signing manufacturers, “(have) unambiguously stated that they do not intend to comply.”
They want to sell Americans more diesel
In its lawsuit, CARB argues that monetary damages alone would not make the people of the State of California whole as far as damages are concerned, citing that the stated goal of the 2023 Clean Truck Partnership was, “to achieve emissions reductions that cannot be measured strictly in financial terms,” according to ACT-News.
The agency is asking the court to compel the truck companies to perform on their 2023 obligations or, failing that, to allow CARB to rescind the contract and recover its costs. A hearing on the truck makers’ request for a preliminary injunction was held Friday, with another court date set for November 21, when CARB will seek to dismiss the case brought forth by the truck brands. The outcome of these cases could shape how state and federal government agencies cooperation on emissions rules in the future.
You can read the full 22-page lawsuit, below, then let us know what you think of CARB’s response (and their chances of succeeding) in the comments.
SOURCES: CARB; via ACT-News, Trucking Dive.
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Starting this month, parking lots in South Korea with more than 80 spaces will be required to install solar canopies and carports. But, unlike similar laws that have been proposed in the US, this new law doesn’t just apply to new construction – existing lots will have to comply as well!
South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced in August that it has prepared an amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Act on the Promotion of the Development, Use, and Diffusion of New and Renewable Energy to the effect that all publicly- and privately-owned parking lots in the Asian country with room for more than 80 vehicles will be compelled to add solar panels to their lots in a move designed to proactively expand renewable energy and create more solar and construction jobs.
In addition to creating jobs and working to stabilize the local grid with more renewable energy, the proposed solar canopies will offer a number of practical, day-to-day benefits for Korean drivers, as well.
The shaded structures will protect vehicles from heavy rain, snow, and the blistering summer sun — keeping interiors cooler, extending the life of plastics and upholstery, and even helping to preserve battery range in EVs and PHEVs by reducing their AC loads (and, of course, provide charging while the cars are parked).
To their credit, Ministry officials absolutely get it. “Through this mandatory installation,” one unnamed official told Asia Business Daily, “we expect to expand the distribution of eco-friendly renewable energy generation facilities while providing tangible benefits to the public. By utilizing idle land such as parking lots, we can maximize land use efficiency. In addition, installing canopy-type solar panels can provide shade underneath, offering noticeable comfort to people using parking lots during hot weather.”
The new rule was approved in late September, and is expected to go into effect later this month, with new installation projects set to begin immediately.
It could work here
South Korea is proving that an idea like is practical. Here in the US, we’re proving that out, too – the Northwest Fire District in Arizona partnered with Standard Solar to build a conceptually similar, 657 kW solar carport system across 12 parking lots (shown, above) that delivers more than 1.23 million kWh of clean, emissions-free power annually and offsets the equivalent of 185,000 vehicles’ worth of harmful carbon emissions.
That’s just Arizona. In New York, a new initiative to help expand solar into parking lots has more than doubled commercially zoned land where EV charging stations can be sited, “freeing up” an additional 400 million square feet of space throughout the city.
Sun-rich states like Texas, New Mexico, and Florida could also benefit, and even if we’re “just” adding fresh energy sources to municipal parking, dealer lots, and public schools, we could do a lot to reduce the cost of energy generation for the entire community. And, for what it’s worth, that seems to be right in line with the big reasons why people are choosing to add solar to their homes today.
What do you guys think – would something like this work in the US, or are we too far gone down the sophomoric, pseudo-libertarian rabbit hole to ever dig our way out? Let us know your take in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Asia Business Daily, via LinkedIn; Standard Solar.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. 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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Autonomous taxi company Waymo faced scrutiny last month when a car was caught on video illegally passing a stopped school bus that was letting children off in Atlanta. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into it.
Georgia State Representative Clint Crowe seemed stunned after being presented with video of a Waymo driverless car illegally passing a stopped school bus on Briarcliff Road in Atlanta last month. “I’m a big fan of new technologies and emerging technologies and I think that driverless cars are going to become more prevalent,” he told local NBC news affiliate WBIR. “But we got [sic] to think about how they’re going to comply with the law.”
WBIR | Waymo illegally passes school bus
Crowe co-sponsored Addy’s Law in 2024. The legislation was named after 8-year-old Addy Pierce, who was killed in Henry County after being struck while crossing the street to get to her bus. The law stiffened penalties for illegally passing a stopped school bus, carrying penalties of up to $1,000 in fines and even jail time.
According to Crowe, those rules still apply to autonomous vehicles. “The majority of our traffic laws, the penalty is usually a fine and or driver’s license suspension. These cars don’t have a driver, so they don’t have a driver’s license and so we’re really going to have to rethink who’s the responsible party, who’s going to be responsible for being in control of that vehicle and who’s going to be the operator of that vehicle,” he said.
Crowe believes manufacturers should face stronger consequences when their vehicles break the law, saying the $1,000 fine doesn’t go far enough.
Now, thanks to pressure from social media and politicians like Crowe and Geoirgia State Senator Rick Williams, who helped co-author Addy’s Law, it seems like NHTSA is getting involved.
Prompted by media reports, the US Department of Transportation issued an investigation regarding Waymo’s AV, which states that, “the AV initially stopped, but then drove around the front of the bus by briefly turning right to avoid running into the bus’s right front end, then turning left to pass in front of the bus, and then turning further left and driving down the roadway past the entire left side of the bus. During this maneuver, the Waymo AV passed the bus’s extended crossing control arm near disembarking students (on the bus’s right side) and passed the extended stop arm on the bus’s left side.”
While it remains to be seen how much work NHTSA is actually doing amid the ongoing shutdown of the Federal government, it’s worth noting that, regardless of the outcome, Senator Williams said he plans to introduce new legislation that would hold driverless car companies accountable with higher fines if their vehicles violate traffic laws. If that passes in Georgia, it could set the stage for politicians across the US and even abroad to use similar fins to halt the spread of autonomous taxis in their states.
“Driverless cars should be stopped until it can be figured out,” said Williams. “We should not have this on the road. It’s too dangerous for our children.”
You can read NHTSA summary, below.
We’re typically pretty tech- and autonomous-forward here, but as a parent I would absolutely lose my s*** if a Waymo or Robotaxi or whatever else ran over my kid. but I’ve also seen plenty of human drivers blow past a school bus with a knee on the steering wheel and both eyes glued firmly to their phones. Let us know who you’d be more ready to trust with your kids’ lives in the comments.
SOURCES: WBIR, NHTSA, via School Transportation News.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. 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.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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