This is a breath of fresh air. Modern pick up trucks post-2017 are giant vehicles with high danger to pedestrians. They are often touted as off road capable with high utility, and I see them in pristine condition on city streets hauling a totality of one human.
> They are often touted as off road capable with high utility, and I see them in pristine condition on city streets
When I was off-roading and traveling a lot of dirt trails with my truck I would also wash it, wax it, and keep it in pristine condition when I got back home.
What did you expect? That we’d leave the mud on it forever, never wash it, and all of the side panels would be bashed in? If you’d climb under the truck (as I do for oil changes) you could see a lot of scrapes and dings from rocks, but I avoid damaging the side and front because that’s very expensive to repair.
Anyway, most of the trucks sold today aren’t sold in the off-road trim. They’re sold with features like lower clearance air dams up front for better fuel economy, on-road tires for better road noise and fuel economy, and commonly in 2WD trims. A new F150 can get 25mpg on the freeway even without the hybrid option.
I work remote so my truck isn’t used for commutes. I frequently haul things in the bed. I off road with friends.
Yet that doesn’t stop some people from making snide remarks about driving a truck. Some people love being angry at truck drivers and imagining they’re all just making irrational choices. They won’t be happy until we’re driving to Home Depot or UHaul every other weekend to rent a truck or trailer instead of parking one in our driveways.
It doesn’t stop them from calling me up and asking for help moving furniture when they need it, though. :)
You seem very intent (here, and in the loneliness thread) on projecting your own experiences as the baseline on which things should be evaluated.
It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed. Millions of school pickups happening on massive trucks - and SUVs - are not ceasing to happen because you loaded your own with a pile of grass. People buy them because they’re “safer”, comfortable and look good. This is coming from research data for years now,
and not only in the USA.
It can be hard to relate to changes happening at societal scale that don’t affect your own microcosm, but how else can we be aware of it, and act on, if not through data, averages and trends?
Let's be honest. I only rarely use most of the features of my vehicles.
What's worse? A not in use bed, or a not in use back seat?
I have a truck, because I find it more convenient to have a truck bed anytime I need it, than to have to arrange to borrow or rent one. The bed doesn't get used often, but it's also a reasonable vehicle for driving solo or with one passenger; two in a pinch. Much better visibility than any other vehicle I have, too. Unfortunately, the single cab, 6-ft bed small truck market disappeared, and I got this one used with too big of an engine, so the mileage is poor... when I had a 4-cylinder small truck, mileage was better, but I don't drive that much anymore anyway.
But, I have lots of space, so I can keep a car for transporting a car pool in comfort, a PHEV with good mileage for longer trips that don't need anything special, a small truck for doing small truck things, and an old van with removed back seats that's fun to work on and can carry things that shouldn't get wet when it's raining. The van visibility towards the front is even better than the truck, because it's cabover, but visibility to the back isn't as good... None of those modern pillars that make it hard to see out the sides though.
You know, for someone who clearly is a bit triggered (reasonably) by dealing with whatever stereotypes and judgements people make about trucks and truck owners, their post is quite positive and respectful. Your reply to it is not. It seems like your argument is “the data indicates a statistical likelihood that someone judging, assuming, or stereotyping will still be accurate.” The factual inaccuracy of prejudice is not the problem with prejudice, the prejudice is
I fail to see how prejudice against waste is a problem.
Prejudice is a bad thing- for things that people can't change, like their race or age. Prejudice against people making bad or wasteful decisions is a good thing.
No, prejudice is bad, full stop. By definition it means to judge someone for something before you actually know for sure that they have/do the thing that bothers you. It doesn’t matter what the thing is, that’s not the problem or the point. The point is you can’t, or shouldn’t, view or treat someone as though they have some quality you dislike when you don’t actually know about this individual and only know that a high percentage of them do. You can’t judge an individual this way! If you hate waste (as do I) and you feel trucks contribute to that and that a majority of truck owners don’t make use of their trucks, then great! Speak about it exactly like that. But you can’t simply take any truck driver and say “that individual is wasteful” without knowing.
You can’t do that any more than you can assume my friends and I are criminals and drug dealers because at some point we decided to use Telegram as our primary messaging app, or like ICE can assume anyone standing near a pro-Mexico protest is an illegal immigrant, you cannot attribute a quality to an individual without having actual knowledge of it.
The point is you can't reliably tell if someone's choice of vehicle is wasteful unless you get to know them a bit. Snap-judging someone's entire lifestyle in the second it takes to recognize a make and model isn't constructive.
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed.
Just want to point out that big pickups are really about the hauling capacity, it's not like their beds are much bigger than a modern Ford Ranger. An F250 can safely pull 10 tons, and a dually F450 can pull 20t. Usually you aren't towing...but when you need to haul nontrivial loads you need a big truck.
> You seem very intent (here, and in the loneliness thread) on projecting your own experiences as the baseline on which things should be evaluated.
I was pointing out that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You cannot conclude that a truck never goes off-road by observing them on city streets. That was your claim, and I explained why it didn’t make sense. I also explained why trucks are not primarily sold as off-road vehicles anyway.
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed
If you read the “studies” that make these claims they use two tricks:
First, they specifically exclude a truck defined as a work truck.
Second, they redefine “using the bed” to some arbitrary threshold, like hauling a large load of loose dirt or hauling something over so many hundred pounds.
If you actually believe that truck owners aren’t putting anything in the truck bed, you’re out of touch.
But why does this one point trigger you so much? If I showed you a similar study that the majority of people with back seats rarely had more than 2 people in their cars, would you become similarly enraged at the people buying 5-seat cars instead of a compact 2-seater?
If I showed you a study that the majority of people rarely use more than 200 horsepower would you start getting triggered by all of the 300, 400, or even 500 horsepower cars so wastefully driving around?
There’s something about pickup trucks, specifically, that makes a vocal minority irrationally angry and triggered. It’s a funny meme to watch because so many comments in this thread are absolutely sure that they understand the situation but they don’t understand basic facts about how you can’t tell if someone goes off-road by judging the condition of their paint, or that using a truck for work purposes doesn’t render it visibly damaged in a way that they can see. They just see trucks, get triggered, mix it with misleading “studies”, and come to believe odd conclusions like “truck drivers don’t use their beds”
Why are you triggered by the vocal irrational minority? You seem quite defensive for someone who is confident and comfortable in the the truck they own and how they use it and maintain it.
Not them, but I find that people who take out political frustration against non-political things quite annoying.
For example, when Tesla was blue-coded, way more comments here were highly forgiving, if not outright glazing. They became red-coded, and suddenly you’d see tons of highly technical reasons they sucked. You can gut yourself into coming up with many reasons this isn’t true, but it’s definitely true.
Trucks have gotten this since the beginning.
It’s not that it’s triggering, it’s just more annoying to have to waste a lot of time reading things that are clearly therapy for the poster more than any sort of interesting opinion.
It's getting harder to find good online discussions devoid of bias and emotions. With user moderation, control goes to those with the most time to waste online, meaning the least happy, productive and social.
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed.
I'm not here to defend brodozers, but you cannot possibly prove this statement. That a _pickup truck_ isn't hauling the majority of the time it is on the road is not some new thing. But of course there are more pickup trucks on the road than ever, so if you argument is aggregate time of all pickup trucks not doing truck things is the highest its ever been is certainly true, but you'd probably have to go back to before the 80s for that number to actually be meaningfully different per truck.
Not sure what you mean by "prove this statement" but answering questions like this is exactly why organizations do consumer research. To wit [1]:
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
The hauling figure is useless without specifying what they mean.
Usually these “studies” redefine hauling to mean something specific like hauling loose dirt or something extremely heavy.
If you can read a quote claiming 2/3 of truck owners don’t “put something in the bed” more than once a year then and not realize that something is wrong with these statistics then you’re missing something.
The question is not whether they "put something in the bed" — it's whether they use the bed in such a way that the trunk or back seat of a smaller vehicle would be unsuitable.
There’s a quote from some consulting firm that goes around claiming 2/3 of truck drivers don’t “put something in the bed” more than once a year.
It’s a laughable claim for anyone who thinks about it for more than a second.
The way they usually get to these numbers is by redefining what “hauling a load” means to be something extremely heavy or for loose fill materials. So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
The company in question has been doing their survey for two decades. It’s a private data set, but has been reported on by multiple serious news outlets which will have their own data scientists looking over the data, e.g. Axios: https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history
You can also verify the data is coming from real drivers, by searching for “New Vehicle Experience Study” and seeing all the posts from users who receive the survey and think it’s some kind of scam.
A rack mount on a normal European-sized car is perfectly sufficient for a couple bicycles, I have one, and a trailer for my enduro motorcycle, or a fridge, or anything else I occasionally transport. Anything bigger and I'll rent an actual truck.
> So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
Even if that’s the case, the truck owners doing this probably don’t need a full size truck. A 90s-era small truck or maybe even a kei truck would suffice, and yet more often than not the trucks in question are the likes of F-150s.
