ENVIRONMENT

Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week: 50 MPH Chinese electric ‘motorbike’ for $600

The wonderful thing about Alibaba is that you can find just about any type of vehicle under the sun, especially electric vehicles. Want to explore the seas? Have an electric boat. Want an entire backyard train set to drive your friends around your sprawling property? Here’s your own train. Storming a Normandy beach? How about an electric Willys Jeep?

But when it comes time to mount up on your own electric steed and hit the highway for some mid-life crisis motorcycle fun, you’re going to want to turn your attention to this awesome electric motorcycle that earned a coveted spot as this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week.

I mean, you’re going to want to turn your attention to it in a curious, can’t look away kind of way. Because I’m not sure how many people would actually want to be seen on this thing.

Though for around $600, perhaps I could be convinced of its cool factor.

There’s a significant dearth of cruiser-style electric motorcycles on the market, with leaders like Zero, Energica and LiveWire focusing mostly on naked roadsters or sport bikes.

However, the price alone might not be enough to convince the most hardcore leather-clad bikers to mount up on this contraption that looks like it escaped from a coin-operated kids ride.

Just don’t let its looks fool you, this electric motorbike came prepared with some pretty darn impressive performance – at least compared to what we usually see.

The motor options go all the way up to 3,000W, which is as much power as I have in my own electric mini pickup truck.

A 60V and 40Ah battery will set you up with 2,400 Wh of capacity, which they claim to be enough for 150 km (96 miles) of range. There’s no way that’s accurate, but at least it sounds good!

That powerful rear hub motor can get this bike up to a maximum speed of 80 km/h (50 mph) when outfitted to the max, meaning you could do some serious commuting or cruising on this thing. You might not be highway ready (or highway legal), but you’ll own the backroads with your bright yellow two-wheeler.

Or bright any color, for that matter. There’s a wide range of color options, meaning you can customize this thing to match your pants or your keychain or your mood that day.

When it comes to parts, I’m actually fairly impressed here.

Not only is it dual suspension, of course, but you even get pillion pegs in back to carry a frightened passenger with you.

A giant headlight and motorcycle horn adorn the front fork, while a cute little license plate mount hangs off back. I don’t know what you’d put there, since no self-respecting DMV official would take more than a cursory glance at this thing before telling you that it isn’t even close to street legal and asking how you even got it into the country. But perhaps a fun novelty plate is in your future?!

You can even rest assured that your bike will be expertly packaged and loaded by the company’s crew of strapping young lads that are either shirtless or at most, half-shirted. Seriously, they put it right in the marketing material. They’ve got every Chippendale’s dancer in Shenzhen packaging these things. Check it out below!

As usual though, this is where I put in my disclaimer that this is all for good fun, and I don’t recommend anyone actually trying to go and buy one of these things for $600. You’re almost certainly going to find that it costs more than you anticipate and is riddled with problems you weren’t expecting.

That of course hasn’t stopped some of my more stubborn readers from buying the weird Alibaba things I feature here though (or finding their own), so we can all live vicariously through them instead of spending our own hard-earned dough!


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