I kinda wish there could be a solar panel mount so nobody would accidentally run over it with a truck.
I'm guessing when you hear UTV you're thinking of the 60MPH off-road blitzing side by sides that are so popular at the dunes these days, but that's only part of the market for these.
All of the ones you listed are fine UTVs, but they also cost literally twice as much =)
I think there's a large education gap surround EVs that needs to be filled. Hopefully more articles and experiments like this continue to appear. If you have an EV, consider spreading the word - good and bad. It's important to talk about all aspects to both bring more users into the EV fold, and address existing issues.
There's also arguably limited use cases like the article brings up (off road, not street legal, lots of land) - or at least "limited" in comparison with the average / mean vehicle that gets purchased by consumers.
Great that it has a use case and it's working for him, but I hesitate to universalize his experience as a result.
These comments are coming from the extrapolation of experience of imported personal electronics, as well as historical crash test results of CDM vehicles.
(1) https://www.carscoops.com/2009/03/brilliance-bs4-not-so-bril...
Some feedback on reliability, the rust issues, etc. would be nice but I'd seriously think about getting one. As for it not being street legal, well I live out in the country. Golf carts, UTV's, ATV's, minibikes, on the roads around here are not at all unusual. Not legal, but I only know of one case of someone getting ticketed.
https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...
Some of this makes sense. Much of it doesn't, or could be vastly simplified for low-speed use cases.
Lol it's normal size for the rest of the world.
This whole article is so pervasively American that it was just about unreadable to me. It's a fairly rare and quite novel experience: it's in my native language, but so completely based on US assumptions and presumption of shared knowledge that I do not have, that it just... doesn't parse.
* His parents apparently live on some plot of land the size of a largish city. Presumably alone?
* The vehicle is a perfectly normal full-size truck of some kind, but he keeps talking about it as if it were a toy. He constantly compares it to a "golf cart" as if those were everyday things. I played golf for a decade and have never seen one except on TV. I presume it's a thing for morbidly-obese Americans?
* It is a real car but it doesn't comply with fnargle-wurgle edict 27B § 42 from the Glarg of Bargwargle, but obviously everyone knows the Bargwargle so no need to explain that.
* I bought it from China for only $LOTS but really it was a cost of $LOTS because $LOTS doesn't count and $LOTS is always there anyway so it's OK to pay $LOTS for a toy. Hello fellow humans! I am a perfectly normal human!
* It is a toy but I can use it on my parent's private city where 100,000 of you peasants from the barbarian lands could live, but we are not barbarians and anyway we shoot barbarians here.
Such a very strange article. Such a very strange country.
Maybe look past your vitriol towards the US?
It's the size of one of those little Kubota ATVs that can carry roughly a 25kg bag of feed and a bale of hay. It's limited to 25mph. If you wanted it to go faster than 25mph, you could load it into the bed of a standard-size Ford Transit.
It's a tiny wee electric buggy that you could *just about* make road-legal under the UK's famously lax laws.
It is not in any sense a "full-size truck".
It has a top speed of 25 mph.
as if those were everyday things
This is something common that children learn about.
The rest of your comment seems like incoherent venting.
https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/electric-mini-truck-how-its-h...
The quick summary is that it's still doing pretty well.
Well, and most people don't want a specialized vehicle they can only use on certain roads for certain purposes but which take a spot on their property, need to be maintained at some level, etc. Maybe have some costs for registration, licensing, etc.
If you have an actual farm you may have a tractor, etc. but most people don't want a vehicle they can only use for limited purposes. And, as soon as you're on public roads, things like insurance come into play as well.
You just described a bicycle, which are pretty popular last I checked
At this price point they had to cut some features. I wonder if one of those features is "Safety" and another one is "The front won't fall off".
They must’ve cut corners, but if you’re not taking this on public roads they’re not corners you care much about anyway. At $2000 you’re not going to do much better.
Helpful tip for anyone else with a really long driveway like mine: I hooked a couple of straps to the back of my golf cart with extra large carabiners on the loose end that I can easily clip on to my trash cans. Works great and cost me under $40. Initially I kept trying to think of ways to lift/mount the trash cans to my cart but the cans can get pretty heavy once full. Since they already have wheels, I just tilt them slightly, clip on the carabiners, and off I go.
[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disruptivetechnology...
Does that mean you can't have a street legal car in the US without a backup camera? Or if it does have a backup camera it has to come from a DOT-registered factory? If the latter then why not just disable it? Or that's not even enough?
