Electric Car for 4 Year Old

[spookly]

I bought one of these for my boy when he was 5.
Second hand off a farmer for £50. Looked a bit rough and used.
Gave it a coat of paint, new batteries/controller and a new motor. Also installed a remote operated kill switch.
Went about 25mph before I restricted it.
Lasted him about 18 months before the gearbox stripped.

[SwankBaton]

spookly said:

I bought one of these for my boy when he was 5.
Second hand off a farmer for £50. Looked a bit rough and used.
Gave it a coat of paint, new batteries/controller and a new motor. Also installed a remote operated kill switch.
Went about 25mph before I restricted it.
Lasted him about 18 months before the gearbox stripped.

Similar story here, ebay Feber F430 for £30. Variable throttle pedal and soft start ESC saves the gearboxes. My son loves it, 24v now , its rapid !
Parts are cheap from aliexpress.

Main thing for me is it really kickstarted his love of cars.

He nows shreds about in a modded power wheels GT3.

[Bullett]

Careful, it's a slippery slope to one of these.



Yes, it is electric.

[gangzoom]

AB said:

Budget of about £500 max.

I got ours for 'free' but £500 is the retail cost I believe. Removable lithium ion battery, lasts hrs on a charge. Goes up hills with no issues.

Haven't checked am 100% sure they will do any body design you want.

https://www.radioflyer.com/tesla



I've tried to sit in it

Edited by gangzoom on Sunday 5th February 06:16

[The jiffle king]

Hi

Just resurrecting this thread in the hope that someone might be able to give an up to date view. We have a 4 year old who loves driving and we have 15 acres so plenty of space to drive about and lots of tracks to go on.

He has a balance bike and pedal car but when we want him to come to the fields it feels it would be much easier to get him to drive and us cart the other stuff like fence posts or even just to turn the horses out

- Off- road capable e.g. on long grass, mildly bumpy ground
- Parental remote control
- 24 V?
- Body type not so important, but tractor , jeep, land rover
- must be able to last an hour or thereabouts
- would think 5mph max at this stage but 3mph is not going to be enough as he rides the 4mph mini tractor with us and he will want to be as fast as that

We have looked at a Toylander but thats out of our price range

would maybe go to £1k for something robust

Any ideas gratefully received

[Goldman Sachs]

The jiffle king said:

Hi

Just resurrecting this thread in the hope that someone might be able to give an up to date view. We have a 4 year old who loves driving and we have 15 acres so plenty of space to drive about and lots of tracks to go on.

He has a balance bike and pedal car but when we want him to come to the fields it feels it would be much easier to get him to drive and us cart the other stuff like fence posts or even just to turn the horses out

- Off- road capable e.g. on long grass, mildly bumpy ground
- Parental remote control
- 24 V?
- Body type not so important, but tractor , jeep, land rover
- must be able to last an hour or thereabouts
- would think 5mph max at this stage but 3mph is not going to be enough as he rides the 4mph mini tractor with us and he will want to be as fast as that

We have looked at a Toylander but thats out of our price range

would maybe go to £1k for something robust

Any ideas gratefully received

For starters, ignore most of the stuff thats been posted in this thread.

For a budget under £1k, the obvious choice is buy something made by Peg Perego. They are by far and away the best manufacturer of kids ride-on/in vehicles for around £500.

The vast majority of these kids electric cars or quads are absolute rubbish. Cheap crap that breaks in no time, or is so gutless it will get stuck on anything other than smooth tarmac/paving.

The Peg Perego stuff is properly well made, lasts for years, and they offer a good selection of spares and parts, unlike almost every other manufacturer. They will also easily drive on grass and have a bit of power.

Forgot about the parental remote control, absolute waste of time, especially if your kid is 4. They are more than capable at that age.

My boy was driving very proficiently on his own by his 2nd birthday, and I never used the remote control once on his. By 2 he could turn it on and off himself, drive around, and by 2 and a half he was selecting reverse and starting to have a go at learning to reverse.

You’ve got to let them make their own mistakes and learn, even if that means watching them crash a few times. If you are steering it and braking it, and stopping them crashing, they won’t learn.

My vote would be as below:

The Peg Perego Gator easily carries 2 kids and some weight in the back, is plenty slow/controlled in 1st gear, but gets up a decent speed in 2nd when the kid is ready for it.

They are bomb proof and the best thing is that if you need more power or torque at any point, you can buy a plug-in kit that changes the battery to an 18v Makita/Dewalt battery and it gives them a fair bit more poke. They are made so well that they easily take the extra 6v.

There’s lots of groups and forums all about the Peg Perego stuff if you want to repair it or mod it.

General Price said:

This. All day long.

Edited by Goldman Sachs on Wednesday 22 May 21:54

[The jiffle king]

Thankyou, that’s very helpful and also a good fit for what we need

Just seen they do a front loader version as well which looks promising

[bigmowley]

Good grief electric cars, this is Pistonheads for gods sake!



Here are 2 of my Grandkids blasting around in their petrol powered buggy. 4 and 2 years old. Pops rides along behind on one of the Quads to put it back onto it’s wheels when the inevitable happens.

I think it was £800, it’s well built, harnesses and roll over protection and plenty quick enough.

[The jiffle king]

What make and model is that petrol version ?

[Mont Blanc]

bigmowley said:

Good grief electric cars, this is Pistonheads for gods sake!

Years ago I would have agreed with you.

As a kid I grew up playing with petrol quads, buggies, bikes. All made by ‘proper’ manufacturers such as Honda and Suzuki etc.

