It’s time for a fancy pants edition of the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week. In today’s column, we’ve got a beautiful specimen of an antique-style roadster complete with the tried-and-true guts of electric microcar from China.
What could go wrong?!
This little EV represents the crème de la crème of China’s sophisticated electric golf carts.
It’s got seats. It’s got a steering wheel. It’s got a paint job to match your favorite diarrhea medication. What’s not to like?
With a vehicle described as having both a “fashion design” and an “elegant appearance”, there’s not much left to argue with here.
A range of 80-120 km (50-70 miles) is pretty darn good for a glorified golf buggy. And that’s especially true when you consider that many used Nissan Leafs would struggle to hit those figures.
I’d describe the unique selling points of this classic looking vehicle to you, but I think it comes across more genuine in the vendor’s own words:
“Vintage car is also called classic car, antique car or sightseeing car. It is a kind of popular car games in the scenic spot, hotel, golf course, amusement park, shopping mall, entertainment center,etc. They can be divided into FRP vintage car and iron vinrage car according to the material. Generally speaking, vintage car can seat 8 or 11 passengers and they have advantages of long time stable performance, low cost maintenance fees. easy to operate. Our vintage car can be customized with different seats and colors.”
Just imagine what will happen when Alibaba vendors discover ChatGPT. They’ll be unstoppable.
I love the feature list too. Check this gem out:
“Features:
1. Fashion design, elegant appearance;
2. Infinitely variable speed system;
3. Using luxurious car professional paint;
4. 2 Headlights for safe driving at dark ;
5. Comfortable soft seats;
6. Custommized as your requirements.”
Tell me more about that infinitely variable speed system, please! I might need to take this Alibaba buggy down to the track and come home with a few pink slips.
The 4,000W motor paired with a 7.2 kWh battery is actually a fairly respectable drivetrain.
That’s a bit more power and battery than I’ve got in my Chinese electric mini-truck, so a drag race or tug of war between the two would be an interesting matchup.
The only downside (or perhaps one of the downsides) is that this “sightseeing car” is priced at over twice what my mini truck cost, with a sticker price of $5,500. Though if you buy three of them, the vendor claims to knock a solid $200 off the price.
Deal of the century there, folks.
At least, until you double or triple that figure to cover all the other costs associated with importing a vehicle from the other side of the world.
Considering that this is certainly not a street legal vehicle in the US or most places in the world, I’m not sure how much real use you’d get out of this Alibaba special.
It’s probably not going to make a very good utility vehicle, but boy would you have the raddest golf cart on the links!
And with a car that looks this good I have to imagine the cops would give you a pass — or at least let you off with a warning — if you happened to meander a bit farther from the golf course than you should.
Keep in mind though that I’m no way advising anyone to actually buy something weird like this. Shopping on Alibaba can be a tricky sea to navigate. Some of my readers who have tried to replicate my own bad idea acquisitions have found that what gets delivered (if it ever gets successfully delivered) might not hold up to the sales pictures.
So this is probably another good example of a vehicle that’s fun to admire from the distance of a computer screen. And that’s about $5,500 cheaper, too!