{"id":49616,"date":"2023-05-14T09:51:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-14T13:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=49616"},"modified":"2023-05-14T09:51:25","modified_gmt":"2023-05-14T13:51:25","slug":"dont-get-too-excited-about-gm-electric-mini-truck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=49616","title":{"rendered":"No, you shouldn’t get too excited about GM’s $14,000 electric mini-truck. Here’s why"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"electric<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of fuss about the supposed \u201c$14,000 GM electric mini-truck\u201d recently, but you probably shouldn\u2019t get too worked up about it. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that electric mini-trucks aren\u2019t an exciting new field. I\u2019m a proud owner of one<\/a> and I love the thing. Mini-trucks, and especially electric mini-trucks, are incredibly useful and highly efficient machines. Though the best part about these fun little utility vehicles is likely their low prices compared to pricier electric pickup trucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most recent model making headlines, the GM-backed Baojun Yep EV<\/a>, even offers some fairly respectable performance numbers. Despite being smaller than a tiny Fiat 500 subcompact city car, it features a 50 kw (67 horsepower) electric motor, a top speed of 100 km\/h (62 mph) and a city range of nearly 300 km (188 miles) per charge.<\/p>\n

Obviously it\u2019s not meant to tow a Boston Whaler down the highway. But for around-the-town jobs it\u2019d be plenty. <\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t start taking out your checkbook when you hear about many of the new mini e-truck models swirling around in the news<\/a>. That\u2019s because you can\u2019t have one. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Baojun Yep EV mini-truck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most of the time these stories are misleading for a few reasons. Take the US $14,000 GM mini-truck above, for example. First of all, it\u2019s not a GM model. And second of all, it doesn\u2019t cost US $14,000. The entire premise is a lie.<\/p>\n

That vehicle, the Baojun Yep EV, is technically \u201cGM-backed\u201d thanks to a joint venture between General Motors and the two state-owned Chinese automotive companies SAIC Motor and Liuzhou Wuling Motors. But GM is a minority owner in the deal. It\u2019s less of a GM vehicle and more a partially paid for by GM vehicle.<\/p>\n

Next, it doesn\u2019t really cost US $14,000. First of all, no one knows what the price tag will be for the Baojun Yepp EV truck when it eventually launches. It is based on a similar<\/a> SUV-format vehicle that itself has only been estimated to launch at 100,000 Chinese Yuan later this summer. <\/p>\n

Sure, \u00a5100,000 is approximately equal to US $14,000 at current exchange rates. But that doesn\u2019t make this a US $14,000 vehicle. As anyone who reads my long-running weekly column Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week<\/a> will already know, Chinese vehicle prices don\u2019t translate very well into US prices.<\/p>\n

\"Bronco-like-EV-pickup\"
Baojun Yep EV mini-truck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only way you could buy one of these vehicles for approximately US $14k is if you did it in China. Which is what I did, once. A couple summers ago<\/a> I paid a Chinese factory US $2,000 for a much lower spec (5 horsepower, 25 mph) electric mini-truck. <\/p>\n

By the time it was all said and done, I had paid an additional US $6,000 or so in freight charges, import duties, US taxes and tariffs, US customs fees, trucking and other expenses to get it into my family\u2019s driveway in Florida. <\/p>\n

I did the same thing with a five-seater electric boat<\/a>. I paid the factory in China US $1,080 but wound up with around a US $4,500 lighter bank account by the time the boat slipped into a Florida pond.<\/p>\n

And that was for a private import. Imagine if I was a company trying to turn a profit on these things. That US $2,000 Chinese mini-truck could easily turn into a US $12,000 or more mini-truck, stateside. And that\u2019s a comparatively low-spec vehicle.<\/p>\n

\"chang
My own electric mini-truck that ended up costing me a lot more than the Chinese sticker price<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The same goes for other popular electric microcars from China. We often hear about the \u201c$5,000 Wuling Mini EV\u201d electric micro-car, which is a vehicle that frequently gets tossed around my comment section whenever I write about an electric bike<\/a> that costs over US $5,000.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t be fooled into thinking that\u2019s a US $5,000 car. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s a \u00a530,000 car.<\/p>\n

Sure, if you flew to China with five grand in your pocket, converted it to Chinese Yuan at the airport, and then walked into a Wuling dealership, you could probably drive out a few hours later in a shiny new micro-car. But you aren\u2019t going to do that, are you?<\/p>\n

Instead, you would need an enterprising importer to bring a literal boatload of them to the US (or wherever you live), somehow get them homologated for federal motor vehicle safety standards, then sell one to you. If you got out of that transaction for under US $15,000, you\u2019d be extremely lucky (consider that a new golf cart in North America can easily US $10,000). And you\u2019d still have a tiny 25 mph (de-regulated to US LSV laws) Chinese car for the price of a cheap highway capable vehicle in the US.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The famous Wuling Mini EV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that electric mini-trucks don\u2019t exist in the US. There are street legal electric mini-truck manufacturers like the Texas-based startup AYRO<\/a>, though they\u2019re still getting rolling with upcoming production. Plus, the starting prices are closer to $25,000, which is a bit higher than those domestic market Chinese electric mini-trucks. <\/p>\n

There are also a few more or less scrupulous importers of Chinese electric mini-trucks, though almost none are street legal, even if the shadier importers claim them to be.<\/p>\n

But for the most start, the few real options are the pricier models from real US manufacturers.<\/a><\/p>\n

Maybe things will change. As electric mini-trucks grow in popularity, perhaps more companies will enter the fray and prices will come down. Or perhaps Chinese models will actually be homologated and imported to the US at reasonable prices. Either would be great news considering the ballooning size of US trucks and SUVs that contribute to climbing road deaths, greater emissions and increased road wear. But for now, there\u2019s no point in getting excited over misleading claims of cheap electric trucks. They simply don\u2019t exist yet, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

\n

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

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

There\u2019s been a lot of fuss about the supposed \u201c$14,000 GM electric mini-truck\u201d recently, but you probably shouldn\u2019t get too worked up about it. That\u2019s not to say that electric mini-trucks aren\u2019t an exciting new field. I\u2019m a proud owner of one and I love the thing. Mini-trucks, and especially electric mini-trucks, are incredibly useful […]<\/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-49616","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\/49616","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=49616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49616\/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=49616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}