Agreed, unfortunately small trucks are increasingly harder and harder to find. A 90s truck also won’t have the amenities that a modern truck has.
I think if they are just hauling mountain bikes, they could get a small hitch installed and purchase a high-quality bike rack. A roof rack can carry 2x4s very well.
> So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
If that's all you're doing, anything more than a Maverick is overkill. Bike racks and wood delivery are a thing. Shit you can fit a mountain bike in the back of a sedan. I see people doing this at trailheads all the time.
Those suburban moms don't need a Yukon to take their two kids to soccer practice either.
I dislike the whole "justify why you like X" thing. People can always find the flimsiest of reasons why they want to prohibit things they don't like and then demand others justify why they should get to keep what they have. Just simply liking something never seems enough for those fighters against joy.
I really don't like pick up trucks. I also think most of their practical uses can be achieved with other vehicles. But that shouldn't concern me. If the owner of the car gets joy out of it, then that should be enough. I don't have to like what others like, and they don't have to like what I like.
>If the owner of the car gets joy out of it, then that should be enough.
For most things, yes, absolutely! However, considering the dangers of huge trucks it is very valid to have concerns about them. An exaggerated analogy: if the owner of a gun gets joy out of free firing it into the air that should be enough.
Respectfully, if you don’t know how long a 2x4 is, I think it would be very reasonable to look this up, as it will make you much better equipped to make this argument.
I generally agree with what you are saying, and frequently haul 2x4s without my truck - but the solution to that is a long flatbed trailer, not a Thule hitch attachment.
it does depend a lot on what you buy it for, but obviously 8' is a good benchmark.
But honestly... at 8' I'm not sure why you're bothering with anything (unless you're getting a lot of them), i usually just threw 8 footers in my Honda Fit and closed the hatch.
Ironically most pickup truck beds are shorter than 8' and most likely a 8' piece of lumber would have to lay diagonally sticking out over one of the edges.
Still good for occasional piece of furniture, lots of lumber, or plywood.
> A new F150 can get 25mpg on the freeway even without the hybrid option.
As a non-American it's super weird that this is considered a good thing. That'd be considered utterly atrocious in most parts of the developed world.
I completely get that a truck is absolutely the best tool for the job for many people. But it's pretty obvious the OP was pointing out the people who own a truck and use it to get from home to their desk job.
The average fuel economy for cars on the road right now is around 25mpg.
You can also get a 40-50mpg brand new sedan here if you want, but they serve different purposes.
You can also get a hybrid F150 that gets better mileage.
You can also get a fully electric F150 that doesn’t use any gas at all.
I was trying to make a point to counter the silly assumptions throughout this thread, such as the person who keeps claiming trucks are “incompetent” at being normal vehicles.
I'm having to convert to US gallons to Imperial here but...
My old ICE car was getting approx 50mpg (which is approx 41mpg for you) and was considered poor for its age. My new one (hybrid) is 60mpg (approx 50mpg for you).
For a fairly modern car (e.g under 10 years old) in the UK you'd expect at least 40–50 MPG (UK) / 33–42 MPG (US), and even that would be considered on the lower end. Most modern cars are either electric or hybrid here these days so you'd expect 60–100 MPG (UK) / 50–83 MPG (US).
Few modern gas cars will get over 50 US MPG in city usage. 35 MPG is probably a better estimate for the hybrid fleet which is still much, much better than gas cars of a decade ago.
25 is terrible highway mileage. When I (USA) had a pickup truck as my daily commuter for a few years 5-10 years back, I got ~22 mpg on "city" roads, and >30 mpg on highways. And that's not considered good.
This is a deeply emotional response to someone making the completely obvious point that the vast majority of trucks are grocery haulers. That's not opinion - it's statistics.
People addicted to online forums love to comment and upvote posts which trash talk trucks. People who own and enjoy trucks are busy leading fun and productive lives and can't be bothered to waste their time with online arguments.
> I see them in pristine condition on city streets hauling a totality of one human.
It’s about having one vehicle that can do it all. Maybe you’re noticing when there’s one human but you don’t really know how else that person is using the vehicle at other times. Trucks can haul people, things, do road trips, etc. pretty well.
You’re spamming this same study throughout the thread without realizing that is uses a different and much stricter definition of “hauling” than the average person.
I live in a big city and two children under 10 have been killed by large pickup trucks within a half mile of my home in the last five years. Two that I know of anyway, because I'm acquainted with the families. One had been modified with a "bull bar" making it more dangerous to pedestrians.
>based on the evidence and data
>Evidence and data show that cake taste better than bread, why are they starving? Let them eat cake
I really wonder what kind of world people live in who write such articles and what kind of world people live in who seriously read them. It's hard to believe that they live among us, there must be some separate island in the ocean or something like that where they can write their articles in complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Ehh, vehicle affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem if people can’t make financially rational choices themselves. As of this comment, the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000, while the average price of a new mid-size pickup truck is about $42,690. This is before tariff impacts are baked in. Doesn’t include operating costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance), putting monthly payments around $1k/month (at least). Let them drive studio apartments around I suppose, if they can get financed and not repo’d in the near term.
Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it? You would not. This is different? Everyone is entitled to wildly conspicuous consumption? I argue no.
>affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem
But that complete bs. Vehicle affordability is not in any danger, average price of a new pickus trucks depends on the amount of money the population has. Even if the middle class completely disappears, people will just drive cheaper pickups.
>Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it?
But they could. And that the reason why "the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000"
I’ll see if I have access to the Cox Automotive pickup truck specific repo stats as soon as I’m not mobile. Based on the auto loan delinquency and repo rates, the evidence is fairly robust that people cannot afford these price levels. They get off the lot with the vehicle, certainly, that’s super easy due to easy credit, but then the clock starts ticking on when the car gets repo’d.
(~100M Americans are sub 700 FICO subprime, 33-40% of consumers depending on credit reporting agency providing the data)
The original comment is just about how "irrational" it is.
And truck owners pay more - for the vehicle, for tires, for registration, for gas, etc which are all taxed by the public to reflect their greater usage of public roads.
You would need to argue that trucks have a disproportionate impac. For example, if I commute 2 hours to work in an Accord, is that a greater negative externality than owning a Truck a commuting 15 minutes?
I suspect the answer is no - a truck is some small multiple of a smaller vehicle.
What I see in this thread is that the narrow demographic here is merely expressing a preference - they don't like trucks, and they wish that could be imposed on others. Ultimately, you need to convince your fellow men in an election.
Pickup trucks weigh about 1.5x as much as a sedan (comparing Camry to F150). Due to the fourth power law, they should be taxed about 5 times higher than a sedan simply for road maintainence. I don’t have the numbers, but I doubt that is so. Toll roads typically charge per axle, and as below, gas tax is probably only about 2x. Ironically, EVs should pay more tax for maintenance since they are usually quite a bit heavier—though the OP truck is still ~600 lb lighter than an F150.
Fuel economy is about half in a pickup vs. a sedan, so they pollute that much more. Gas tax obviously scales here, but do the other taxes? Does gas tax go towards remedying the pollution impact at all? I don’t know.
Then there’s the safety impact on pedestrians and other vehicles. I don’t have numbers here, sorry.
Also, if you consider the externalities of cars in general, there's the additional issue of designing our communities around them rather than around the people who live there.
This quote is kinda a meme by now but here's SimCity lead designer Stone Librande on how the team had to make parking lots unrealistically small for the game to be enjoyable [1]:
> When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
If you spend any time looking at parking lots on satellite maps you quickly realize parking lots are nearly always at least twice as large as the building they are for.
Ironically, I don't think ignorance means what you think it means. It simply means not knowing something; it's not, for example, an attitude in itself.
Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.
If you buy a product that comes with a ton of negative externalities and then don't use the single feature that distinguishes it from other products, people will rightly judge you.
> Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.
No, they aren't. I attend a significant amount of track events as a driver and I will see maybe 1 electic car every few events. Besides the lack of charging infrastrucutre at most race tracks, the one positive of instant torque/power is significantly outweighed by their overall mass and significant heat generation.
The latter tends to result in a Tesla S being unable to last more than 20 minutes at Laguna Seca or Sonoma before the battery pack overheats and reduces power output requiring the car to exit the track.
A lot of modern “trucks” are pretty crappy for actually hauling anything. A few months ago I had the pleasure of loading some furniture into an Escalade. The outside is huge, but the inside is remarkably small. The height of the interior floor is also ridiculous, so it’s extra difficult to lift anything into the vehicle. I don’t think most full size pickups are a lot better.
Also, check out the underside of most of these monster vehicles. The approach, breakover, and departure angles may be awesome, but that’s only because the definitions assume uniform height transverse to the driving direction. If you drive these things over any substantial bump that the wheels don’t go over, the differential will bottom out. Oops. This means that, for many practical purposes, the height of the vehicle and the absurd suspensions don’t buy nearly as much capability as they might appear to.