1) Yes, this is true, for several years the FMVSS has required backup cameras for full speed cars. However, this isn't true for low speed vehicles.
2) This just isn't true at all. FMVSS do not require factories to be certified in any specific way. https://www.rearviewsafety.com/pub/static/version1558698936/... These are the requirements. Manufacturers self-attest that they comply. The NHTSA reserves the right to respond to complaints or independently inspect their vehicles. They don't inspect or register "factories."
I don't know much about this site or the article author, but I have a hard time believing that this is anything but a dramatic exaggeration.
I own a farm. I (and no one I know) would never seriously rely on an electric vehicle for utility. In general the batteries just aren't there and the rate at which they lose capacity is just too high to justify the cost. For $7,000 you could have a used UTV/SXS or a quad with a trailer in most markets. Both would handily outdo this Alibaba amalgamation.
I won't even get into all the horror stories about uncaught grounds and battery safety for things on that site or the fact that preferring electric to ICEs is more of a virtue signal than net benefit for the planet. Cool experiment though.
That's a great way of saying 'I've never heard of LiFePO4 batteries.'
Looks like electric ATVs/UTVs are around 15k, which would be a rough comp.
Electric bikes / scooters / etc will hopefully become much more commonplace. Way cheaper than cars, and potentially more exercise. Hopefully more special purpose trails for bikes / pedestrians are created to accommodate demand. Certain places like the Netherlands do a great job at accommodating non-vehicle commuting.
It is not your home project with Bluetooth chip. It is moving machine that can hurt and kill.
Good fun I guess and help the totalitarian country one more us$ dollars. God bless America.
Getting replacement parts seems like a nightmare, if not impossible. What happens when the shocks wear out? When you bend a wheel rim on a rock? etc.
Maybe I'm just not informed, and it's easy to get parts. Or maybe these things are so mechanically simple that it's no big deal.
But, the author of the article also massively overstates the requirements for a legal vehicle under the Low Speed Vehicle rules. The full FMVSS rules are gargantuan, complex, and hard to meet, but the LSV rules really aren't.
They basically need to not go 25mph, meet dimension and weight requirements, and have lights, reflectors, seat belts, and an approved windshield. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.500
The manufacturer then self-attests that the vehicle meets FMVSS, and submits paperwork documenting their VIN format. Unless there are complaints or an investigation, that's pretty much it.
https://www.semasan.com/resources/everything-you-need-regist...
Roughly the same thing is true for airplanes - experimental (“home built”) have to be airworthy but not certificated.
They say it’s due to long tradition of DIY vehicles in America.
I have an old 2001 beater truck I use for the purpose now, but I can't replace it with this EV because it's not street legal. I live in a rural area, but luckily I can drive 2 miles to a dump (transfer station) and 5 miles to a place with bulk mulch, soil, gravel, etc...
But I can't possibly get to either without going on state roads... And I can't drop my gas truck and replace it with an EV for $7k if it would not be legally usable.
I can't see many farms that could use this. For the same reason -- I certainly don't want to use my truck to get serval buckets of mulch, just to shovel it into the EV, then to shovel it out at the final destination.
If the gov lets me slap "farm use" tags on this, and that's all is needed... Okay, I'm interested.. but I think there's usually more requirements
That's the actual car I think I want most in the world. It's so cheap and fun, and possibly even practical for me, but I don't think there's any way I could drive it in my city sadly.
Not nearly as cheap, but street legal in the US and looks like loads of fun.
https://www.citroen.co.uk/models/future-models/ami.html
Though personally (if it will ever be produced in mass) I like this "re-make" of the old Isetta, the microlino:
Why wouldn't you be able to drive it in your city. Doesn't look smaller than a smart.
At the same time I love seeing this and where its going. I always think of Luke on his uncles farm in star wars and that farm work will increasing change more to fixing the machines doing the job, than the job itself. And I suspect ongoing electric powered will suit farmers more than anyone as they have the space and lack of neighbours to create power themselves.
Although I do wonder if all the conveniences that makes this more carlike combined with its uniqueness in the US would make it more likely to receive legal pushback. Something that clearly isn't even attempting to be a street legal vehicle like a golf cart is easier to excuse. A cop who sees this might be more suspicious of the vehicle and how you actually use it.
Another neighbor has an ATV he uses for snow plowing his long driveway. You need to keep on top of things relative to plowing with a pickup but he seems to manage.
