Complete list of the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicles of the Week

When it comes to four-wheeled electric vehicles, Alibaba is known to have some doozies in the low price department. But this model might take the cake for cheapest electric vehicle yet. I’m not sure what I’d use it for, but at least the $600 price tag wouldn’t be nearly as hard to justify to my wife as my $2,000 truck was.

And as some nice bonus points, it works perfectly for this week’s edition of the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week!

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 a dumping bed. It’s the opposite of a mullet: party in the front, business in the back!

One of the many hallmarks of bizarre vehicles I often find for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column is a strange combination of parts. And rarely is that trait so perfectly exemplified than in this cute little two-seater electric car… with tank tracks.

OK, I get it – it’s not a helicopter. It’s a multirotor. A quadcopter, perhaps? A drone? VTOL? Whatever it is, it’s a piloted flying machine, and you can actually buy one from China. It’s scary. It’s wild. And it’s this week’s entry in the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

If you’ve followed my writings for any period of time, you’ll know there are two things I love: electric motorcycles and finding weird EVs on Alibaba. And when those two things overlap, well, then you’ve found my happy place.

Sometimes the result is weirder than others, and that’s the case with this four-wheeled electric motorcycle that has earned the dubious title of Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

In this week’s dive into the deep end of the Alibaba pool, we’ve floated back to the surface with an interesting looking electric UTV designed for flying fast over rugged terrain. It may not compete with the best offerings currently found in the industry, but neither do most of the vehicles we dredge up for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column.

Regular readers of my Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column will know that I usually dig around Chinese shopping sites to find the wackiest and coolest little EVs in the world. That’s resulted in finding everything from electric submarines to mini electric Jeeps. But this time, I’d say that today’s vehicles are less weird and more awesome, especially if you’ve been looking for your own electric-powered construction equipment for your property or work site. These little electric mini loaders could be the perfect size for hobby farms and small ranches. And they’re pretty darn affordable too!

It’s not everyday that the odd little EVs I find for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week are so cool that I’m tempted to buy them myself. But this week it’s going to be hard to pass up on this three-seater electric pedicab that you can own for a song!

It would give a whole new meaning to the term “small business” if you became the owner and operator of a towing company using this electric tow truck. That’s because, despite getting with the times and swapping in an electric drivetrain, this tow truck is a bit on the diminutive side, though there’s a good reason for that — mostly because it’s built for children.

But it’s just too awesome for me to pass up wanting to take my own ride in it! So fortunately for all of us, this little electric tow truck has won a highly coveted prize that it didn’t even know it was in the running for: a spot as this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

One of the coolest things about all the weird electric vehicles we find on Alibaba is that many of them seemingly come from objects you’d never expect to see on the road. Take a tiger-shaped bus or a house on wheels. Other times, you get things that are technically vehicles but that still should never be near an actual road. And that makes me want to do exactly that – by getting one of these electric bumper cars for cruising my neighborhood’s streets.

Welcome to the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week, bumper car edition!

When we find electric vehicles for this weekly column on China’s bottomless pit of a shopping megasite Alibaba, we generally look for something that looks weird, fun, or at least remotely useful. This week, I’d say we nailed the first two. I’m not quite sure what to call this thing, so I guess I’ll have to go with the name given to it by its creators: the Happy Car.

Unless you have a stomach of steel, though, you might not be the happiest rider after a few revolutions in one of these.

You might be wondering why food trucks play such a big role in my Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column. After all, they tend to pop up fairly frequently in these weekly entries. A big part of their allure seems to be the fact that Alibaba’s engineers love taking the simple concept of a food truck and making it as complicated as possible by adding as many weird things as they can. Or sometimes by subtracting, like in this case where they subtracted the truck. In its place is a bicycle-powered food truck cart.

We like to think that we have it all figured out in the West, but while we’re still trying to get solar electric cars off the drawing board, China’s EV engineers already have them driving around. Look no further than this awesome little three-wheeled electric truck that just happens to have enough solar panels to give it nearly infinite range — at least while the sun is out.

Laggards beware: No transportation industry is safe from electrification. It’s going to drag you, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the future. That’s true whether we’re talking about planes, trains, or automobiles, or even cement mixers. And not only are electric cement mixers now a thing, but you can order one straight from China. Learn all about it in this week’s edition of the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

When most families go on safari, they rent a truck or pay a company for a guided tour. But with this cheap Chinese electric truck I find in the bowels of the internet, you could spend the same amount of money and get to keep your safari truck at the end! And lucky for us, this funky little e-truck is perfect for this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column!

The list of weird yet awesome electric boats on Alibaba seems to grow every week. Fortunately for us, we’ve managed to stumble upon another oddball offering in the form of an inflatable electric houseboat. And if you ask me, it’s perfect for the latest edition of the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week series.

Oops, I did it again. I bought another quirky, cheap, yet kind of awesome-looking electric vehicle on the Chinese mega-shopping site Alibaba. This time it was a five-seater electric boat.

Here’s how it happened.

For anyone who thinks the worst part of stand-up paddleboards is the paddling, you’re going to love this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week entry. Apparently, all it takes to ditch the paddle is a $300 SUP conversion kit that turns a paddleboard into an electric surfboard.

Each week I dig around in the bottom of the barrel of China’s weirdest shopping site, dragging to the surface a funky electric vehicle to laugh either with and/or at. They’re usually fairly underpowered things, coasting by on their good looks and charm. But this week, we’ve got the opposite: a vehicle so ugly that not even its mother could love it but that can haul so much that it doesn’t even care.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is your big boy. And it’s perfect for this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

There’s something fun about trademark infringement reproducing retro-looking vehicles in an electric form factor. You get all of the exciting, old school design vibes that today’s automotive culture is sorely lacking, yet in a modern vehicle that doesn’t require two hours of wrenching for every hour of driving.

And this awesome-looking reproduction of a 60’s VW bus is a perfect example. Well, except for the fact that Alibaba’s finest EV engineers seem to have given the bus a feature that I don’t think came standard back in the day.

One of the best things about scouring Alibaba for awesomely weird electric vehicles is that many of them seemingly start from something rather normal. There’s nothing strange about an electric tour bus – until it comes shaped like a tiger. Stuffed animals are rather normal – until engineers added wheels, motors, and batteries to make them rideable. And a mobility scooter for old folks is a pretty common sidewalk vehicle – until you add enough seats to make it into a party bus for old folks.