{"id":38991,"date":"2022-12-24T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-24T14:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38991"},"modified":"2022-12-24T09:10:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-24T14:10:00","slug":"electric-bike-food-truck-cart-alibaba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=38991","title":{"rendered":"Weird Alibaba: A beautiful food truck on the back of a bike"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You might be wondering why food trucks play such a big role in my Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week<\/a> column. After all, they tend to pop up fairly frequently<\/a> in these weekly entries. A big part of their allure<\/a> seems to be the fact that Alibaba\u2019s engineers love taking the simple concept of a food truck and making it as complicated as possible<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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And yes, I know that it\u2019s technically not an electric vehicle, at least not yet. But to make it qualify as one of China\u2019s weird EVs for this column, we\u2019ll merely have to get a bit handy.<\/p>\n

Just give me a few hours and we could bolt on a simple $280 e-bike motor kit<\/a> on the bike\u2019s front wheel, add a $220 e-bike battery<\/a>, and that\u2019s it! We\u2019ve now got an electric bike trailer cart\u2026thing.<\/p>\n

And boy, would it be worth it! Considering the base price is a modest $2,880<\/a>, we could be in our own e-bike food truck for barely over three g\u2019s, folks! <\/p>\n

Well, before shipping and customs. But we\u2019ll deal with that later.<\/p>\n

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Part of what I love about this contraption is just how ingenious the design is.<\/p>\n

Not only is this thing a food truck bike, but it\u2019s actually also both just a cart and just a bike. The two seem to be joined together at the rear axle of the bike in a classic demonstration of \u201cthe whole is greater than the sum of the parts\u201d. <\/p>\n

Presumably you pull off the bike\u2019s rear wheel, lock it into some axle-shaped hitch on the cart, and off you go!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no clear mechanism for how the bike actually powers<\/em> the cart, but our front wheel e-bike motor kit removes any worry about that little problem. Perhaps the designers have the rear axle mount connected to some fancy shmancy drive system that turns one or more of the cart\u2019s wheels. But with your e-bike kit, we can just let the pedals function as foot rests.<\/p>\n

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The rear cart attachment seems a bit plane Jane at the moment. It\u2019s like someone took a phone booth, stretched it, added wheels and said, \u201cHere, serve some coffee out of this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t actually get a coffee setup, or a taco counter or really anything you could use to run your own culinary purveyor establishment. But you do get a flip-down serving window, a small counter with a sink, and a whole lot of possibilities!<\/p>\n

I know this is of course destined to be a food truck that gets customized to your own business\u2019 needs, but I think they\u2019re overlooking an entire second market here: e-bike RVs!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already seen tiny campers from Alibaba<\/a> before, but this would take the concept even farther, at least in weirdness. When it comes to range it probably wouldn\u2019t take it very far at all, but think of it more like a mobile home that doesn\u2019t go very far. You could add some curtains for privacy, a couple bunk beds on the walls, and finally some shelves on the opposite side. You\u2019d have the tiniest little electric RV for two! Well, provided those two don\u2019t mind living in quite an intimate space.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d probably be a good idea to remove some of those windows before this thing goes full camper. They look great as a food truck, but the greenhouse effect while trying to live in a, well, greenhouse\u2026 might be a bit uncomfortable. <\/p>\n

You could run a little evaporative cooling device<\/a> that barely uses 85W of power. Slap several 100W solar panels <\/a>on the roof of your ride and you\u2019ll have plenty of extra power left over for charging up the e-bike\u2019s battery!<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m not saying this would be the end all and be all of tiny campers. I\u2019m not even saying it\u2019d be a good food truck bike. But I am<\/em> saying this is just about as weird as they come on Alibaba, and that\u2019s why I love it.<\/p>\n

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FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s engineers love taking the simple concept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}