Commuting In America's Cheapest New Car ALMOST Killed Me...

Howdy folks and welcome to Will It Make It, the show that tempts fate, and in this case, we have fate. Well, what we actually have is the most affordable, the cheapest brand new car in America, which happens to be a Candy K27 electric car. That's correct. With a tiny little battery and almost no range, this vehicle has already proven to be a problem child for Roman and Tommy because it broke down twice on them in less than 48 hours. Yes, but today's task is to drive from Boulder, Colorado to Denver, Colorado for a big show, and will it make 31-mile drive through major cities? That's the question, and we're going to answer that by having me, the hamster, jump inside the vehicle. When I mean hamster, I mean like the test subject. I was going to say test mouse or rod or whatever, but I guess it's hamster. But just in case, we're going to have this vehicle follow me. Notice that it has a trailer on it. Why? Because the Candy spent a lot of its time on a trailer, and so just in case it doesn't make it, we have Andre here to help out. Yeah, I'll just be following you and just talking to you, and we can have a good time. Notice how I don't get to drive Tesla and other really expensive electric cars, but they'll let me drive this. Think about it. Let's go. Well, we're going to the Denver Press Club, which is in downtown Denver, and it's specifically an EV showcase where there's a Q&A going on through Colorado Public Radio and some other government entities that are all going to be there, plus we have a representative there as well that will be speaking. All right, now tell me about your Candy. So Roman and Tommy purchased it for TFL, but what is a Candy? Well, from the onset, the Candy was conceived as a commuter for the Chinese. This is a Chinese-built vehicle. It was never really meant for our market. However, a small company that was based in Texas thought that they could import them and make them the least expensive cars in America for street use, but there was a problem. Okay, so let me guess. It was range? That's part of it. I mean, it has a 17-kilowatt-hour battery, basically, and God only knows how much of that you can actually use. No, the real problem was actually because they refused to switch out the airbags and make them federally compliant with U.S. vehicles, they just kept the Chinese airbags in this vehicle. They were not permitted to have a full license to be driven on highways in the U.S. As such, this is only a street-compliant vehicle, meaning that it has a top speed limited to 35 miles per hour. I'm assuming we're not taking Highway 36 and I-25. You would be correct. We are going to be taking circuit streets all the way there, which means an even longer drive, but at the same time, it's just such a great time to chat as we do this ridiculously long drive in a very comfortable car. I got a six. I'm in more comfort than I expected. Well, I mapped it out and it says approximately 31 miles, maybe more on surface streets, basically slower speed roads, and it could take us over an hour to do this. Over an hour to go 30 miles, that's just awesome. Well, you know, that's nothing for it but giving it a shot, so away we go. Andre, I found something really interesting. I didn't know this had this. There's a page in settings that actually shows quite a bit. I don't know how relevant some of this is, but I'll just read it to you. Okay, you ready? Yeah, go for it. We've got time. It's got battery voltage and I'm right now running at 319 volts. Battery current, it's kind of jumping around, but it runs between 9 and 12. Battery SOC, I do not know what that means, and it's a percentage. That's at 96 percent. Maximum temperature, apparently I'm at zero Celsius. Motor temperature, 35 degrees Celsius. Let's see, motor controller temperature is at 31 degrees Celsius. Motor speed is at 3840 something rpm, and motor torque, I'm at four newton meters of torque. SOC, state of charge, so you've dropped, what, from 99 to 96 percent in the last four or five miles, and it's weird that it's not giving you like miles per kilowatt hour, but it gave you everything else. So Roman and Tommy got it for around five grand at an auction, and he maintains that's what makes the cheapest. He's wrong because he got it at an auction. What makes it the cheapest is that it was new $12,000 when it was sold at the Candy dealership in Texas, and $12,000 still makes it the cheapest car you can buy in the United States, if you consider this a car. Right, but when Roman purchased it, it also had 20 miles and never was registered, right? So technically, it was an auction, dealer auction, but it technically is a new car. Regardless, what a normal person would pay for this vehicle, if indeed they went to the dealership in Texas and bought one of these, would be around $12,000. Seven years ago, or eight years ago, you could buy a Nissan Versa for like almost that money, but no longer the case. All right, the pros and cons right off the bat. Yes, this thing is a pile. It's just not good when you measure it against any car that you can buy in the United States that's built in volume. I would compare this to a Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf would be five times better. Forget the mileage, which even though this is saying I still have 106 miles