This Is Not A Truck With A Full Load Of New Second Generation Smart Cars
You might think that this is a flatbed truck loaded with second-generation Smart cars that somehow ended up in China. You are wrong. This indeed is a flatbed truck loaded with Jijie Tule cars, clones of the Smart. There are 14 cars on the truck and at least three are of the special Hello Kitty Edition, with a partially pink roof.
The Jijie Tule is a low-speed electric vehicle (LSEV). It is made by a company called Jujie Electric Technology, based in the great city of Changzhou in Jiangsu Province. They also make a clone of the Volkswagen Up! (scroll down).
Happily, I met the Jijie Tule Hello Kitty Edition at the the 2017 Jinan EV Show. All the pink stuff is factory standard. Sadly, the pink on the wheels is of a darker shade than all the other pink.
Pink seats and a pink steering wheel. Nice, but Zotye does pink interiors even better. The touch screen is a nine inch and plays MP4 video, it has a radio and even a navigation system. Drive selector stick is located on the tunnel just in front of the red panic button.
The Jujie Tule is powered by an electric motor with 4 horses, mated to a 60V lead-acid battery. Charging on 220V takes 8 hours. Top speed is 45 km/h and range is 100 kilometers. Price for all this Hello Kitty smart-ass pretty is 18.800 yuan or $2725.
Size: 2730/1570/1570 (as wide as high) and wheelbase is 1850. Curb weight is 738 kilo.
Let’s compare that to the sec-gen Smart:
Size: 2695/1560/1540, and wheelbase is 1870. Curb weight was 795 kilo, just a bit more than the Tule, but the Smart had a petrol engine and was undoubtedly much safer and better build. The Tule then, is a fat cat.
On their way to an LSEV market near you.
