I’m no stranger to collecting weird Alibaba electric vehicles, and that includes aquatic vessels. But after buying an ultra-cheap Chinese electric boat last year, this new one makes my own lazy lake cruiser look like a luxury yacht.
Compared to my $1,080 boat, this $680 masterpiece is a tad bit less decked out.
Sure, it’s got a fiberglass hull, which is already surprising for such an affordable little boat. But with just four seats, your lake parties will be more intimate affairs.
The boat claims to be electric, though pictures of foot pedals have me a bit worried. There is a note somewhere on the sales page claiming a 6-8 hour run time, so that’s a good sign that it’s actually electrically powered. At least, as long as it doesn’t mean that’s how long it took the last couple to pass out.
And hey, having foot pedals as a backup on a boat like this probably isn’t a bad idea!
The design is certainly… intriguing. I know that ship figureheads have been commonplace for millennia, often ornately carved into ships’ wooden bows as a symbol of pride or to instill fear in sailors’ enemies.
But I’m not sure how well the swan head here can accomplish either task. Though, if you’ve ever ticked off an angry swan, I think it’s fair to say they’ve been known to instill a bit of fear themselves. With some red and green navigational lights in the eyes and a recording of angry honking mixed with violent wing-flapping sounds, you might just scare a few other boaters overboard.
The other small issue is that there’s not a great way to connect a bow line while on the boat. They shortchange you with a ring instead of a cleat up front, but to get there you’d have to shimmy out over the bow on your stomach, avoiding the giant swan (I didn’t expect to write that when I woke up today), and then dangle down over the prow to attach it. Sheesh.
I guess these are meant more for amusement park ponds where you’ll be cast off from the dock by some drunk carnie instead of doing it yourself, so that exercise I described above might not be a common occurrence.
Assuming the boat truly is electric, that canopy seems like a lot of wasted space that could be well spent holding up some solar panels. That’s exactly what I’ve done with my boat, adding around 350W of solar panels to the shade cover (that story is coming soon) to keep the batteries topped up.
Though for under $700 for an electric boat, I don’t think we can make too many extra requests here.
In fact, as usual, I recommend that nobody make any requests, including any purchase inquiries. These unknown Alibaba vendors can be a risky bunch, and you never know if you’ll get a product at the end of the saga, or if you do, what kind of quality it will be.
For example, the top coat on my fiberglass hull is definitely already chipping in places after a year of Florida UV exposure and my rudder has more rust than an abandoned bike lock that’s now fused with a bike rack. And that’s after my boat cost nearly twice as much!
So this is definitely another case of allowing ourselves to simply enjoy one of these weird little electric swan boats from afar!