left, realistically, and also EPA rating, half that. So I'm going to be lucky if I even make it to the press club from here, but there are a couple things to keep in mind. This was built for people who have very few dollars in their bank account in China to commute. This was built specifically so you could drive it to your place of work without, you know, contributing to the CO2 and smog and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you plug it in at work, seven or eight hours later, you jump back out, jump in the car, it's full, and you go back home, plug it back in. It was never meant for fast highway driving, for high performance, or for luxury. It was a utility component that you drive, and it's no different than a Cuisinart. A couple other things to note. The ride is not horrible. I would say that it's on par with some older cars that I've driven that are small. Acceleration, Andre thinks it moves quickly up to 30. I would disagree and say it's slightly faster than lethargic up to 30. On this journey, I am spoiled. I'm in a brand new Rivian R1T quad motor, so four motors. This is the truck that's been around on sale almost two years, but I've got air conditioning, I've got five seats, I've got a bed. This truck has 830 horsepower. It has a range of over 300 miles. This truck showed earlier 313 miles of range. It has 11,000 pounds of maximum towing, about 1,500 pounds of payload. This is a pickup truck that's not only a hobby truck, it also can be used as a pickup truck, and that's how I'm using it today. I'm towing a trailer, which is our Aluma. This trailer weighs around 2,500 pounds, so if Nathan does start having any issues, overheating, breakdowns, hopefully I can get his car onto the trailer. His car should weigh around 2,500 pounds by itself, and I should be able to tow him to the show and hopefully still make it. But yeah, I am, well, my Rivian costs over $80,000 depending on options, so comparatively on price, yeah, this is a premium luxury vehicle. So wait a minute, we're climbing this hill. I'm really close to you. Can you maintain your top speed on this hill? Well, according to my car, I'm still maintaining my top speed. I'm just right now over 35, but I don't know if the speedometer is broken, but yeah, it says that I'm at 35-ish. Well, I'm showing 33, 32. My speedometer is optimistic, and now it's showing 35 on my end, so I would imagine that it's about three miles per hour off. Well, it seems like you maintain about 33 on that hill, so I think, how much power do you have? I mean, that's enough. Yep, 61 horsepower. I don't know what my torque number is, but it's not much. Holy moly, Nathan, we've gone most of our way, and we need to take a left on Speer Boulevard, which is going to lead us into the heart of Denver. I think so far this thing's been working just fine. Obviously, it's not fast, and there's a couple other problems I found out about it. For one thing, there's hot air emanating from somewhere in here, which I can't seem to find. I think that's just its way of cooling its electric motor down, and yeah, it's no air conditioning or anything like that, even though it says it has an air conditioner. All right, what state of charge and how many miles does the car think it has? Well, according to this, I'm at 74 percent, and I've got 86 miles left. There's no way I believe that. There's just no way. No way I believe that. I'm telling you what the car says, and I've been looking at the instrumentation on the center display, and it's showing the same numbers. But that means that we've gone almost 30 miles, and you used a quarter battery. This blows the range estimate on this car out of the water. And we haven't been doing a lot of downhill either. There have been a lot of uphills, so yeah, I'm a little curious about this. All right, well, I see Denver. Fortunately, speeds will slow down, so that's a good thing. So far, so good. Still got a little ways to go. There it is. That's amazing. Nathan, you made it under its own power. It did really well. Check this out. Look here. So, according to this, it has 72 percent power left, 84 miles. Now, if I switch into sport, it's 67 miles, but I was driving in drive almost the entire time because I wanted to stretch out the battery. All in all, the car has behaved exactly as it should, which is a cheap Econo box, but it did the job. So, I'm thinking that maybe I'm just luckier than Tommy and Roman. So, let's just rough it out, right? We went about 32 miles. We used about a third of its battery. Actually, a little bit less, according to the car. A little bit less. So, this could be a 90, 100-mile car all day long. It could be. So, how much of the driving did we do that was highway? I would say about 85 to 90 percent was like, not highway, but like open road, right? Yeah, we weren't stopping very much, but you were always maxed out at 35, basically. I had my foot down every single time I had to accelerate. So, it all worked out well. Little candy did okay, and we're at the Denver Press Club, which is in downtown Denver, and that's for a special event for EVs, and you guys will be able to hear about it on Colorado Public Radio and other places. And yeah, I'm one of the guys who's supposed to be here. So, thanks for joining me. We had an awesome trip. See you next time. And you didn't even need me. I didn't even need him.