Five years ago, I did something that seemed pretty ridiculous at the time. I bought a $2,000 electric mini-truck from China, had it shipped across the oceans to the US, and put it to work on my parents’ property in Florida.

The little white mini electric truck became something of an internet sensation, with my original unboxing and testing video quickly racking up over 10 million views, plus several million more from the follow-up videos.

It also attracted plenty of skeptics who were convinced that a $2,000 Chinese electric truck would fall apart within months, rust into oblivion, or otherwise prove to be a spectacular waste of money. “Good thing it has a bed,” was a common refrain. “So you can collect all the pieces that fall off along the way.”

I gave an update after the first year, showing that the truck was doing great. But to be fair, one year doesn’t tell us much.

Well now it’s been over five years, and I recently returned to Florida to see how the little truck has held up after five trips around the sun on my parents’ homestead. And I’ve got to say, the results are pretty surprising.

So here’s the truth about how the truck is doing five years later. Oh, and if you want to see it in action, you can check out my update video here. Trust me, you’ll want to.

Five years of actual work

First, it’s important to understand that this truck hasn’t spent five years sitting in a garage as some kind of novelty vehicle. It’s been a genuine workhorse on my parents’ 10-acre homestead.

Over the years, we’ve used it to haul everything from mulch and sand to lumber, tree branches, logs, yard waste, and everything in between.

Its hydraulic dump bed makes it particularly useful for moving bulk materials around the property, like hauling mulch and then dumping it in their raised planting beds.

My dad even uses it as a mobile irrigation truck during Florida’s dry season. I built him a solar-powered pump system that fills a water bladder in the truck’s bed with water from his pond, allowing him to drive around watering his trees and plants.

By now, it’s been involved in practically every major landscaping and construction project my parents have tackled.

We’ve also made some improvements over the years. Early on, my dad and I replaced the ridiculously stiff factory suspension springs with softer ones, making the ride considerably more comfortable. We added a custom tow hitch and swapped the original street tires for aggressive off-road tires that work much better on the property’s sandy and muddy terrain.

The suspension upgrade did reduce how much weight we can comfortably carry, though. Load more than around 500 pounds (220 kg) of sand or other bulk materials into the bed, and the rear end starts squatting enough that our homemade tow hitch threatens to touch grass.

But for most of the work we do, it’s been an excellent little utility vehicle.

And before anyone asks, no, this isn’t a street-legal truck. It was never really designed for American roads, and we use it almost exclusively on private property. Sure, it’s hit the pavement a few times since they live out in the boonies and its normal to see tractors and other non-street-legal vehicles on country roads, but it’s not the most ideal vehicle for long distance transport at 25 mph (40 km/h).

So, what’s actually broken after five years?

Here’s the part that surprised me most: Almost everything still works.

The electric windows still zip up and down with the speed of a guillotine. The electric door locks work. The headlights work. The backup camera works. Even the air conditioning still blows impressively cold air.

I actually checked that last one with a thermal camera during my latest visit, and the air coming out of the vents was around 55°F (12°C). Not bad for a five-year-old air conditioning system in a $2,000 truck!

Of course, not everything is perfect.

The windshield wiper still operates, but its range of motion has decreased significantly. It now stops around the middle of the driver’s field of vision, which isn’t ideal when Florida’s famous afternoon thunderstorms roll through.

The rearview mirror has also developed an annoying habit of falling off. We’ve glued it back on multiple times, and it looks like another round of adhesive surgery is coming soon.

Inside, there’s some minor upholstery damage on the driver’s seat, including a few small tears and stressed seams in the cheap faux-leather material that you can see in the video.

The passenger seat, which sees much less use, still looks nearly new. In another few years, I might just swap the two seats to get another half decade or so out of them before we need some upholstery repair.

One decorative plastic panel around the driver’s door handle has popped off, though I still have the piece and could probably snap it back into place with a bit of effort. It’s just aesthetic though, so it’s been a low-priority repair.

And that’s pretty much the extent of the mechanical and electrical problems we’ve encountered.

There haven’t been any major drivetrain failures, the hydraulic dump bed still works, and the truck continues to start up and drive just as reliably as it did when it was new.

It still gets used for lots of bulk jobs, material hauling, and sometimes just random transportation around the property.

What about all that Chinese steel rusting away?

One of the biggest predictions from critics five years ago was that this cheap Chinese truck would quickly dissolve into a pile of rust.

To be fair, there is some rust. But nowhere near as much as you might expect.

Most of the corrosion is concentrated in areas where the paint has been scratched or chipped, especially around the tailgate and cargo bed.

The rustiest spot is definitely the top lip of the tailgate, where we usually have long objects hanging out of the bed, such as shovels, ladders, lumber, etc. The paint has worn through on that edge, and the rust has inevitably started in those few spots.