I wouldn’t consider an Escalade a truck, just a luxury SUV. A Hilux/Tacoma, Tundra or F150 are trucks. And they pretty capable of doing all the things. My Tundra might be one of the best cars I ever owned.
This. I have had a 2016 F-150 since late 2017 - I'd never owned a truck before. I can go get mulch, take an entire bed-load of stuff to the dump (couches, mattresses, etc). When we go on vacation within driving distance (usually up to 500ish miles for us, we can bring more or less anything we want without concern for space. We took my wife's SUV 2 weeks ago on a 700 mile trip (her mid-sized SUV is much newer) and we had to pack very carefully compared to when we take the truck. Our son plays ice hockey, his hockey equipment stinks (yes it gets aired out...he's still a stinky teenager), but it's never an issue because with the truck, it's not in the passenger compartment. We live in the south but drove to Pittsburgh through 2 snowstorm there and back...lots of SUVs stranded on the road...my 4x4 F-150 made it through without any trouble. When my father in law passed last year, we moved all of his things out of his apartment with my truck. I let my neighbors borrow it when they need to move something large. The only thing that sucks about it is parking in store parking lots. That and buying a newer (not brand new) costs 2x what I paid for my 2016 in 2017. I've toyed with getting rid of it for something smaller, but it's just too versatile for me to give up.
> Maybe you’re noticing when there’s one human but you don’t really know how else that person is using the vehicle at other times.
95% of big trucks I see on the road have one person in them and beyond my anecdotal experience we know statistically that most vehicle trips involve 1 person. It's not super hard to extrapolate from there.
I'm not even particularly "anti" truck, though I do think the increase in size and weight has gotten totally ridiculous.
In a sane society "knowing someone with a truck" is all you really need. In a highly individualistic society "having a truck just in case" is the dominant precept
Fully agreed. Although to add, I literally never met someone with a truck, and in fact never owned a car myself either, but rented a car and also ranted a van plenty of times during a move, even with a driver.
Same reason I don't own an airplane, I just rent one with a driver if I go on holiday trips.
Big caveat: I've always lived in a (capital) city of my country and I have no kids yet.
But by and large I think renting for the 3 day a year use-case makes more sense than owning 365 days of the year, even if you have no friends to rely on.
This. I learned as much when I was clobbered by a distracted teen and my SUV ended up in the shop. I use it a lot for moving people, things and towing (like daily). Nobody would rent me a SUV and allow me to tow with it, only commercial truck rentals at ridiculous rates.
And for the truck driver haters three things:
- Are you speaking from experience or projection? Stereotyping doesn’t work. After owning a large SUV for 25 years I can say with conviction that the price is worth the utility to me. No question.
- I would LOVE to also own a small electric scooter for small trips. The cost and poor quality have put me off for years but it’s inevitable I’ll end up with one soon.
- Our next sedan will be electric as well, and probably weigh more than the SUV.
I did this for a while. You’re leaving out some ancillary details: time driving to and from home depot to pick up and drop off the truck, needing a truck and no rentals available, picking up a rental truck and there’s some issue with it, something happens out of your control that requires more time with the truck but you can’t extend the rental… all things i’ve encountered.
At some point the number of times i needed to use it picked up (hah) which multiplied these inconveniences enough that it became worth it to just pick up (hah) a used truck.
I use it exclusively for hauling work, but that usually entails at least one trip without a load, which may lead people to incorrectly judging me for driving it unnecessarily.
> * a truck is just a car that misses a roof over the back part of it
Respectfully, a truck is not just a car missing the back part of it. It often has a lot more power, is lifted, has off-road springs, larger wheels, low and high speed gear box, roll cage for the front cabin, raised air intake - the list goes on.
Most people, though, do just need a car with a removable back.
You don’t know that. You’re making assumptions. But even if that were true, so what? Maybe it is important to that person’s quality of life to have the truck for weekend adventures or chores.
If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs. Most people buy trucks as a lifestyle choice, not as a practical one.
That’s not to say there aren’t real uses for trucks, or people who use them for their designed purpose.
That’s also not to say people should be required to purchase only vehicles that meet their basic transportation requirements. People drive sports cars even without ever going out to a track.
Trucks (and full-size SUVs) specifically push some pretty crappy externalities onto other road users, so it’s not exactly crazy to be annoyed with people who buy and drive big trucks a personality trait.
> If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs.
I generally beat the crap out of my truck and the exterior looks just fine.
It's really not hard to avoid damaging your exterior. In fact, you have to have a total accident or be completely negligent to cause actual damage. Stuff goes in the bed of the truck. The bed had a bunch of nicks and dings in it, but you're not going to be seeing that while casting judgement.
Heck, go take a look at the work trucks. Find something like a welding truck, an electrician, or a plumber. These are all trucks that people literally use every single day for work, tossing stuff in and out of the bed. They just don't look that beat up. That's because it's just not that hard to avoid completely destroying your vehicle.
I'm sitting here smh. Everyone in my (rural) neighborhood owns a pickup truck. Except for the one dude who towed a skid steer with an Escalade. Those trucks are often towing trailers, hauling messy crap, etc. and don't look any different than any other truck on the road.
Hell, I just unhooked a horse trailer less than an hour ago and the year-old truck that was hauling it looks like it just drove off the showroom floor.
>If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs. Most people buy trucks as a lifestyle choice, not as a practical one.
No you wouldn’t. Off-roading, hauling things, and towing trailers does not require destroying the finish or exterior of the truck in any way.
Yep. Trucks that actually get used as trucks look like it with dings, scratches, and scuffs because they’re tools, not toys.
Ironically they’re also often old small models that owners have been keeping running forever because they’re cheap to fix, practical, and easy to park unlike their embiggened modern counterparts.
> Trucks that actually get used as trucks look like it with dings, scratches, and scuffs because they’re tools, not toys.
Not really. Lots of people use trucks and keep them in pristine condition too. Beds have liners now to keep them looking new. And you aren’t getting random dings on the outside unless you drive into things.
The amount of effort required to keep them pristine scales with the quantity and intensity of the work performed, no? The most serious truck drivers probably aren’t going to have time to buff out every little mark when it’s going to get covered in them again on the job tomorrow.
People who drive a truck for work aren't going to crash it into things all the time, what are you even talking about? Do you regularly crash your car into things while driving it? Like on a daily basis?
Like..you get that mud and dust just wash off, and the reason to wash them off is that once dried they can mess up the paint over a long period which then gives you a rust problem you really don't want?
The people I know who drive trucks are doing things where constant small bits of damage are inevitable. Think kicked up gravel, tree branches scraping against the body, unintentionally bumping up against the truck with equipment, etc. Damage is frequent enough that it’s one of the reasons they find buying a new truck difficult to justify and would rather buy something that’s got some visible wear and tear on it already.
I do know that because I see the same trucks driving around my neighborhood with Jerry cans and recovery boards 7 days of the week!
Best case you’re looking at 28.5% weekend utilization which isn’t that bad, much better than the 1% I joked with, but how many people do you know taking an offroad adventure every single weekend?
So what? Yeah I don’t really care. It’s mostly hilarious watching them try to park.
Does it have to be an off road adventure specifically? I feel like most people will want to get two vehicles in their family that can do many things, since that’s what they have room for, rather than more. A truck could be used for off road stuff but it could also be used for taking kids and gear to their games, or for a weekend camping trip, or just for commuting. It can do whatever you need without needing to rent a different vehicle or borrow from a friend or whatever. That’s peace of mind and flexibility. I don’t even own one but I do appreciate that aspect.
The other day, I was just remarking how my minivan makes a better pickup than most pickups for most tasks. For years I've wanted to get another truck (had an old Dakota that I had to sell when kid #3 was on the way). Practicality reigns, though, and I'm extremely satisfied with the usability of the van.
The people I know with pick-ups don't use the bed half the time "in case it rains today" and have to tow a covered trailer to haul anything that wouldn't like to get wet.
Getting a cheap minivan with an ugly, worn out interior that’s been through the rigors of family and ripping the seats out seems like it’d be a great cost saving hack for a number of businesses that people often buy trucks or small commercial vans for.
You can do all those things with a vehicle half the size. Modern F-150s are industrial vehicles. They weight 5000 pounds. They and their large SUV cousins are a menace to pedestrians, normal-sized vehicles, and the road itself.
Not to the same ability. Sedans and mid size SUVs have far less space, and also less ground height. If you’re traveling on gravel roads or camping, most sedans and smaller SUVs aren’t ideal. If you have kids, space fills up quickly even for small trips. If you’re moving something larger (like drywall or a TV) it may not fit at all in a smaller vehicle. Even most full size SUVs also have less space than a full size truck (even one that isn’t one of the larger models).