But these days, the electric stuff is so good (if you buy something decent like the Peg Perego suggested above) that until the kids get older and want something really quick, electric is ideal.

You never have to worry about engine/mechanical breakdowns, servicing, making sure you have a can of petrol for it, and all that sort of thing.

You just charge it up and they work. They are also a lot quieter which is better if you have neighbours within a few hundred yards.

Also, most of the off road buggies such as the one you posted are Chinese rubbish with Chinese rubbish engines in them, and they probably won’t last as long as the Peg Perego electric stuff. I know plenty of people who bought their kids those £800-900 ebay petrol buggies, bikes, or go karts, only to see them sat there broken a year later, and unable to fix them or get the parts from China.

Petrol is still the best if you want something with a bit more power, speed, noise, and excitement for the kids, but never ever buy the Chinese stuff. Buy something proper from Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki etc.

You’ll pay several times as much for an old and secondhand Japanese made quad, buggy, or bike than you will for a brand new Chinese item, but it will be worth every penny.

[bigmowley]

The jiffle king said:

What make and model is that petrol version ?

Not sure, I will have a look tomorrow when it stops raining

[bigmowley]

Mont Blanc said:

bigmowley said:

Good grief electric cars, this is Pistonheads for gods sake!

Years ago I would have agreed with you.

As a kid I grew up playing with petrol quads, buggies, bikes. All made by ‘proper’ manufacturers such as Honda and Suzuki etc.

But these days, the electric stuff is so good (if you buy something decent like the Peg Perego suggested above) that until the kids get older and want something really quick, electric is ideal.

You never have to worry about engine/mechanical breakdowns, servicing, making sure you have a can of petrol for it, and all that sort of thing.

You just charge it up and they work. They are also a lot quieter which is better if you have neighbours within a few hundred yards.

Also, most of the off road buggies such as the one you posted are Chinese rubbish with Chinese rubbish engines in them, and they probably won’t last as long as the Peg Perego electric stuff. I know plenty of people who bought their kids those £800-900 ebay petrol buggies, bikes, or go karts, only to see them sat there broken a year later, and unable to fix them or get the parts from China.

Petrol is still the best if you want something with a bit more power, speed, noise, and excitement for the kids, but never ever buy the Chinese stuff. Buy something proper from Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki etc.

You’ll pay several times as much for an old and secondhand Japanese made quad, buggy, or bike than you will for a brand new Chinese item, but it will be worth every penny.

I do agree with much of this and they do have an Oset 12 mini motocross bike that is electric.
The best kids Quad is the Suzuki LT80 which is almost unbreakable and big enough for adults to ride if necessary. Quite quick as well. I will migrate them onto the LT80 in another year or 2.
The buggy is a Chinese special but it’s got a good spares back up and it’s fairly well built. No problems so far. The engine is a 4 stroke single cylinder and it looks exactly the same as the Honda one on my wacker plate. Industry standard power unit, should be easy to fix. Electric start as well as pull start, kids love it.

[The jiffle king]

Thanks for all the replies. I think an electric one is the way to go but interested in the brand of the 2 seat petrol kart.

We have all sorts of other dangerous stuff for him to use when a bit older so something which needs little maintenance is ideal

[PRO5T]

The petrol one might be a quadzilla, there’s plenty of those about.

I’d say the electric ones are for folk (like me) with an acre, the petrol quadzillas are for folk with a farm.

I’d love my kids to have a petrol one but in reality to use it they’d be off in places they really shouldn’t be and would end up encountering cars and the general public.

[bennno]

Nissan leaf?

[996Type]

You mention budget of £1K, but say you bought this and used it hard for a few years & looked after it, you’d get the majority of your money back….

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226153026415?mkcid=16&a...

[Mont Blanc]

996Type said:

You mention budget of £1K, but say you bought this and used it hard for a few years & looked after it, you’d get the majority of your money back….

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226153026415?mkcid=16&a...

That is cheap for a Toylander, even if it does need a little bit of cosmetic work.

[kambites]

We got our daughter a relatively simple 12v one (not sure who made it but it was styled after an S-class cabriolet). It was decent enough to potter up and down the rough grassy area behind our house; would drive at a fast walking speed in the higher speed range and maybe half that in the lower. Range was about a mile on smooth ground (so maybe 15-20 minutes of constant driving on the higher speed), my gut feeling is that trying to get a vehicle to last 1 hour of reasonable speed driving is going to need something other than conventional lead acid batteries? It could get stuck on wet grass slopes because the "tyres" were relatively smooth hard plastic so I'd say proper tyres should be your main concern for your usecase.

Over the three-four years use she got out of it it got through 3 batteries, but they were some sort of standard motorbike lead acid thing so fairly cheap. We ended up giving it to a friend for this children and it's still going strong.

I think it was probably this one: https://riiroo.com/products/mercedes-s63-amg-ride-...

Edited by kambites on Thursday 23 May 11:39

[PRO5T]

Isn't the whole idea of a Toylander that the build is the main part of the fun? I reckon you need a skilled grandfather on board as no one with kids the age to use one has the time!

They're a shed load of money though, especially when you can buy something for a quarter of the price or a second hand quadzilla at less than half the price.

[Gazzas86]

General Price said:

We have one of these for our kids (5 year old and 3 year old), Its great, ability to lock it in first gear until you feel safe enough to allow them to go fast. The battery lasts a good few hours, We went on a couple of mile walk and we had 2 kids in the front and 2 in the back and it ploughed on through all the fields with ease.

We had a friend who works at John Deere, and got staff discount, i think we paid £400 for it.