Weird Alibaba: 4-door $4.5k Chinese electric pick-up truck for off-road adventures
When most families go on safari, they rent a truck or pay a company for a guided tour. But with this cheap Chinese electric truck I find in the bowels of the internet, you could spend the same amount of money and get to keep your safari truck at the end! And lucky for us, this funky little e-truck is perfect for this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column!
We’re no stranger to mini electric pickup trucks. This series has featured fun little farm trucks, hot pink Barbie trucks-come-to-life, and even stubby little pickup trucks with a bed the size of a suitcase.
But never before have we seen such an off-road ready mini electric truck, and that makes this week’s feature a special find.
It already comes complete with front bash guard with fog lights, full length extended roof rack, rear mesh rack for protected storage, roof light bar, tubular doors, skid plate, and optional running boards (just in case you need help climbing up into a mini pickup truck).
The truck itself is setup as a four seater so you can take the whole family on safari, though there appears to be a two-seater variant as well for the non-breeders to enjoy their vacation in peace.
It’d be nice if this thing came as a 4×4, but the electric motor mounted on the rear axle precludes it. Instead, you’ve got yourself a rear wheel drive truck. The good news though is there’s no driveshaft tunnel, meaning you’ve got a flat floor throughout the entire cab.
The motor isn’t particularly impressive at just 4,000W, though like most Chinese EVs, that’s a continuous power rating. Peak power is likely closer to 6,500W or around 8.7 hp.
That’s enough for the 45 km/h (28 mph) top speed. You may not outrun any lions or charging rhinos, but at least you’ll get a darn good last look at them through those open tubular doors!
For batteries, this truck rocks 72V 100Ah lead acid batteries. The first thing I’d do if this were my truck would be to rip out that 7.2 kWh of century-old battery technology and toss in six new 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 bricks to get some modern day battery technology.
The vendor claims a range of 120 km (75 miles) with the original batteries, and I’d wager that you’d do slightly better with the lithium iron phosphate upgrade, since those batteries are much more tolerant of deep discharges. They’ll also last a good 7-10x as long, so it’s worth the upgrade.
I’ve got an electric boat on the way from Alibaba and I’ve already got those exact LiFePO4 bricks waiting in my garage to load up the hull with modern, safe energy storage.
The rest of the features on the truck are surprisingly good, especially considering the reasonable $4,500 purchase price. We’re looking at rack-and-pinion steering, independent front suspension, aluminum wheels, electric windows, three-point seat belts, and even a front storage frunk.
Of course this thing would never cost you just $4,500 in the end, considering you’ve probably got a couple thousand bucks in freight charges, another grand or so in import duties, several hundred dollars in customs broker fees and port charges, etc.
Then you’re looking at the small problem of it not being even close to street legal in the US. There are a growing number of DOT-approved 25 mph (40 km/h) mini EVs in the US that qualify as road legal LSVs, (low speed vehicles), but this ain’t one of them. There are even street-legal mini pickups in the US that look like what this is based on, though they cost around 4-6x this much.
If your main use is a safari trip though, street legal status might not be at the top of your priority list.
I’m sorry to say that I don’t think I’ll be adding this one to my list of fun Alibaba purchases.
I took a risk on buying an electric mini-truck from China last summer and it actually went quite well.
It was a gamble that I’m not sure I’ll be ready to roll the dice on again though, at least not any time soon.
It’s been an awesome work truck for around my parents’ ranch (it’s another definitely not street-legal situation), though I’ve had to make a few upgrades like adding off-road tires (which weren’t on yet in the image below).
While I wait for my electric pleasure boat to arrive on the slow boat from China, I’ll ponder the missed opportunity of buying a bright orange mini safari truck. Maybe I’ll regret it, but there’s always next summer.
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Just after Tesla launched its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package, in China, the country announced that it cracking down on automated driving features with new limitations.
In February, Tesla launched a first version of its “Full Self-Driving” FSD package in China for owners with the latest “Hardware 4.0”, or “HW4”, vehicles.
Most of the features under Tesla’s FSD package have been limited to North America due to Tesla training its system for this market first and due to regulatory limitations in other markets.
Shortly after Tesla launched FSD in China, the American automaker had to pause its rollout due to updated requirements from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Now, MIIT has confirmed that it held a meeting with automotive industry stakeholders yesterday, and it has further clarified the rollout of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features.
CNEV reported on the meeting:
Car companies were asked to refrain from using words like “self-driving,” “autonomous driving,” “smart driving,” “advanced smart driving,” and instead use the term “combined assisted driving” to avoid misleading consumers, according to the minutes of the meeting.
Tesla had already changed the name from ‘Full Self-Driving’ to “Intelligent Assisted Driving” following the launch in China.