The argument Telo makes is that you can have high utility in a smaller vehicle designed well. I was my own GC for a site-built home and sub contracted out many parts of it. I did it while owning a 2 door Mini SE. Only twice did I need to rent truck from my local Home Depot to haul some unwieldy and heavy debris. Most stores will deliver what you need (lumber, large pipes, insulation, etc) because consumer trucks are rarely large enough. I would not have been able to load any significant amount of lumber into an F250. That leaves large vehicles for recreation or family space. I hope car manufacturers rethink vehicle packaging now that EV motors and batteries allow for different confirmations like putting the motor in the wheel hub.
And, the sub contractors - the ones doing the work (immigrants) - they had a wide variety of vehicles. I took note that some had Camrys, Prius, old Golfs, small picks ups like Rangers, and some older mid size trucks that were visually heavily used. Else, they used commercial trucks or vans. When did I see the prestigious full cab F150s or Silverado RTs? When I originally interviewed GCs which is when I noticed they drove their clean and new trucks.
They did a good job maximizing wheelbase given the small size, which is very important for safe and comfortable towing. I look forward to their launch and some real-world reviews and drive tests.
The vast majority of dirt roads are fine. I put hundreds of miles on my 1996 Honda Civic hatchback in the Cascades with no problems many years ago.
If the road existed in the 1990s, it's quite likely accessible by a mid-size SUV. Similarly, if families of 4 could go camping with cars from 1950-2000, you can today as well. In fact, you can get more compact tents, etc. today.
Trucks and huge SUVs come in handy if you want to bring lots of modern toys like gigantic prestige coolers and 4x4s.
I have multiple times driven a Mustang Mach E (a heavy, very low ride height EV) out to a friend’s property an hour off of anything resembling a road, down multiple dirt switchbacks into the bottom of the Yuba River canyon.
Where I'm from, people often own a car for their commute to work, and rent a van when they're moving. Their regular car is way less of a hassle for other people than the van is, but that's okay, cause the van is just for a few days.
I now own a truck. I’m actually
regretting not getting a bigger/heavier duty one. The biggest limitation is payload capacity. Payload is anything that puts weight on the vehicle - occupants, dogs, gear, food, supplies, bed covers/caps, etc. You must legally be under payload capacity or you can risk fines or liability in an accident. A lot of people are willing to push these limits, but cops pay a lot more attention to people towing/hauling.
If you want to actually tow with your truck, you need to allot a good portion of your payload to trailer weight (and hitches) that rests on the truck (tongue weight). This can range from 200lbs to 1k+ lbs, but is typically in the 500 to 600lb range for something like a boat or travel trailer. It can easily go higher if you load the trailer up with stuff.
A typical light duty truck might have 1500 lbs of payload capacity. Four people and their belongings can easily add up to 800lbs. Add pets, bikes, travel gear, food, etc and your suddenly well over 1k lbs of payload. You literally have no capacity to tow anything but the smallest of trailers.
So what do you do, well you get a bigger truck. You don’t need it all of the time, but it just doesn’t make sense to own a vehicle that cannot legally handle a family road trip.
Before people say “rent”. That comes with its own major set of issues. The biggest being little to no ability to tow with a rental vehicle. Most rentals flat out prohibit towing (even if technically capable and equipped). Those that do allow towing, generally limit it to 1st party trailers (U-Haul truck can only tow u-haul trailer).
I agree generally, but blame the makers I guess. One important thing to remember is bed length. Trying to haul plywood or 2x4s with a 5 ft bed is a joke, and not easy with even a 6 ft bed.
The old, small rangers used to have a 7 ft bed option! I believe the longest you can get today is 6. So if you want a longer bed, you're kinda forced into the full size fold.
I don't know how well they'd actually sell, but it'd be neat if they at least offered something maybe a hair bigger than maverick sized with a 7 ft bed.
I don't think this generalization is quite fair. I'm sure this is true for some folks and their social circles, but for those of us who engineer and know our way around a Home Depot, the capacity is a game changer. I used to have to rent or borrow trucks for my projects.
Not to mention Christmas trees, moving, helping friends out, etc.
> The typical number of times an American non work truck is used to haul a load each year is zero.
If you specifically exclude work trucks and define “haul a load” as filling up the bed with loose dirt or gravel or something then I could believe this.
I haven’t put a cubic yard of anything in my truck bed this year but hauling a cubic yard of anything is a rare occurrence for someone who isn’t doing landscaping.
But you have to really stretch the definitions if you believe that people never put anything in the bed to haul.
Hm, sounds like you don't really need a truck... The world is racing to +4C and you're over here defending 25mpg gender affirming care mobiles - you're on the wrong side of this one buddy.
Those effectively don't exist anymore. The fine multiplier was reduced to zero, so there's no penalty for violating the standards, retroactive back to 2022.
I noticed the lack of a "crumple zone" the instant I saw the image.
...and a moment later, I also realized it's usually a solid engine block that sits there. I shudder to think of what actually happens when that zone "crumples".
Back to the Telo MT1, it's great that they redesigned it from the ground up, around it being an EV -- it's like the Phelps Tractor having reins, and then somebody asking "why does it need to have reins if there's no horse?"
The engine is designed to move based on the design of the frame rails and mounts -- it is pushed under the passenger compartment, absorbing and deflecting more energy.
I'm sure the Telo is designed to modern standards and would perform similarly. I'd be more worried about expensive damage to the vehicle in less personally dangerous collisions.
> ...and a moment later, I also realized it's usually a solid engine block that sits there. I shudder to think of what actually happens when that zone "crumples".
I believe the engine drops down and the rest crumples inward, at least in theory.
Decades of research, innovation, crash tests and rule changes have been put into improving safety in head on collisions. It’s not like you’re the first who wonders what will happen with engine block. It’s designed to go down.
Although I don’t know about American trucks. I think they are meant to wreak havoc on every single person involved.
My neighbour designs the crumble zone on Volvo's heavy duty trucks. They at least spend a shit ton of effort (continuous, multi-decade) on making anything hit by the truck having as little effect as possible (at least).
Quite a challenge with heavy duty trucks shipping tens of tons of stuff, but anyway.
Vehicular elephantiasis is largely the result of perverse incentives from emission regulation. Make something big enough and it fits into different more lax categories. The way we do emission and mileage standards might do more harm than good unless you’re an oil company.
Maybe, but it's clearly worked it's way into fashions as well. The F-150 lightning doesn't have to worry about emissions categories, but it's just as elephantine as the rest, including a child-killing vision-obstructing front hood and grille whose only purpose is to enclose a frunk.
I’ve driven plenty in Europe. Those small cramped roads can’t handle big vehicles and parking anywhere is non existent or highly inconvenient. I bet that’s the main reason European cars tend to skew smaller.
I have a Subaru Forester. When I drive a sedan everyone shines their headlamps into my face. I parked my Forester behind a sedan and drove back and forth. My lights were not in their cabin.
So other people drive in a way that is not compatible with my driving because I don’t want headlamps in my cabin. Occasionally there’s a lifted truck behind me and it brightens my cabin.
In those moments I fantasize about placing retroreflectors all over my rear seat headrests but then I pull over and let them past and the moment passes.
Besides, a HN truism is “Yield to gross tonnage”. I liked that. It makes sense that HN users who believe that if you’re big others should get out of the way also get large cars.
“The cemeteries are full of people with right of way” so smaller vehicles should get out of the way of larger vehicles or risk death. It’s a good lesson. Can’t say it’s false.
I guess there should be rules about the height of headlights. It seems like exactly the sort of safety and compatibility problem that standards exist to solve.
US mainstream belief is that standards can be enforced at factory but no laws should be enforced on individuals. I act in that ecosystem. Not worsening it, but not sacrificing myself to it.
What is also obviously true is that road damage scales with the fourth power of vehicle mass, and that therefore vehicle taxation should increase at a similar power, so that the drivers of the 3-tonne trucknutted Canyoneros stop freeloading on the community.
Also the arms race of collision survivablity. I have no interest in driving a big truck, but with all the other big trucks out there I’m seriously tempted just for my own safety…
The big trucks are not evaluated for safety to the same standard as other vehicles. They aren't rigged with exploding gas tanks anymore, but the feeling of safety is mostly psychological.
That’s not the safety risk. The safety risk is not being in a big truck and getting hit by one. It’s not so much to do with the vehicle’s safety features as to (1) mass; and (2) height of the cabin.
That’s part of the issue. The safety ratings of a pickup truck do not incorporate the risk of the front end causing fatalities in collisions.
The feeling of safety is part of that - drivers think they have better visibility due to seating position. They are also more likely to roll and spin out than other vehicles.
I've been looking at the GTK Boxer since it was first announced. The modularity means you can bring the kids to school then swap the rear module for one more suited to transporting raw materials, you just need a garage equipped with a 15t crane to do the swap at home in just a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn_WblYc4xk
It is much safer to be in a big truck hitting an another big truck, than in a small sedan hitting a big truck. Physics of momentum beats out safety features. Actual studies do show this: it is safer for the occupant of the truck in a two-vehicle collision.
