A big part of the fun of finding vehicles for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column comes from all of the interesting fascia designs. These uniquely Chinese vehicles often have interesting faces, giving each vehicle a unique personality. And this week, we’ve stumbled upon an electric box truck with an underbite that could give Don Rickles a run for his money.
The Tweety Bird-yellow electric truck looks otherwise fairly normal, at least along the rear 90% of the vehicle.
But for some reason, the designers decided to give it a continental kit-style shelf up front with an extra helping or two of bumper. It’s as if they were trying to respond to critics who say that Alibaba vehicles make you the crumple zone, so instead, they offered the vehicle with an entire crumple chin.
That front bumper is so big that the factory seems to have run out of material for the doors, opting to instead divert full resources to that dining room table mounted to the front of the truck.
I also love that they didn’t make this electric truck too fast or powerful because the last thing you want is to blow past onlookers before they can truly absorb the brave aesthetic choices made by the vehicle.
The modest 5 kW electric motor running on a 48V electric system offers a top speed of 30 km/h (18 mph), which should be fast enough for a parade float but not so fast that you can’t linger for those extra gawks around town.
The vendor boasts that the electric truck is available in any color you’d like, but frankly, that bright yellow shows it off so well that you’d be crazy to go with anything else.
And speaking of absurd, the price is a rather unbelievable $5,000. Of course, that price is unbelievable in part because you literally shouldn’t believe it. As I’ve seen in the past when I’ve bought vehicles from China, the advertised price is only the beginning. My “$2,000” electric pickup truck ended up costing me around $8,000 by the time it rolled into my driveway. Most of that came from logistical expenses involved in moving it halfway around the world, but other fees came from adding the batteries (usually not included in the price) as well as other accessories like air conditioning, etc.
I think I’ll be leaving this bright yellow monstrosity right where it is on the Alibaba page and just enjoying it from my computer screen, which is what I recommend for you too. As much fun as it looks, don’t risk your hard-earned money on a weird mobile like this!
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