The obsession with electric vehicles is nothing new. Nowadays, everyone and their brother seems to have an electric car. But I'm not your average EV enthusiast. I prefer quirky designs. This craze has led me to some strange places. Recently, I have appeared on hundreds of millions of TV screens across China.
In addition to my day job, I'm one of the prolific communicators of e-bike news and reviews on the internet, and I'm also a wide fan of weird electric bikes in China. You may have also seen my weekly column"Alibaba's Weekly Weird Electric Car"。
It's mostly the result of me and my publisher competing to see who can find the weirdest car on Alibaba, China's big shopping mall.
Inevitably, they are almost all electric vehicles, as the simple fact is that China has quietly led the world when it comes to the development and adoption of electric vehicles. There are many types of electric vehicles in China, both realistic and fantastical, and it is breathtaking. Norway may lead the world in the adoption of electric vehicles, but frankly, anyone can buy an electric car. China is at the forefront of the world in the design and production of electric vehicles.
Will this be the smallest electric car in the world?
So, my publisher and I laughed and said, we can find a lot of interesting and sometimes weird Chinese-made electric cars.
I threw him a replica of an electric horseless carriage that looked just like it was in a live-action Cinderella movie. Next, he would throw me an electric pickup truck with foldable solar panel wings. I would overtake him with a dining cart in the back seat of an e-bike.
After discovering how deep the rabbit hole to China was, I was fascinated. I vaguely guessed that other people in the world might be as interested in this crazy behavior as I was.
This became a recurring theme in the column every week. Our talented cartographer, Michael Bower, magically transplants me to every car every week, which definitely helps us a lot in our work.
Of course, I can imagine driving an electric double-decker bus. Why not?
I've spent the last few years looking for the most exotic electric cars in the world, and I've come across some truly bizarre ones. The three-wheeled electric touring car was once the hottest contender, but who can refuse to have their own full-featured electric submarine to explore the depths of the ocean?What would our society be like without the world's smallest electric police car?
However, I soon discovered something interesting as well. In addition to the super weird products on Alibaba, I also found some electric cars that I really wish I had.
How could I say no to an improvised electric snowmobile or a single-seater speedboat?
When I finally came across a $2000 electric mini truck, it looked like a copycat Ford F-150 that inadvertently passed through the washer and dryer. from"Man, it must be interesting to buy a car like this. "to"Ahh"。
I spent months working out the details with the Chinese factory, finding the right customs broker, going through the formalities, and finally getting the mini truck on board and heading to the United States.
After a long wait, it has finally arrived. I fell in love with it right away. What you can't buy in the U.S., you can drive up and down on my parents' farm in Florida all at once. I own an electric mini truck, equipped with air conditioning and a hydraulic dump lathe, and have traveled halfway around the world from China to my fingertips. I couldn't be more excited.
After those interesting photoshops above, this one is real. This was filmed at my parents' ranch in Florida.
As it turns out, I'm not done yet. In fact, I'm just getting started.
The more I find strange electric cars from China, the more I want to add them to my collection.
Unfortunately, a little thing called economics (or, more colloquially, convincing one's own wife to buy something stupid is actually a good idea) makes the job even more difficult. There were a lot of quirky things out there, but I had to pick and choose. I can't help but pick. So, I focused on what worked best for me.
And just like that, just a year later, I had a five-seater electric boat that was slowly moving on the local lake. Recently, I am proud to be the new owner of electric construction equipment, including an electric mini excavator and an electric loader.
My family uses miniature electric construction equipment to do a lot of odd jobs around the estate.
Along the way, people started noticing me. I filmed my anecdote as a ** and it started going viral on the Internet. That electric boat has been viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube. Remember my electric mini truck?More than 10 million**. I'm not the only one enjoying this stuff anymore.
In fact, the news has come full circle back to China. An electric minicar manufacturer in China (according to its typical users, as locals call it"Happy grandpa"Wanted me to see their latest model and sent me one to unbox.
A few months later, a huge wooden box appeared in the driveway of my house. It's crazy.
A tiny electric car is still in a rather large box. Thanks again, minghong!
The news continues to spread. One morning, out of the blue, I received an email saying that they were representatives of a news channel in China, named"Television stations"and asked if they could report on me. I didn't remember the name well, so I asked a Chinese friend of mine if he had heard of the news station. "Is that. The largest channel in the country,"He said. "You should check it out"
According to what Wikipedia told me, China ** Television (CCTV for short) claims to have more than 500 million regular viewers. It's a figure they came up with from their own investigation, but I believe it. Why?Because all local news stations in China, in addition to their own programs, must also have daily news broadcasts from TV stations. This is the country**.
Leaving aside any issues that may exist in this (there are many), I'm curious to see what China's national ** will think of me, a Westerner with a quirky penchant for sourcing exotic Chinese cars.
As someone who has been called a journalist once or twice, I think there will be an interview soon. They would ask me questions. Maybe I'll share some interesting stories. We'd all eat a fortune cookie and laugh at my weird behavior.
No. Apparently, they've gotten everything they want from my youtube. The exact story doesn't matter, as long as they can read between the lines.
More than a week later, my silly face smiled at the bewildered 500 million Chinese.
This news show is basically just an excerpt of a couple of my youtube **s, a few selected snippets of me showing off the power of the electric boat, and then some voiceovers.
With the help of a translation software and a friend who speaks Mandarin, I pieced together the story.
Basically, they made a cute vignette about a Chinese product being bought by an idler on the internet. The lovely host drew the audience's attention to me and my electric boat.
They showed the audience how I unboxed, then demonstrated the functionality of my boat and tested it with my dad at the local lake.
It was a surreal experience to watch myself display my electric boat and other electric mini-cars on the Chinese country**. To be fair, they put me on CCTV2, a sub-channel that focuses more on the business economy. But again, this is not talking about ESPN8"The Ojo"--I still got some positions during the ** session.
While I feel like I've gone a little too far, there's no denying that everything I've said about these products, especially that boat, is true. I've never found a fiberglass electric boat worth $1000 like this in the U.S., and the boat I received was built pretty well. So if the Chinese state ** is going to use me to show their own citizens that a local factory has built a good ship, then. And they're basically right.
I even had the opportunity to chat with the head of the plant**, who showed me my boat during the production process. Although those who oppose it want to imagine the factory as a child labor sweatshop, this is not the case. What I saw was skilled shipbuilders building fiberglass and aluminum boats. In fact, when I was chatting with him one day, he explained that the factory was empty most of the time because it was so hot that day that he had the workers all go home. This is simply the opposite of sweatshops.
That's not to say that we're ignoring a long list of other problems that exist in the country, but building electric boats isn't one of them.
In a word, that's how I got on Chinese state television. I love weird electric cars, and later I traced the source of several electric cars. As a result of this peculiar trip, I collected a collection of exotic electric vehicles, which eventually caught the attention of Chinese state television.
I've been working on it every day since. I tried not to let myself gain fame and fortune because of my new discovery in 1 minute and 46 seconds. But sometimes it's hard to do. I think by this time next year, I'm sure I'll be plastered all over Chinese kids' lunch boxes, second only to giant pandas in popularity. Rumor has it that I will be included in the next quinquennial session. They would even set up a national holiday for me.
It's true that they may not really be able to bring me or my weird car back to the West. But I at least hope that somewhere, when someone asks worriedly"What's going on with that guy?", the answer will be"I do not know. I guess he's famous in China, right?"