More trucks on the road make the chance of fatalities overall higher. You often find articles saying that fatalities go up when you introduce a truck, and that is true. But that's because trucks are more likely to kill pedestrians or drivers of smaller cars, NOT because of risk to the truck driver. []
It would be better if there were fewer trucks on the road. But if everyone else is buying a truck, it becomes your selfish incentive to do so as well, for the safety of your* family. It is a tragedy of the commons situation.
[*] The exception is single-vehicle accidents, e.g. rollovers. Those are riskier and more likely for the driver of a truck, but also less of a concern in suburban driving.
The risk to pedestrians is pretty much a non-factor in this. It’s going to come down to business / agriculture adoption where I see the largest market opportunity. Think service technicians such as HVAC, plumbers, construction. If these can make financial sense in terms of ROI and cost of ownership then Telo can make it. Currently the base price of $41,500 is a bit on the higher end, though of course will save dramatically on fuel and maintenance over industry standard vans and light trucks.
I want a tiny car. The problem is that road design is unsafe so people buy bigger cars so they are safer when they get into an accident. I've seen the aftermath of a Chrysler Fiat getting into a collision with an SUV and lets just say the Fiat driver had much worse day than the SUV driver.
I don't think you thought this one through... if anything you're making the opposite point you're (I believe) trying to make.
I'm writing this on a macbook air that sizes up to <2.5% of the weight and volume of a desktop computer you're describing (screen, case and peripherals). It's also idling at about 2-3 watt, which is also <10% of the computer you're describing. It also produces much less sound, it's entirely quiet.
So size, weight and power usage and noise are way down.
The idea that I'd use a pentium 3 instead is ridiculous for these very reasons (heavier, bigger, noisier, using more energy), even in private use, and especially in public use.
It's also the reason why bigger, heavier, noisier and more energy-consuming cars, are also ridiculous to many people, particularly those not driving them and having to face them in the public sphere.
Why is it wrong to have a powerful vehicle if you don't always use it for tasks demanding that power, but it's okay to have a surplus of power for low-demanding computing tasks?
Same reason I don't want to have dinner in a restaurant next to someone trying to cut their steak with a chainsaw: at best they are being incredibly obnoxious, at worst they are going to maim me. Just because it is better for your once-a-month weekend lumberjack trip with the boys doesn't mean it is an appropriate one-size-fits-all cutting tool for day-to-day use.
Contrast that with someone having a needlessly powerful computer. How does that impact the rest of the world? Not at all, it only impacts the owner's wallet. Someone's needlessly-powerful computer has never killed a child, or taken up four spots in public. Heck, it'll even downclock when idle, so there isn't even any extra power use to be worried about!
Because accomplishing the same task with a more powerful (i.e. larger) vehicle is a) more polluting, and b) more dangerous for other road users; two things that are not true for a surplus of computing power.
Because by and large the apps and programs you are running on your computer requires lots of resources just to open and allow you to do your low-demanding tasks.
People by and large don’t really know what they want, they purchase based on vibes and manipulation. If people in general really wanted these trucks they’d be more popular outside of America. The truck has been a boiled frog, slowly growing in size and people haven’t realised it. Also Americans in general have a bit of a cultural issue with ego, individualism and all that, which doesn’t help.
Even Tacomas are larger than they used to be. One day not too long ago when I was running errands I came across an early 2000s Tacoma (before they got bumped up to midsize trucks) and was almost dumbfounded, because it’d been so long since I’d seen a truck that size. It’s a great size, but nobody makes them like that any more.
I’d like a small truck for DIY house projects in a suburb, but even the “small” Ford Maverick is nearly a foot longer than a 2000 Tacoma and the 2025 Tacoma is about two feet longer, both of which would be awkward to park and maneuver on the tight streets around here. Their increased height is dangeorus with all the kids running around, too. So, well, I don’t have a truck.
The Telo and maybe Slate are the first two modern trucks that I could realistically consider. Hoping for an R3T that’s sized similarly to Rivian’s upcoming R3 (which is comparable in size to a VW Golf) but that’s probably not going to happen.
- The body panels were composite but they want to go to stamped metal for production.
- It's based off of the subaru ascent; at least most of the frame and suspension is.
- NMC chemistry, didn't get an OEM name for the actual cell/pouch though.
- Mostly off the shelf Bosch power-train components. Will be interesting to see a tear-down once they're for sale.
- No commitment on how "open" the vehicle will be to modifications. They have designed in attachment points for upgrades but it didn't seem to be anywhere as extensive as what Slate is doing. This makes some sense; they have a more "finished" vision where Slate is intentionally taking the "our vision is for you to buy the canvas from us and then make it your own" approach.
On that last point, I don't think Slate has released anything substantial either w/r/t the CAN bus either. As far as I know, their plan is still a BYOD approach for the head-unit so here's hoping that it'll be relatively straight forward to interrogate the busses from an android or linux device. The Telo had a head-unit integrated so who knows how much control you'll have over the vehicle.
This is cool I guess but I don’t get why some of these electric car companies have to design cars that look like toys. Rivian and this. It looks like a golf cart with a flatbed. I think an electric kei truck would have a huge market in the US but the design needs some work to be taken seriously.
There’s something to be said for being distinctive, but you can do that while not looking silly (Lucid is a good example). And simply being a small electric truck is enough differentiation anyway
They had a ton of design constraints, and looking like a toy wasn't one of them. This is what their solution to those constraints (such as more range via a low coefficient of drag) looks like. Very few people are capable of evaluating a vehicle without their biases influencing them, such as what a masculine truck needs to look like.
To 99% of consumers in the US, kei trucks look like toys, so I'm not sure that's the best example.
Honestly, if you look at the truck market, it's dominated by masculine designs like the F-150. Arguably this has created a gap in the market for designs that are more compact and approachable. It may never be the majority, but TELO looks perfectly suited to address that niche.
I find it amusing that people are discussing the masculine design language and how men driving trucks are overcompensating (OK, not so much in this particular thread), but for as long as I can remember, it's been women that have always told me that they prefer bigger vehicles.
This looks like a kei truck, who by definition looks like a toy.
Seriously though, it has the same shape and look of any kei I've seen. Like others, I wish for a 90s era Ford Ranger or Tacoma, but between safety requirements and capability demand from people that's probably not practical.
I love the fantastic designs and form factors popping up in mini-EV truck/SUV space. My worry is for the business feasibility for these. Why isn’t Tesla making these? They have the supply chain and expertise to easily pull it off and they’d be such a big hit. People switching to them for light cargo would be a REAL contribution in cutting use of carbon.
I can think of one possibility. At Tesla’s scale, production becomes feasible only if they can produce X million units. This is because setting up production tooling, supply chain channels, and other associated costs is prohibitively expensive. Additionally, the demand for these vehicles will be relatively low until influential YouTubers in the construction, farming, and rural sectors become advocates and start promoting them.
In my opinion, electric vehicles (EVs) are perfectly suited for this task. They are ideal for transporting heavy items between nearby destinations, such as moving Home Depot supplies to a construction site or Costco products to a restaurant or store. A range of even 200 miles is practical for this use-case and keeps the cost low (MT1 is a beast by my standard).
For clarification, I am all for more competition. But I am also selfish and I really want this segment to become wildly successful . In any case, I really and truly hope they can make the business case work and be profitable/sustainable.
I don't think Tesla's judgment should be the litmus test. They have capacity to produce 250K Cybertrucks / year, currently on pace to sell < 20K and it's only going down from here.
To be fair, the main reason for this is that the CEO of Tesla looked at "people who buy electric vehicles", and spent the last four years turning himself into a caricature of a villain to those people.
At the best maybe it was some sort of misguided attempt to encourage the American right to buy EVs?
If so it royally backfired and just decimated his own customer base right at the time real competition was entering the market. The Equinox EV roundly beats the Model Y head to head on range, price, AWD, etc. The Ioniq 5 is more expensive but is lovely.
I kind of think it's cool that reality is configured such that Cybertruck exists, but only in a very meta way. Lazy-think me: It feels dumb and is probably just bad focus from a company focus standpoint.
Sadly, trucks like these are like the automotive "small smartphone". At first it appears there is a large vocal market, especially if you read the comment section. Alas, nobody will buy it, just like nobody actually buys small smartphones.
> Additionally, the demand for these vehicles will be relatively low until influential YouTubers in the construction, farming, and rural sectors become advocates and start promoting them.
This is a surprising claim to me. Can you point to any other vehicles (even something from John Deere or a competitor) whose demand significantly rose in a way directly attributable to influential youtubers in those niches, and which influencers in particular you think would be particularly influential?
A John Deere is not a fashion statement. A car, or a daily commute truck, very much is, for many. (Sneakers, jeans, or t-shirts could be completely pragmatic, brand-oblivious items, too.)
A John Deere is absolutely a fashion statement, lol. You gotta meet more farmers, because the fights I see break out over Case IH, John Deere, New Holland, and Cat are unreal.