The truck is stored outdoors under a lean-to roof that I built between two shipping containers, but we have a skid-steer in front of it and so the rear of the truck sticks out and gets rained on several times a week (or several times a day during the summer).

We applied a paint-on bed liner during the truck’s first year, which helped protect the metal for quite a while.

After four years of hauling dirt, rocks, branches, and other abrasive materials though, that coating has started wearing through in a few places.

Every time I’m shoveling mulch out of the bed and I hear that scrape of metal on metal, I cringe just a bit before remembering that the truck cost me $2,000 and doesn’t owe me anything at this point.

Speaking of being parked outdoors with the rear hanging out for the world (and the UV) to see, there’s clearly an effect on the truck’s wear.

You can absolutely see the difference in the paint and plastic components. The front headlight lenses are still crystal clear, while the rear taillight lenses have become noticeably cloudy from UV exposure.

Despite that, the truck’s basic structure remains solid, and the rust is mostly cosmetic and limited to the high-impact areas that tend to get beaten up repeatedly, as you’d expect in any self-respecting work truck.

Considering that Florida combines high humidity, frequent rain, and intense sunshine, I’d call that a pretty impressive result for a vehicle that cost less than many electric bicycles.

The real test: What does my dad think?

Since the truck lives at my parents’ property, my dad has actually spent far more time using it than I have.

And when I asked him how he felt about the purchase after five years, he was surprisingly enthusiastic.

He described the truck as an incredibly functional piece of equipment that has become an essential part of maintaining the property.

In fact, he pointed out that the truck has been involved in virtually every significant project they’ve completed over the past five years.

It isn’t the only electric utility vehicle on the property anymore. My parents also have a Kandi electric UTV, which has taken over some of the smaller daily chores thanks to its better suspension and more convenient dump bed operation (the bed also lowers under power) which helps my dad lift the trash and recycling bins and drive them down the long private road to the street on pickup day.

But when it’s time to haul bulky loads, long branches, or large quantities of dirt and mulch, the Changli is still the vehicle of choice.

My dad also pointed out something that tends to get lost in discussions about cheap Chinese EVs: the operating costs have been almost nonexistent.

A full charge costs a little over a dollar in electricity, and the truck has required remarkably little maintenance over the years.

Even after five years, he says it still puts a smile on his face every time he drives it.

Was it really $2,000, and was it worth it?

Yes, the truck cost me $2,000. Or technically, the price was $2,080.00, and that’s what I paid to the factory. At that point, it was mine.

Of course, it was still in China though, and so I had to pay an international freight company to have it sent on a cargo ship to the US (nearly $2,000 by itself, if I recall correctly).

Then I had to pay the US Treasury a bunch of tariffs to help make sure American automotive companies don’t have to compete with these types of vehicles.

And I also had to hire a customs broker to handle the import documentation for me, etc.

So there were several thousand dollars of additional fees on top of it, but I still think it was worth it based on the incredible amount of use it has given us over the years.

Of course, there’s an important caveat here for anyone considering getting a vehicle like this.

Remember, this is a very basic, low-speed electric utility vehicle without the safety equipment, crash protection, or regulatory approvals you’d expect from a modern full-size pickup truck.

It’s not something I’d recommend as a replacement for a road-going vehicle.

This is a work truck for us. It moves material, tows trailers and boats, carries the trash cans a quarter mile to the street each week, etc. In that way, as a private-property work truck, it’s been fantastic.

But even though I’m calling it simple, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t made pretty well. The truck has hauled countless loads, survived five years of rough Florida weather, and required very little maintenance. Even its cheap interior and basic electronics have held up better than I expected.

I also have to give some credit to the modifications we made early on, especially the suspension and tire upgrades, which turned a quirky little imported vehicle into something much more practical for off-road work.

The biggest unknown is how much longer it will last. Unfortunately, the truck doesn’t have a proper odometer, so I can’t even tell you how many miles we’ve accumulated over five years of driving around the property.

I also can’t tell you anything about battery degradation, since we don’t know how far it has driven (due to the lack of odometer), and the fact that even on 10 acres, you just can’t get that far from an outlet. We generally charge the 6 kWh battery every couple weeks just to keep it topped up, but range was never an issue and hasn’t become one, at least not for our use case. If you needed to drive this thing to the next town over each day, it could be another story.

Basically, there’s no indication that the mini-truck is nearing the end of its useful life.

My dad thinks it could easily serve another five or even ten years, and after seeing how well it’s survived its first five, I’m inclined to agree that there’s plenty of life left in it.

When I first bought this thing, plenty of people told me it was a terrible idea. Five years later, with the truck still hauling dirt, carrying branches, and generally earning its keep, I’m feeling pretty good about that decision. It’s done a lot more in its five years than many “real” pickup trucks do in their entire lives.

Not bad for a funny little electric truck from China.