I can even connect my phone to the Bluetooth and play music or movies on the infotainment system. There’s a backup camera, steel cargo rack and bed rack, high power charger, windshield wiper with washer fluid, and the air conditioning is even quite powerful (as tested in hot, humid Florida). It features full metal body panels, electric windows and doors with key fob for locking, and a full light package with blinkers, head lights, spot lights, tail lights, reverse lights, etc. The truck itself is surprisingly well-made in some regards. The dump bed is awesome and I’ve already put it to good use collecting yard waste around the land and hauling it back to the dump pile. The top speed is just 25 mph (40 km/h) but I rarely hit that speed on uneven ground around the fields anyways – more on that shortly. It’s not particularly powerful, though the 3 kW motor and 5.4 kW peak controller give it plenty of low-speed oomph for hauling around on my parents’ property. What showed up?īelieve it or not, the truck is actually even better than I had hoped. I guess preparing myself for a banged up truck helped keep my expectations low, and so I was shocked when the truck arrived nearly dent-free. I was actually surprised by the fact that the truck was in such good condition after the long journey around the world. Ultimately the un-crating went decently well with only a few hiccups that I caught on video along with my first test rides (of course my dad and wife who were both on hand to watch the show unfold were quick to volunteer to test it out). There I unboxed the truck, a process for which I was glad to have charged up my angle grinder in advance. The cage it was shipped in was beaten to hell and back, but the truck was miraculously fine. Once it finally popped out the other end of customs, I paid an additional $500 to some dude I found on Craigslist and he hauled the crated-up truck on a bigger flatbed truck to my parents’ property in Florida that would become the truck’s new home. Long story short, the truck finally arrived in Miami, but then got held up in customs for a few more weeks. No one could explain it.įinally, the Chinese trading company heard back from the shipper on their end that my container had been offloaded in South Korea and put on a second container ship – something about the water in port not being deep enough. No one knew where it went and I spent several days calling the forwarding company, the logistics company, my customs broker, and the Chinese trading company. The only problem was that my truck was no longer on it. It sat around for another couple weeks until it made it into a container and onto a boat, then six weeks later, the boat arrived in Miami. At first all went well, and a couple weeks after paying, my truck was headed to the port. The shipping process seemed to take forever. My truck all boxed up at the factory and ready for a voyage to the New World! Shipping an electric truck from China Those upgrades cost me around $1,500 on top of the base price, plus I had to pay an outrageous $2,200 sea shipping rate, but at least my truck was on its way to me now. I was able to spec the truck with a hydraulic dumping bed, air conditioning, and a giant (for this small truck) 6 kWh lithium-ion battery. So I started talking with the trading company (a little outfit known as ChangLi that also supplies a few importers in the US). ![]() It was a bit small, but had a lot of charm. And you had to pay extra for batteries, shipping, etc.īut glossing over all those hiccups, the truck looked as silly as it did awesome. ![]() I found a $2,000 electric truck that looked perfect, except that it was about 2:3 scale. I originally found the truck while perusing Alibaba in search of a weekly nugget of gold for my Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column. Well, now I can finally answer, “Yes!” and share with you exactly what I received.īut first, a tiny bit of background. I know this because I’ve gotten emails almost daily ever since, asking if my Chinese electric pickup truck has arrived (with some humorously calling it my F-50). Some readers may recall that a few months ago I bought a cheap electric mini-truck on Alibaba.
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