>My worry is for the business feasibility for these
hopefully the success of the ford maverick can allay some of this concern - i don't think anybody was really expecting it to be as successful as it has been, but it seems like there's actually pretty decent demand for a smaller truck.
> Why isn’t Tesla making these? They have the supply chain and expertise to easily pull it off and they’d be such a big hit. People switching to them for light cargo would be a REAL contribution in cutting use of carbon.
I get your point but I also think you are being dismissive of their ongoing contributions to cutting carbon use.
They have to solve a real problem for people hauling cargo, they don’t really do that as they currently exist. They get significantly worse range when hauling than a normal gas or diesel truck, their only benefit is making feel better about their carbon footprint.
I was legit considering getting an F150 lighting for a little while but when I saw how much your range decreases when towing something it became obvious that it’s not really practical. It’s just objectively worse at hauling than a gas car.
Hopefully we see more battery tech breakthroughs that make electric trucks viable work vehicles.
It’s pretty complicated. The issue with hauling is that it craters your aerodynamics and explodes your rolling resistance, so you need massive battery capacity. Or to slow down, but most people don’t want to do that.
They are cheaper to run almost everywhere (depending on the cost of electricity versus gas of course). No breakthrough in battery technology needed for that.
It is worse at hauling. I can get between 150 to 200 miles while towing my 4000 lb RV with my lightning. What’s nice though is I can get a full charge at my campsite for the night so I never really pay for transportation. Turns out 200 miles per day is good enough for cross country RVing.
For everyday driving, I pay about $8.50 for a “full tank” of charge that gets me around 300 miles. That’s about $100 worth of gas in an equivalent gas truck.
That’s being said I think the ideal truck would have about 2x-3x the current battery capacity of the extended range lightning.
The new huge GM EV & SUV trucks do have way more battery - and weight. The GM Silverado EV Work Truck is EPA 492 miles, tested at 530 by edmonds. So take the common rule of thumb, divide range by half or maybe a little more and you get about 250 miles of towing range. https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/topic/us/en/2025/....
In a couple of recent youtube videos, "Aging Wheels" thoroughly tested a variety of trailers towed behind a variety of vehicles and then also added weight to the trailer to see the efficiency impact of towing a trailer with a lot more weight. They found a 4.3% efficiency drop by adding weight to max out the towing, compared to towing without the extra weight. Weight isn't what matters on towing impact, it's the wind resistance of the trailer that matters much more.
They did a long series of comparison drives (in the about 30 mins video) with different trailers and then loaded them with extra weight to see the impact. It was smaller than you expect. The video with all the tests is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA.
I heard about this on the batteries included podcast where they interview the author of the video above, and kind of give high level summary with some details, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJv-xAqcTI.
This is 3860 x 1854 x 1676mm, or 14% x 25% x -16% bigger than Japanese Kei car specifications(3400 x 1480 x 2000mm max.) Closest match in features among Kei cars would be Daihatsu Hijet Deck Van, except that one is 465mm / 18" shorter that this having an awkwardly short 880mm / 35" long bed.
Still as ugly as last time it appeared on HN, it has none of the charm of a Kei truck. I wish any company would just take the old Ford Ranger designs (2011 and earlier) and make a truck on that. Or better yet, Ford themselves could redo the electric version of the Ranger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV) from 25 years ago with modern tech but the same look.
There's a reason limited production vehicles are almost always sports cars. Huge economies of scale are needed to target the budget market that you're not going to get as an unknown brand.
When I scrolled quickly through the landing page looking for the price, I noticed it wasn't there and figured it would be expensive. I didn't think it would be this much though...
One thing I'm really happy about with the rise of EVs is that they seem to be unlocking a fresh wave of innovation. This is in part because at a fundamental level, they are much simpler and easier to manufacture and more flexible in terms of design, so they are far more accessible for the startup ecosystem to break into. I'm really looking forward to what else we see emerging in the next few years once all the basic EV technology is commoditised.
It's aesthetically not pleasing in my eyes. They even have a comparison with ford trucks on their page and all i'm thinking is yeah i'd take that ford instantly over that thing.
I am glad to see EV companies doing something different, aesthetically. In this particular case I do not like it -- at all -- but I much prefer a high-variance aesthetic distribution to the genetic every-car-looks-the-same world we have now, sans a tiny few exceptions.
The side compartment under the bed / in front of the rear wheel is pretty cool too.
One thing I have learned.
If you own a pick up like vehicle
You will be helping even people you barely know
to move. and your extended friends and family
whenever they buy something too big to fit in their car
I was thinking a while back about how you could roll coal in an EV. Maybe a huge Tesla coil throwing lightning everywhere would be analogous? Or a giant Jacob’s ladder?
Interesting to see how much the perception of trucks varies globally. For many, it’s about versatility and utility beyond just daily commuting. The off-road and hauling capabilities often get overlooked in city-centric debates.
At least the Fiat Multipla was a great car. It is filled to the brim with small features which improve the driving experience, and it is a miracle that it can fit six(!) people. It has a massive amount of storage space and great visibility, what's not to like?
Besides the way it looks, of course. But if you're inside a Multipla, at least you don't have to look at its exterior?
The width is why the design was so clever from an interior perspective - seated six comfortably with three abreast front/rear in a car shorter than a three door Ford Fiesta!
People tend to focus on demand, but just getting vehicles like this into production at a profitable cost often turns out to be impossible.
It is a 10-15k/year product at best. How does an independent maker get that profitable at <$50k, despite all the costs of setting up a sales and service network?
On one hand I agree. It makes me sad but I'm skeptical they are going to make it.
On the other hand, electric cars seem to be relatively "easy" to build. Sure, Fisker went bankrupt, but Rivian seems to do sort of fine. Xiaomi even managed to build a car, and I actually saw one of them by chance charging next to me today.
Seems to me like a lot more newcomers succeed in getting cars built, than was and is the case with ICE cars.
most profit in autos is in personalization and financing, which in principle you can do at any scale, with whatever fixed costs. I believe these guys are building on top of a Subaru with vendor motors.
that said, the problem with these utilitarian vehicles is that they appeal to people who buy cars once every 20 years, whereas most of the industry is serving the very large, very abundant population of Americans buying 2 cars every 2 years
This can fun a fun and practical vehicle,
and it has a lot nifty solutions,
and should serve sub(urban) life well.
but if you really need a pickup truck,
this cannot compare to a Tacoma
That said I dont think anyone buying a Tacoma
will be tempted by this vehicle, and I dont think
the buyers of the MT1 will be comparison checking
the Tacoma either.
Separate markets the way I see it,
as do they
""EV pickup for urban living and weekend adventuring""
I really like the idea of taking advantage of there not being an engine bay in the front, and moving the driver position forward, and eliminating the unused length of the engine bay - but this looks very unsafe for the driver in a crash, with no crumple zone to speak of - not to mention it turns a simple fender bender into a front axle replacement (though with modern cars and their sensors, there's no such thing as a cheap crash anyway)
Looks good and a step in the right direction (speaking as someone who thinks the modern day trucks are getting too big for the danger of those driving alongside them on the roads).
I wonder though if the interior trim can be ordered without this felt-like material. I can easily see that being stained or dirty in a short period of time. I am sure there is.
Towing range is an issue with all EVs and the battery on this one isn't that big, but if you're regularly doing long distance towing I'm not sure why you'd start with a city truck
Let's see the production model pull 6600 pounds on an 80% charge. Which by the way I see no stats on this on the site. But I'd much rather see production demos before I trusted those even. Even Cybertruck struggles to tow full weight at full charge further than 90 miles.
How much you want to bet you'd be calling a real truck to tow your ass out of that situation? There's a reason electric trucks haven't taken off for real work use cases.
The cybertruck is built pretty poorly. I think we can use truck stats from reputable automakers.
> There's a reason electric trucks haven't taken off for real work use cases.
When were electric trucks realistically available on the market for a reasonable price?
I use a truck regularly (forestry industry), there's huge desire for them, they just haven't been around until very recently. You can't buy a secondhand ol beatup electric truck yet, so I don't expect them to be taking off yet.
I really like the solar roof and bed cover add-ons. They don't have specs but should be roughly 4 square meters combined or so? so about 800w at peak power. Not enough to let you rely on it even if you live in a sunny place, but it could add up to a nice reduction in cost per mile if you use it to commute and park it in the sun.
> We're tired of oversized, impractical trucks designed for show over substance.
I wonder if Telo is attempting to define a new category. Substance in a truck, in my lived opinion, is about utility. Towing capacity, ruggedness, ability to go (very) off road. An electric power train shows promise, but is limited by infra.
If that’s not the target, then maybe it’s a different target, such as San Francisco residents where space is limited and a slight nod to utility is adequate.
Further down the peninsula, and specifically in the Santa Cruz mountains, this is less interesting. I can’t imagine this for outdoor (e.g. mountain biking) or project oriented (e.g. landscaping) people.
