Howdy all. I’m brand new on here. I joined because i have a dream of running my carpentry and home remodeling business with an electric vehicle. Because i will probably need to replace my junky ICE truck soon and because the GEM el XD is the closest thing to an electric work truck sold in the US today, i am considering buying a GEM el XD. Is this a stupid idea?
Some things to note: I own my own business and work almost exclusively for homeowners in my own neighborhood. I live right on the edge of a big city. Lowe’s is 2 miles away. My local lumberyard and Home Depot are 3 miles away. I can get to pretty much everywhere i need to go on 35mph or less roads. There is even a neighborhood pickup truck co-op i can join for an occasional need to have extended range or whatever.
My neighborhood and all my clients (and potential clients) are left-leaning environmentalist types… so an electric truck would be amazing marketing. I currently run my business with a Chevy Colorado with a short bed. It has about the same payload capacity as the GEM el XD and if i get the el XD with the L-box, the GEM will have more tool storage space than the Chevy. When i need a whole bunch of material at once, i already just place an order for delivery rather than picking up in my dinky Colorado.
So why not a GEM? Tell it to me straight, GEM owners! Are they not reliable enough? Not strong enough? Will the batteries empty out too fast with a bunch of tools in the back? Is it too hard to find someone to fix them when they break? (i do enough tinkering for my day job. I don’t really want another tinker project at night).
Please, talk me out of it, or talk me into it, as you see fit! Either way, tell me what i should know about owning a GEM!
$20k for a new GEM eL XD is hell of alot of money to shell out for a work truck. I do like the idea of doing initial sales calls in an EV, so maybe spending up to $5,000 on a used GEM could work for that.
I would keep the Chevy Colorado and check out if there’s any utility boxes or racks you could add on to your Colorado. With a name like “TahoeJoe”, im probably a little biased on keeping the Chevy
Just did a quick search, here’s a couple links to check out:
I say yes it can be done. Dave has a used Gem truck. It had 500 miles on it. A while back
I would say a Stock truck may come up short in performance and range, but Dave has fixes for both speed and range. Get ahold of him and see what he has to offer.
Tahoe Joe, i am not ditching the Colorado because it doesn’t have enough storage capacity. I am ditching it because it has some mysterious engine problem that mechanics can’t figure out that makes its exhaust smell horrible. It is soon due for its notoriously tough Maryland emissions inspection and it is not going to pass, which will instantly turn it from a truck into a paperweight until i sell it to someone in another state. I only mentioned the storage capacity to say that a el Xd is not really a step down in storage compared to the Colorado with a short bed.
Grantwest, i may be interested in this truck! Although Maryland is a long way from California at 25MPH. Who is this Dave you speak of? Remember, i am new here.
Inwo, i have a conversation going with a Polaris dealer, but i haven’t yet convinced him to give me contact info for his last few GEM buyers. That’s why i’m here talking to y’all!
jrjava, Awesome! You are the one i need to talk to!
My part of Maryland gets a little snow and ice. Not a lot. Less and less every year, I’d say. But good point nonetheless. GEM users in northern climes, what has been your experience with traction and cold battery performance? Can you buy tiny little snow tires for these things? Are some types of batteries better than others in the cold?
I have a 2009 Gem e6 and live in Maryland on the Eastern Shore. I use her for zipping around town all four seasons of the year and have noticed that the batteries do drain faster in cold weather. A full load of people will also tax the battery life. I have the gel batteries but it seems like everyone likes their converted lithium batteries. Since she is just for fun I have never driven her in snow (or rain for that matter) and just use my car instead.
One thing to be careful of, don’t overload the GEM. It’s not built like the truck you are replacing. The GEM is a lightweight aluminum vehicle with small parts, you can beat the crap out of it, but only to a point.
This is what can happen when you push that envelope with max weight, a rough road, and a sharp left turn while on the brakes at < 10 mph…
Yeah, this was in the '02. I can’t say for certain that both hubs failed at the same time, I suspect the right side (snapped spline drive collar) happened a month or two ago, based on some odd clicking that I didn’t recall hearing prior to that and that the vehicle seemed to torque steer more than ever at high power. The left side, I think something happened a week or so ago. I audibly heard a loud crack while making that turn into our parking lot early AM when the roads are empty. But, that might have been just a secondary crack, like the collar coming completely detached… It’s hard to say.
I’m the engineer at a brewery. IIRC, the spline might be related to 600-something lbs of scrap metal and motors being taken over to the waste carting company metal dumpsters. The exploded hub collar was probably due to the other side being compromised, a few shims and a couple hundred lbs of industrial tools.
Damn thing kept driving though. It was the loss of brake hydraulic pressure that eventually had me rip it all apart yesterday to figure out WTF went wrong.
I wouldn’t say that a couple of busted hubs after overloading an 18 year old vehicle would disqualify a newer version from use as a work truck now but… well… it would be tellling for me to know what your plan is now. Are you planning to repair the old GEM, repair your 2010, buy a new GEM, or throw them all in that scrap dumpster and buy a gasoline truck?
Those parts aren’t 18 years old though. They are a year old, give or take. Stock disc front brakes weren’t offered until '05, so these are aftermarket. Put them on earlier this year.
I’m not sure if NEVA gets these hubs and spindles from polaris or they have them made under contract. Maybe a bad casting. The discs, calipers and rotors are definitely not polaris. Probably VW parts that have been adapted.
I’ve already repaired it. Luckily I had enough pieces-parts in my used but good bin. (I’m a recovering marine engineer, we save everything…)
The '10 has a way better motor and control system thanks to Mike and Dave. Plus having to send parts out to a machine shop to be worked on. Just haven’t put it back together, as I’ve been time limited. Eventually it will replace the '02 and not much will change, I have learned to be more gentle on these though.
The '02 has worked hard it’s whole life - it used to haul parts for a UC bus line, including sometimes a CNG tank to go rescue dumb-ass students who drove the busses and ran them out of fuel.
Hoping for an affordable cybertruck eventually. Or a pre-74 that I can drop an HO crate motor and a blower into. lol.
Hello Pete.
I work on a private estate here in NJ and we have been using gem cars here since 2006. Most of our maintenance staff has been using el and elxd Gem cars to do their daily routines.
Our cars are not used on public roads as we have no roads in our area that allow LSV on them.
We have had great success with them with over 20,000 miles on some of our classic gem cars.
They are a great vehicle and Polaris has done some nice improvement’s to them.
attached are a couple pictures of our work box we are installing on our new 2020 gem cars, they were built by access mfg, they can build anything you want.
