The $4,800 Chinese electric sportscar that isn’t very… sporty
</figure>
I’m admittedly more of a two-wheeled kind of guy, owning and riding just about every type of electric bike, scooter, and e-motorcycle out there. But I’ve always thought that the thing that could get me to buy an electric car would be a short little electric roadster – something like an e-Miata. After browsing through Alibaba recently, I thought I had finally found my muse. At least, until I dug a little deeper.
The thing about this slick-looking electric sportscar is that it’s only slick-looking from a distance. Once you get up close, the quirks become much more noticeable.
But then again, that just makes it a perfect entry for this week’s Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week series!
For instance, take the front air scoops. They appear to be solid, as in they’re simply painted on. There’s no air flowing through, but rather the jet stream just smashes up against a front panel.
That’s not surprising, considering this is an electric vehicle that lacks an air-breathing combustion engine, but it’s still a bit of a weird way to design a front fascia.
But things get weirder from there. Take a stroll around the back and you’ll see what appears to be either a collection of tailpipes or a Gatling gun sticking out of the rear tail lights. The tailpipes would be strange since this is an electric car, and the Gatling gun would be weird since, well, it just would.
In fact, this is one of the stranger tails I’ve ever seen on a sportscar, though I’m starting to question whether or not this really fulfills the designation of a sportscar.
The biggest issue with the electric sportscar title here is that the performance is a bit… muted?
The 4 kW motor puts out just over 5 horsepower. That’s not much, but to be fair, it’s more than most of these Alibaba microcars. The last one I drove had a 1.5 kW motor, or just two horsepower. And it actually had some boogey to it!
The spec sheet lists the top speed as adjustable from between 28-35 km/h (17-22 mph). That’s both slow and a tiny range of max speed. It sounds like getting a radio with a volume knob that only goes from 1 to 3.
The range is at least decent, quoted at 120 km (75 miles), but my newfound optimism is quickly crushed when I see the spec sheet list the seating as 4-17 occupants. Either we’re doing some serious family-style lap sitting or this is really the spec sheet for the Finding Nemo-style electric bus that the company is selling further down the page. I’m not kidding.
But hey, with a price of just US $4,800, that’d be a steal for either a weird electric sportscar or a fish-shaped electric bus. Perhaps it’s worth the risk just to see which one shows up. But then again, I’m still working my way through my last container of Chinese electric vehicles I ordered, so I think I’m going to have to pass this one up, at least for now.
Maybe next year!