So back to the top: if they’re marketing substance over show, maybe they’re really marketing to people who desire show over substance.
Edit: let me also throw in my drive down to the bottom tip of Baja a few months ago. The roads were rough in places, and I definitely went off road to reach some interesting places. It reminded me of some rough terrain and roads in Wyoming and Oklahoma - truck states. Without big wheels and tough suspension - I wouldn’t take a Telo.
A tremendous portion of the truck market are people who live in urban to suburban areas and need to move things. For that audience, the ability to fit a 4x8' plywood sheet easily puts this ahead of a surprising number of conventional trucks on utility. The 2k lbs payload on the 2WD drive model is more than a Tacoma and some configurations of the F150, for example, popular models that also don't fit a 4x8 sheet without strapping it down over the cab or another awkward technique. It also lists a towing cap of 6,600 which is competitive with many production pickups.
There's a divide in needs between off-roading and moving things around, and this seems oriented in the moving things around direction. I can easily see it working for a landscaper in a suburban environment, for example, where the driving miles per day are really not that high and 6,600 is plenty for a typical landscaper's trailer.
From everything I've seen, true off-roading applications are a pretty small portion of the overall truck market, and one that many popular trucks right now are also poorly optimized for (popular 2WD configurations, middling clearances, etc).
I just put down a deposit. I make things from plywood sometimes, and even in my wife's R1S it's a pain. When we don't take the R1S, all 5 of us have to fit in my car (Honda Clarity). I coach robotics teams and sometimes need to haul a lot of stuff. Sometimes we do some light offroading in the R1S.
Looks like this will do all the things I need OK. I would like to drive something small and easy to park, that I could offroad a bit, carry my family a bit, haul stuff a bit.
And I've always liked the weird aesthetic of kei trucks and things like the Jeep Forward Control.
> I wonder if Telo is attempting to define a new category.
It's a Kei truck. That's not a new thing. Online discourses categorizing Telo as one leads to people pointing out Kei are equipped with weaker engines for legal reasons, that doesn't matter. US finally started making its own Kei truck.
I would say "kei" does pretty specifically refer to vehicles adhering to those Japanese regulations. I think "minitruck" or "compact truck" would be a better, more general name.
What would be the limitation that prevents you from mountain biking? It seems to have a similar sized bed to a Tacoma?
I’m unsure why people think they need such big vehicles for outdoors sports. We drove thousands of miles around Europe with 4 kayaks on the roof of a Ford Fiesta. Or you can easily fit three mountain bikes on a rear bike rack.
I also used to throw my mountain bike on the back of my sports car! It was, in retrospect, ridiculous.
I’ve also seen a motorcyclist having a bike mounted on a hitch!
Optimization for tiny isn’t a factor in the big outdoors. Indeed, I see more people in Sprinter vans than Teslas by mountain biking hot spots. So it’s not about “could you”, it’s about comfort and practicality of anything / everything else you may want to do beyond just lugging a bike to a trail. Such as: the optionality to go truly off road - in the vehicle not on the bike.
I need to tow a 5000lb boat 300 miles without charging and I need to fit 6 passengers. It needs to be $30K or less.
I realize Europeans have a much different understanding of distance and cargo needs; I do. But, 300 miles and 6 passengers is a pretty common requirement here in the US.
I often find that I want to take a break after a couple hours of driving, and even when I drove a gas vehicle, those breaks would be 30-40 minutes long unless it was an exceptionally long day of driving. With a little planning I’ve found that I can do 90% of the trips in my EV that I used to do in my gas car. I probably can’t replicate the couple 1000-mile-in-one-day trips I did in my previous vehicle, but those experiences also made me not want to.
FWIW, in the last two years alone I have driven my EV from MA to Nova Scotia and back, MA to Iowa and back, MA to MD and back, and all over the eastern seaboard (trips to the Adirondacks, WV, etc). Lately I have not even had to plan anymore. It was surprising to discover that I could plug my car (a Bolt) into a GM charger in Indiana this summer and not even need to fiddle with an app. Things have improved dramatically for road trips in the last two years, and I have probably one of the slowest charging cars out there. Really, the only thing stopping me from buying an EV pickup is that I don’t want to pay that much for a vehicle with such an absurdly small bed. My Bolt can pull a small trailer just fine.
I started looking at camping trailers recently to tow with my Rivian. I quickly went off the idea when I realized that each time I’d need to charge en-route I’d have to find somewhere to park the camper, unhitch, go charge, then do it all in reverse. That’s going to add at least 20 mins to each charging session. None of this is necessary if I were filling with gas. For typical places I go camping here in CO that could be two or three times per journey direction.
Because he can tow 300 miles easily with a ICE vehicle, and he can fill up anywhere in 5 minutes or less. Once you can charge cars in 5 minutes or less, I doubt he’d have made that a requirement.
I was responding to someone worried about the practicality of carrying mountain bikes to the Santa Cruz mountains 50 miles from San Francisco.
I don't think it's possible to buy a new 6 passenger vehicle rated for towing 5000lb in the US for under $30K.
Europe allows towing with much smaller vehicles. There you can do 4400lb in a Golf and 4850lb in Passat though you might still struggle for 6 passengers for $30k new.
No pickup will do that. Even crew cab pickups normally max out at 5 people (4 passengers), because there is no bench seat up front anymore. Even a Ford Maverick is $30k or so, and that won’t tow a 5000lb boat. Max listed towing is 4klb.
"I commute 400 miles each way to work, every day, towing my 5000 pound boat, fully equipped outdoor kitchen trailer/classroom, my home-schooled family of 6, 6 dogs, a portable sawmill, solar-powered game freezer + ammunition, and an extra trailer because I might have to go to home depot."
> I need to tow a 5000lb boat 300 miles without charging
That's a 4-5 hour trip and you don't want to stop to charge for thirty minutes? One bathroom break or stop for food and you've already spent probably half of those 30m stopped anyway.
> fit 6 passengers
This truck does? It has a third row.
But I'm curious what truck you think will comfortably fit six passengers for under $30k. If the second row fits three people and the front row fits two passengers (and frankly, having a person ride in the middle of the front row is ridiculous), you only seat five passengers. Even if you count the driver as a passenger, at best you've got one uncomfortable occupant.
- Ram 1500 starts at 40k
- F150 starts at 38k
- Silverado 1500 starts at 37k
- Ford Superduty starts above 40k
- Sierra 1500 starts at 38k
And most of these are just bench seats in the front, not a third row.
I'm American and this sounds really off. AFAIK pickups in the US typically have space for five passengers, not six. And good luck finding new pickups that can tow 5000 lbs under 30k; as a category, pickups have experienced quite a lot of price inflation, as I understand it.
I'm failing to see how this could have as much or more utility than a Tacoma. I don't see any mention of towing or payload. Not to mention, the clearance will be limiting for anyone who wants to venture off road at all.
Towing is possible but limited-- this is a weak point for all electric vehicles-- but good enough to haul a trailer to the dump or a boat a small distance.
But the bed is better in some ways than the Tacoma.
Big question is whether they can reach production and really deliver for this pricing, etc. They have ~11k preorders and could develop a lot more.
Slate is ugly and not nearly as functional. Predicting who is doomed at this point is silly. But there will be a small electric truck soon, which is nice.
As of OpenSauce last month, they had 3 that were roadworthy. I think the company is 15 people big so it would be odd if they had a fleet with mfgr/prototype plates.
They were cagey on their manufacturing strategy but I got the sense that it'll be mostly contract manufacturing. I think slate is trying to keep as much in-house as possible and that means saying "no" to some design decisions that would require a step-up in terms of manufacturing capabilities. E.G.: Composite panels are a hell of a lot cheaper to make than stamped metal panels so slate isn't going to contract the metal stamping out.
I’d hardly say telo isn’t a viable option compared to slate.
Anyway what really matters is if any of these companies can get a vehicle to market, and at what price point. I’m not about to buy an imaginary car, and neither are you.
Fwiw if they were for sale i would strongly consider buying a telo. It looks perfect for my needs - slate less so, but if they’re all that’s available i’d strongly consider it
As much as I like the novelty of the design, there isn't much of a crumple zone for a head on collision. I could see the wheel placement making this a fun off-road vehicle, though.
This is incredibly sensible design (if they pull it off), it's a reasonable size (unlike a lot of 'Murcian utility vehicles), has some good options (like the dual solar roof) and a useful carry layout.
The reason why we don't generally have vehicles this small any more is because they don't pass crash tests so I'm wondering how this fares in a crash test. I can't see any way this could be sold in Europe unless there's some very clever engineering to make the front end more resilient in a crash.
> I can't see any way this could be sold in Europe
It's 3860 x 1854mm, there are vehicles smaller than that being sold in europe right now (in the A segment, not quadricycles): the fiat 500e is 3632x1683, the suzuki ignis is 3700x1660. The citroen c1 (discontinued 2022) used to be just 3470x1620.