Based on a statement from MIIT, the meeting focused on enforcing the previously announced updated requirements that launched right after Tesla introduced FSD in China (translated from Chinese):
The meeting emphasized that automobile manufacturers must deeply understand the requirements of the “Notice”, fully carry out combined driving assistance testing and verification, clarify the system functional boundaries and safety response measures, and must not make exaggerations or false propaganda. They must strictly fulfill their obligation to inform, and truly assume the main responsibility for production consistency and quality safety, and truly improve the safety level of intelligent connected vehicle products.
Regulators want automakers to reduce the frequency of new software updates and instead focus on extended testing before releasing new updates.
The last few months have been quite chaotic for ADAS systems in China. Along with Tesla’s FSD release, several Chinese companies released their systems, including BYD, Xiaomi, and Huawei.
Xiaomi reported a fatal accident in which its ADAS system was active just seconds before the crash, and Tesla owners using FSD racked up thousands of dollars in fines due to FSD making mistakes.
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The Global Payments Company logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
Igor Golovniov | LightRocket | Getty Images
Global Payments shares tumbled 17% on Thursday after the company said it’s buying Worldpay for more than $24 billion while simultaneously selling its Issuer Solutions business to Fidelity National Information Services.
The company said that in acquiring Worldpay, which FIS had purchased in 2019 before later selling a majority stake, it’s expanding its reach and will be able to serve over 6 million customers across more than 175 countries, enabling $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume.
In selling its Issuer Solutions unit to FIS for $13.5 billion, Global Payments is divesting a unit for back-end financial processing that’s long been viewed as a stable provider of growth. In the end, Global Payments is going bigger in providing payments services to merchants, while FIS is focusing on issuer processing.
FIS bought Worldpay for about $35 billion in 2019 and sold most of its stake last year to GTCR.
Global Payments said on Thursday that it obtained committed bridge financing and plans to issue $7.7 billion of debt “to replace the bridge commitment and refinance Worldpay’s outstanding debt.”
Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready called it a “defining day,” and said the transaction gives the company “significantly expanded capabilities, extensive scale, greater market access and an enhanced financial profile.”
But Wall Street was less enthusiastic. While the acquisition gives Global Payments a larger footprint in payment processing, analysts at Mizuho described it as a strategic step backward.
Mizuho reiterated its neutral rating on the stock, warning that “the business could be seeing more meaningful margin pressure than investors acknowledge.” The analysts wrote that FIS won the trade, getting the “crown jewel” with Global Payments getting “more of the same.”
FIS shares rose more than 8% on Thursday.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The Tesla Cybertruck is in crisis. The automaker is still sitting on a ton of old inventory, which it is now heavily discounting, and it is throttling down production to try to avoid building up the inventory again.
When launching the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the vehicle program would reach 250,000 units a year in 2025:
“I think we’ll end up with roughly a quarter million Cybertrucks a year, but I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025.”
We are now in 2025, and Tesla is expected to currently be selling the Cybertruck at a rate of about 25,000 units a year – a tenth of what Musk predicted.
Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla began the second quarter with 2,400 Cybertrucks in inventory, valued at over $200 million.
This is a real problem for Tesla as many of those Cybertrucks are older 2024 model year units not eligible for the federal tax credit, and even some ‘Foundation Series’, which Tesla stopped building in October 2024 – meaning that Tesla is sitting on some 6-month-old trucks in some cases.
Tesla is now offering deeper discounts on the new inventory of Cybertrucks. The discounts can go as high as $10,000, but the average one is closer to $8,000, which is more than the tax credit:
Despite Tesla’s efforts, the automaker has only reduced its Cybertruck inventory by about 100 units since the beginning of the month.
Tesla is now further throttling down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, according to a new report from Business Insider.
According to two Tesla workers speaking with BI, the automaker has reduced its Cybertruck production teams and now operates at a fraction of its original capacity. It also moved some Cybertruck production workers to Model Y production at the plant.
One of the workers said:
“It feels a lot like they’re filtering people out. The parking lot keeps getting emptier.”
As we previously reported, Tesla has been operating all its factories at approximately 60% capacity to avoid building up excessive inventory amid lower demand.
When it comes to the Cybertruck program, it sounds like Tesla is lowering production even further.
Last week, Tesla launched a new version of the Cybertruck in an attempt to boost demand, but it has been poorly received due to the automaker’s removal of many essential features.
Electrek’s Take
There are a lot of other automakers that would have already given up on the Cybertruck ith these results, but not Tesla. Musk is not one to admit defeat easily.
However, Tesla is running out of options.
The new Cybertruck RWD was a desperate attempt, and I doubt it will work. Now, it sounds like Tesla is further throttling down production – virtually confirming that the new trim didn’t help.
The next step would be a complete production pause.
Again, I don’t think Musk wants to admit defeat, but at some point, it’s inevitable.
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