Uh oh, I’ve done it again. I’ve fallen in love with another one of the victims subjects of my Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week series. It’s an odd mashup of a quad and a pickup truck, complete with dumping bed. It’s the opposite of a mullet: party in front, business in back!
I better be careful here because the last time I fell in love with a Chinese electric utility vehicle, I ended up with a big metal crate showing up at my family’s ranch.
So I’m going to try to avoid going too head-over-heels here. But as I think you’ll see, that’s going to require a Herculean effort thanks to the awesome nature of this weird little utility vehicle.
Let’s start by trying to figure out what the heck we’re looking at here.
The front half is mostly a quad ATV. We’ve got what looks like double wishbone suspension up there, typical controls and a single-rider saddle to straddle.
The back half is where things get interesting. There looks to be a mini-truck axle with an electric motor mounted right onto the differential, with the entire axle riding on leaf spring suspension. Above that axle is a short truck bed that features a tail gate and two side gates, meaning the entire bed can open into a flatbed configuration. It looks a lot like my the electric rickshaw I bought earlier this year, though in a slightly more compact setup.
Though there’s one other awesome thing about the bed: it has a hydraulic dumper. That’s right, this tiny truck is actually a tiny dump truck!
The whole thing weighs 250 kg (550 lb) and is said to have a maximum load of 400 kg (880 lb). It is powered by a 1,500W motor that runs a 72V electrical system.
The 32 AH lead acid battery supplies 2.3 kWh of capacity, and the entire setup claims to be capable of a top speed of 60 km/h (37 mph).
At just 2.3 meters (7’6″) long, the little guy is basically a pint-sized farm truck. The saddle height is just 52 cm (20 inches), making it easy to hop on and off. It can even be outfitted with extra racks, off-road lighting, a winch and other accessories.
I’ve saved the most beautiful part of this whole thing for last: the price. You might expect to pay a pretty penny for this weird little half truck, half quad bike. But the price is listed at just $1,299!
Of course that’s just the initial price, might not include batteries or the hydraulic dumping upgrade, and definitely doesn’t include the several thousand more you’d have to pay in freight, customs, warehouse fees, arrival charges and local transportation (unless you live next to a port and can pick it up yourself when the boat arrives).
Oh yea, and there’s the small wrinkle that this thing almost certainly isn’t legal in the US. Unlike many of the other weird things I’ve imported from China, such as my mini electric truck and my electric boat, ATVs actually have federal standards in the US (yes, even for off-road). Their designs are regulated (that’s why you can’t buy a three-wheeled ATV anymore) and they require a bunch of paperwork to be filed in order for the ATV to be imported or sold. That’s actually why Radio Flyer and Tesla had to recall their Cyberquad for Kids ride-on EV, after it was deemed to be an ATV and not a “kid’s toy”, and thus was subject to federal standards that it did not meet.
So alas, I will have to simply enjoy drooling over the images of this Frankenstein’s monster of an off-road utility vehicle. Well, that and the awesome video below!