But yeah. If you're going to have farm vehicles are probably better and more standard options.
rust issues on cars are actually caused by water pooling in inside cavities and rusting its way out over time because they don't dry out. water on the outside of a piece of metal isn't really that serious a threat for rusting its way in (you see lots of cars driven for years with unrepaired body damage and they don't rust away)
I don't imagine the rust he saw was bubbling up through the paint from inside, I doubt it's a problem
If you use this all day it probably won't work, but most small property owners would use it for an hour or two (over the course of an entire day), and so it always has plenty of range. I don't see why they sell gas lawn mowers at WalMart (do they still?) as for home owners electric now makes more sense than dealing with gas. Sure the big lawn mowing companies use their mowers more in a day than the battery will last, but the small home owner doesn't.
How this works is basically:
1) There are safety guidelines (FMVSS) governing classes of motor vehicles. For LSVs, the regulations are _extremely_ simple. There's no such thing as a "DOT reverse camera factory." https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.500
2) The manufacturer must self-attest that the vehicle complies, and affix a label confirming this self-attestation.
That's pretty much it. Now the NHTSA will do what they need to to enforce their rules. If customers complain or independent testing reveals a violation, they will require a recall or ban certain vehicles or makes, or sue the manufacturer or importer.
But there's no reason these vehicles couldn't be compliant if the manufacturer was willing to attest, and also no such weirdness as "DOT factories."
There you can see the reverse camera requirement is as follows: "(11) Low-speed vehicles shall comply with the rear visibility requirements specified in paragraphs S6.2 of FMVSS No. 111."
Follow that through to the full requirements for backup cameras in FMCSS No. 111 and you'll see that the LSV backup camera requirements are the same as the backup camera requirements for full motor vehicles. That includes that the factory that produces it is registered with the NHTSA. It's not enough for the chinese factory to claim that they meet the camera depth of field requirements, angle of vision requirements, color requirements, etc. They have to be registered with the NHTSA, after which they will be listed in the DOT database for registered manufacturers, as well as produce the product to those specific standards. So yes, there very much is a such thing as a "DOT reverse camera factory." If you consult the DOT's own online database, you'll find all of them listed.
However, the light turned out to not actually be safety glass and not shatter in harmless cubes but in nasty long splinters that hit an artery and the pedestrian bleeds out on the side of the road. The Chinese company won't give a shit because they have no certification so nothing to lose. They didn't even export it to you, some random AliExpress seller did. So you end up in jail for it.
This kind of learning from previous mistakes informed the complex legislation around vehicles. Most of these things have good reason, not just lobbying. Manufacturers love cutting costs and you need a big stick to keep them honest. Remember the Ford Pinto? The Boeing 737MAX? Or what Volkswagen did to trick emissions tests? In fact I'd be surprised if the factories welcome all the paperwork that comes with it.
In the end it's not to protect the industry, it's to protect the people (not just you but other road users as well) from an "all too eager to cut corners" industry. And random Chinese factories love cutting corners even more and there's virtually no risk to them. The only way to be sure is to have the whole chain certified.
A lot the specific requirements were proactively created because it's easier for everyone if we all just agree that a particular widget will have certain specs because then the engineers and manufactures can behave accordingly without thinking about it and managing it or there were a couple competing "not quite standard" ways of doing something and they just kinda picked the better looking one.
Not that I am saying it appears to be replete with crumple zones or ride-over protection or side curtain airbags or other safety features we would appreciate. But then I wouldn't expect to get T-Boned by an inattentive driver in a lifted F-550 when I'm tooting around my own property clearing fallen branches after a windstorm.
> Factory Five products are expressly sold for custom car-building, racing and off-road use and are not intended to be used in conventional passenger or other legal highway applications.
Did they wrap some tin foil around balsa and call it a day (figuratively), or was true thought given to the structure of the vehicle?
You mean like every other headlight? Headlights don't use toughened or safety glass.
Functionally this electric truck has limited use case - low top speed, not street legal, low range, etc. - but there are a few niche cases where it's perfect for the job.
People could buy this small truck and try to make it street legal, but as mentioned by the article that would be prohibitively expensive, defeating the point of buying it because it's cheap. At that point you may as well look into a sedan EV because it's going to be comparable in cost (at least within 2x-3x of the price).
General use vehicles, both trucks and others, have a much broader area of operability. There are also EV trucks coming to market more quickly if that's what you want to spend your money on.
I bet you could fit 2 small NEV into same space needed for 1 minivan or full size pickup/SUV.
