A bizarre Chinese electric mini pickup has appeared on Alibaba wearing what we can only describe as a very convincing Halloween costume of a Ram truck — and, against our better judgment, we have completely fallen for it.

The vehicle, listed by Foshan Green Electric Vehicle Technology Co as an L7e electric 4×4 pickup, has the stance of a shrunken American truck, the proportions of a utility vehicle, and a grille that appears to shout RAM in enormous letters despite absolutely definitely having nothing whatsoever to do with Ram.

Let’s call it what it is: a Dodgy Ram.

At first glance, the little red pickup looks like somebody fed a Ram 1500 into a photocopier, set it to 65%, and then sent the results to a factory that normally makes golf buggies.

There’s a bluff front end, chunky black wheelarch extensions, off-road-style tyres, roof rails, running boards, and a miniature load bed at the back. It even has four doors in a proper-looking double-cab body and space for actual humans, providing those humans are not expecting Ranger levels of refinement, safety or dignity.

It is, in short, magnificent.

Chinese Ram pickup

According to the technical information provided, this tiny truck is 4,500mm long, 1,750mm wide and 1,780mm tall. That makes it much bigger than you might expect from the pictures, although still comfortably smaller than any serious full-size American pickup.

The load bed is listed at 1,360mm long, 1,340mm wide and 470mm deep, while the payload is claimed to be 500kg. That is not exactly workhorse territory, but it is more than enough for garden tools, feed bags, or the emotional baggage that comes with explaining to your accountant why you imported a 31mph Chinese Ram lookalike.

Power comes from a pair of 5kW motors, one at the front and one at the rear, giving it all-wheel drive and a mighty total output of 10kW. That’s around 13hp, or roughly one enthusiastic lawn tractor.

Range is given as 37-50 miles, depending on conditions, battery type, optimism, and wind direction. The battery can be either lead-acid or lithium, with charging taking between five and ten hours.

The ground clearance is listed as at least 350mm, or 50% more than a Ford Ranger, and therefore something we would treat with a degree of caution. Possibly a very large degree.

Our favourite line, however, is “Body Structure: Intelligent loading body”. We don’t know what this means, but we choose to believe the load bed has achieved sentience.

Is it actually road legal? Well, the listing describes the vehicle as EEC L7e, which refers to the European heavy quadricycle category. In broad terms, L7e vehicles sit in the world of small, low-powered, lightweight four-wheelers like the Mobilize Bento rather than conventional cars, vans or pickups.

There may be a perfectly valid homologated version somewhere in the mix. Equally, the version with the correct paperwork may not be the four-door truck shown in the pictures. Or the paperwork may be applicable in some markets and less useful in others. Or, because this is an Alibaba listing, the answer may simply be “good luck”.

Anyone genuinely thinking of importing one to the UK would need to check type approval, registration, insurance, parts supply, warranty cover, lighting compliance, braking requirements, crash safety expectations and whether their local MOT tester is quite prepared for the experience.

Not entirely pointless

It would be easy to dismiss the Dodgy Ram as a joke, and we’re doing exactly that. But vehicles like this do hint at something more interesting.

China is building an enormous variety of small electric commercial vehicles, from low-speed campus runabouts to compact urban vans, tiny tippers, micro-pickups and estate utility vehicles. Some are crude, some are oddly charming, and some are more useful than they first appear.

Used in the right environment — a holiday park, farmyard, factory site, private estate, municipal depot or large industrial complex — a slow, cheap, electric micro-pickup with all-wheel drive and a 500kg payload could make a strange kind of sense. It doesn’t need to cruise at 70mph if it’s never leaving private roads and the toughest job it faces is moving tools from one shed to another.

Would we buy one? No.

Would we like to have one delivered to the Professional Pickup test fleet for a week? Absolutely.

It’s ridiculous, it’s questionable, and it’s undoubtedly a legal nightmare. And, honestly, we adore it.

Phil Huff
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