A YouTuber Got Sick of Insane Gas Prices—So He Chopped a BMW i3 Into an $8,000 Electric Truck
If you drive a standard pickup truck in America right now, going to the gas station feels like a financial punishment. But making the switch to a fully electric pickup isn't exactly a budget-friendly alternative. If you want a brand new EV truck, you are generally staring down a massive $40,000 to $80,000 price tag.
YouTuber Michael Pick recently found himself in this exact dilemma. His old Ford Ranger was draining his wallet, but the modern EV truck market was entirely out of his price range.
"The average price of gas in America is over $4.50 a gallon; in LA it's over $6, that's insane," he explained. "I wanted something cheaper, a lot cheaper. So instead of waiting for somebody else to build one, I decided to build my own, and I gave myself two rules: I can't spend more than $10,000, and the total range has to be over 300 miles".
Chopping a Carbon Fiber BMW
To hit his strict budget, Michael purchased a heavily abused, sight-unseen 2017 BMW i3 from an online auction. The car was completely dead upon arrival, but a simple 12-volt battery replacement brought the screens back to life.
Crucially, he specifically purchased the "Rex" version of the i3. Hidden underneath the rear floor is a tiny, two-cylinder gasoline range extender engine. It doesn't drive the wheels; instead, it acts as an onboard generator to charge the battery when it gets low.
But to turn this quirky German commuter into a pickup, he had to cut the entire back half of the roof off. This is far more complicated than chopping up a normal steel car.
"This is where the i3 gets weird," Michael noted. "Unlike a normal car with a mostly steel passenger compartment, the i3's passenger cell is made primarily from carbon fiber, which is kind of insane… before the i3, this kind of construction was mostly reserved for exotics and supercars".
Armed with a specialized diamond blade designed for abrasive composite materials, he successfully chopped the hatch and roof away, instantly transforming the luxury hatchback into a tiny pickup silhouette.
Waterproofing and the Home Depot Test
Building the truck bed required a massive amount of custom fabrication. Because the i3's delicate electronics and iDrive system were exposed to the elements, Michael had to design a heavily waterproofed wooden bed structure coated in penetrating marine epoxy and durable bed liner.
He repurposed the original BMW rear door glass by tracing it onto ABS plastic to create a sealed rear cab wall, and even wired the factory LED taillights into 3D-printed housings so the BMW computer wouldn't throw any dashboard error codes.
To prove it wasn't just a pavement princess, he immediately took the finished product to the ultimate testing ground: the local Home Depot lumber aisle. Parked next to a massive Ford F-350, the tiny BMW managed to haul several long planks of lumber with ease thanks to a set of adjustable aluminum L-track tie-downs mounted in the bed.
The Final Budget
At the end of the project, the entire build—including the donor car, the custom bed, a new windshield, and an upgraded 12-inch Apple CarPlay screen—came in at less than $8,000.
To satisfy his 300-mile range rule, Michael strapped two 2-gallon gas cans to the truck bed, allowing the onboard generator to push the vehicle's total range well over 340 miles. He even rewired the BMW's factory overhead SOS button to trigger a blaring police siren just for fun.
"Filling up my new electric truck cost me only $10, and if I decide not to use gas and just go fully electric, it only cost me $4 to fully charge the high-voltage battery," Michael concluded. "This is the truck BMW should have built".