But, for LSV the requirements are so simple that this is much easier, though.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/tp-500-02.pdf
The rules for an LSV are pretty much "has lights, a DOT windshield, and seat belts, isn't overweight, and doesn't go more than 25."
I would think that if a US importer could partner with one of these Chinese OEMs, they could make decent money selling one of these cheap LSVs.
> Millions of things are stamped "not for highway use" not because
That is before we account for rentals often being sold out. The fact that you don't have to plan ahead to use your own truck is worth something as well.
In short, the operating costs are not all that much different. The true cost comes in with overall vehicle price and insurance costs, which heavily favor the family sedans.
Vitriol?
Pity for a culture so dependent on a machine I personally dislike: the motor car.
Distaste and disdain for a culture whose example is destroying the world.
I reserve vitriol for more important things.
It's not much bigger than a quad bike. It would just about fit in the back of my Range Rover if I put the seats down.
> Go read about tuk-tuks.
Tuk-tuks aren't real vehicles either. You can't even make them road-legal in the UK, where the most you need to do is "does it have some sort of brake and some sort of mudguard on all its road wheels, some sort of brake light, and some sort of exhaust silencer?"
I submit that a Range Rover is not a normal-sized vehicle, either.
> You can't even make them road-legal in the UK
You had better tell this company quickly, then -- they are already selling them.
https://tukshop.com/buy-a-tuk-tuk
I
I am from a third world country and have seen plenty of trucks on roads and private properties.
They don’t sell them in the US anymore.
That's a pretty nice mini electric vehicle.
If they had 3 wheels you could skip a lot of that and count it as a motorcycle. Also, anything older than 25 years basically just bypasses the rules which means a lot of 90's Kei cars from Japan are starting to make their way in, but obviously those are combustion powered (still cool though).
There is the concept of Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, but I don't believe they are allowed in my state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
Who knows, maybe there's a business opportunity to import these things and certify them - I'd be a buyer.
https://www.motor1.com/news/587022/nissan-sakura-electric-ke...
https://www.mitsubishi-motors.co.jp/lineup/ek_x_ev/special/?...
As for the size of vehicles, it kind of depends what you consider normal-sized. What do you think I should get instead?
[Edit] I've just looked it up and it is considered a mid-sized super-compact.
Within 1/2" of the Fiesta for the wheelbase. Its quite dinky.
A lot of government regulation is about preventing non-obvious dangers or trying to make them obvious.
> electric kart seem less safe
I'm not saying that this car is more dangerous in a collision than a motorcycle. It might be, though. This weighs more than a motorcycle, which means more mass involved in the collision, which means energy to be dissipated. In a basic understanding of physics, this is sometimes referred to as the mass-energy equivalence. It's denoted by the formula E = mc2 which is fairly well known.
It's not just about mass though, is it? It's not even just about collision safety.
Cars have features like airbags, crush zones and impact protection cells to make collisions more survivable. Some of these features are optional, but many are mandated by governments on new cars.
One of the reasons this vehicle would not be road legal is because a passenger getting in to the vehicle, or someone buying it second hand, would reasonably expect it to have these features. This is what I mean by obvious and non-obvious dangers. A motorcycle has obvious dangers. It's clear to anyone that if a car t-bones you, that car will impact your body directly. This car, however, has the appearance of "a newish car". What that means to someone in a developed country like Australia is "a vehicle that meets basic safety standards". This vehicle contravenes that expectation in a non-obvious way.
Regulations also exist around things like handling dynamics in collision avoidance scenarios. How does this vehicle perform if you need to swerve suddenly to avoid a kid that has run out in the street? Will it turn or skid onwards? Will it roll over? Will something else happen? It might perform wonderfully, but the certifying authority doesn't have any reliable information that someone reliable has tested it.
New vehicles sold also have regulations around the reliability of individual components. The master cylinder for the braking system must be manufactured to a given standard of quality. If the plastic casting is crappy and the lid blows off when you hit the brakes, that's a bad thing and someone could be hurt. Preventing things like this happening to unsuspecting bystanders is why we live in a society that has agreed to place restrictions upon itself for the greater good.
You’d still need to satisfy the requirement that they don’t pose a threat to non-occupants though. Pedestrian and bystander safety is a thing. Might be taken care of by limiting the max speed.
This post is known by the state of California to contain cancer causing elements.
I don't think a collision between two vehicles results in total mass-to-energy conversion, unless one of them is made of antimatter.
You probably meant to write E = 1/2 mv^2.