Hell there are B segment cars which aren't much bigger, the R5 e-tech is 3920x1770, the yaris is 3940x1745.
There are smaller vehicles being sold but the distance from the front bumper to the driver's legs is much longer because they don't have a bed taking up space at the back.
The vast majority of tractor trailers in Europe are cab over designs. There’s definitely less room between the bumper and the driver’s legs in those than in any standard pickup truck.
The ForTwo has two seats and no truck bed so it can have enough space for a crash structure in front of the driver. On top of that its NCAP rating expired in 2021 and it is no longer being sold. The next generation of the ForTwo is likely to be longer in order to improve safety (if it ever makes it into production)
I'm stuck with a cloth interior. I bring a beach towel to drape on the seat after my rides. Mud falls onto the towel which makes it easy to clean out of the vehicle.
Let's hope now that CAFE is dead or at least disarmed, more cars like this will come from the woodwork. I was always jealous that the japanese had so many cool small kei cars like the Subaru Sambar or Suzuki Cappuccino
This is a bad marketing idea to compare a golf cart like this to a Toyota Tacoma. There is practically zero ground clearance and a unibody frame, this will high center in places where I regularly drive my Tacoma. Tacoma wins on ruggedness, lower total cost of ownership thanks to a significantly lower price and having limited depreciation.
Unless these are priced at under $30,000 for the AWD, these will flop commercially.
If the CAFE standards could be fixed, we could get ICE and hybrid trucks that are smaller and more affordable, the EV route is too expensive and the products are strange.
I know the CAFE standards are bad, but isn't it just a tax if you miss the target? Anyone know how much would it cost a car company per vehicle if they made a modern version of the '80s Ranger or Hilux?
why are there no pictures of the backseat? tired of cars with four doors and backseats made exclusively for children. and they say it can fit 8 people???
You can go on YouTuber and find reviews of the car and most people seem to say the backseat is fairly roomy (the one 6'5" reviewer said he fit). I put a reservation down a few months ago and at 6' (1.9 m for the sane people), I'm really banking on that one off-hand comment.
The third row is just planned. They do not have any publicly available views of it, and the currently non-removable back glass of the prototypes inhibit actually installing and using them.
Is there some reason they have to make these have 300 or 500hp? Or is there nothing to be gained in terms of cost and weight from having, say, 90hp (like my completely functional Mighty Max had).
What’s the range when loaded with things or people? That’s what matters. I find that most EVs have too many impracticalities to be convenient. For a fixed commute, sure. But for versatility, absolutely not.
1. Adding weight to the bed, if it doesn't affect aerodynamics, doesn't affect highway range much. For stop-and-go traffic I assume the range would get worse, but he didn't test it.
2. Adding a big air pusher to an otherwise empty trailer murders the range
3. Adding an aerodynamic car or truck on a trailer is better for your range than the air pusher
I do wish it was a hybrid. Maybe small companies don't have the knowledge built up to make a good hybrid drivetrain but hell, Edison is going for it. They're planning to build logging trucks with a diesel generator under the hood as prime mover for a series plug-in hybrid drivetrain. It looks very practical and their initial tests show it tows great. (Since that's their entire selling point, they'd have to fold if it couldn't haul logs)
I like that it's small and potentially even more functional than whatever idiotic American small-dick-compensating nonsense people buy these days but why does it need to be so ugly?
If you want more people to buy sensible vehicles, make them look nice i.e. not like something NASA would send to Mars.
Man, I'd love something like this. I was happy with my small, early 2000s pickup, but everything in the used market when it died were obnoxious show-off vehicles that quite literally don't even fit in most of the parking spaces in my city. This has that cute kei truck look... well... Maybe an inbred kei truck. But it seems just the right size for utility (and my much-missed tailgate naps).
But $42k is just so much money to me. I've never spent more than ~$15k (financed) on a vehicle and I feel like I'm fairly well off...
I saw this on JerryRigEverything and was thinking that this is the perfect city pickup. Compact, yet with a reasonable payload size. It has a good range (which, in my case, is not as important) and the horsepower is good. The dash takes a bit of getting used to, but OK.
It's the second electric vehicle I actually like (Rivian being the first - but it's a full-size).
That will only happen if the right-wing propagandists manage to turn these into a wedge issue. But ultimately more EV cars and trucks (as opposed to e-bikes) won’t threaten the car-dependent culture that enables the population-density-driven fear or urban culture driving their narratives to begin with.
The extreme regulation of automobiles in the US is entirely from the left, specifically from people who dislike cars and want everyone on public transit (except for the few special people of course).
Why do you think cars are so hated? Just curious if you could steel-man what you believe their arguments against cars to be, so I know we’re on the same page of understanding.
Sorry. But to me it looks like a truck i can order on alieexpress. Does not show any robustness, strength and is not sexy at all. Nice for your local laundry delivery service at your beach resort. But thats it.
Just make a gas-powered one that's repairable. This is not complicated. I love my Tesla, but my other vehicle is a Hardbody for a reason. EVs SUCK as trucks.
I'd love an EV truck but not the weird little thing highlighted in this post. I watched an overview video someone linked but turned it off as soon as I saw the guy trying to fit inside the tiny cab.
Also, why is this goofy little truck so powerful and so expensive? Can I please just get a modestly powered EV work truck with capacity for sheet goods, a few tools, and a single passenger other than the driver? Can it not cost $50k?
I want power density and off-grid capability in my truck. I want to be able to go camping and not plan for charging. I also want to be able to repair it without dealing with software. I also want to be able to tow without stopping to charge every 100 miles.
Very little information about safety other than marketing speak "Utilizing the latest in advanced safety technology—sensors to predict and classify collisions before they happen, airbags, and structural technology—to make our vehicles safer for everyone on the road."
You think a crumple zone isn’t required by current FMVSS, which they are designing against? That is, in fact, what they referred to with “ structural technology”.
I'm pretty skeptical of the safety as well. It's also pretty hard to judge where there don't seem to be any actual photographs of the vehicle, only computer renderings.
I would love a small truck like this, but I would honestly buy an old Tacoma or Ranger before even considering buying this on spec.
*edit: digging around I did find some footage on YouTube with actual vehicles. I'm definitely skeptical on the safety now.
It doesn’t matter how capable, efficient, affordable, powerful, etc. the truck is. That’s not the point.
The point of a truck for 90% of American pickup truck drivers is that it signals to the world around them what team they’re on. This truck is a signal for the wrong team.
This is a good illustration of what's wrong with American not politics, but, I'd say, psyche. Every little (an not so little, like a truck) thing is used to signal allegiance to one of the two irreconcilable warring factions. No union, no values, no common cause, just us vs them, doubtless virtue vs doubtless vice.
It's really, really disheartening to see; not in the parent comment, but generally in life.
I wish an electric truck could alleviate even a small bit of that.
Exactly. I love that it's small. I used to have a 4 door full length bed GMC and it felt like driving a boat. Seattle was particularly awful. My current garage is only 210 inches deep (5.334 m) so most trucks will not fit in my current house (very first world problems I know). But yes, smaller, lower cost, and does everything I need a truck for.
I'll be eager to post one! After the cybertruck I won't be preordering any more vehicles. Right now I'm looking to replace our Model 3. I'm waiting for now details on the 2026 R1T Quad, and to see if Mazda actually really makes an electric MX-5. We have two other EVs (cars) so a truck would make sense but we're keeping our options open. An R1T would be cool but putting the 50k difference into a home battery system would be a smarter play, and an electric MX-5 would just be fun as hell.
A friend of mine who works at a tech company doing charging tech is urging me to hold out for a year, so I might delay a decision another year. We'll see.
More capable how? It's more capable if it does more things that you want it to do, but in my case it doesn't add more utility. When you compare it based on range and power, it's still more expensive.
The stereotype is that a big truck implies you're compensating. The only people who think an unimpressive vehicle means you have small bits are the people who think that an impressive vehicle means you have big bits.
So is a Ford Transit van? Who cares. This is a work truck.
> The bed looks too short to be practically useful.
The bed is 5 ft long. From TF website: "Same truck bed length as the Toyota Tacoma. Larger than a Rivian R1T."
> The wheels look comically small.
They look fine? How big should they be?
> The ground clearance doesn't seem to make it useful for more than suburban and urban road environments.
Oh, so they designed it for the environments it was...designed to be used in? And the same environments most macho big boy trucks spend 99% of their life in? What's the problem here?
Honestly, what's your problem? Why is your comment so harshly negative? You can't fathom a target market for this because you don't seem to be in it?
> * The bed looks too short to be practically useful.
Have you looked at the mainstream 'small' truck market lately?
Small in quotes, because actual small trucks disappeared, and we're left with mid sized trucks as the smallest. Used to be you could get a 6-ft bed standard and an optional longer bed on a small truck. Fuel efficiency standards now dictate you can't have that without a larger truck and worse fuel efficency.
I'm not willing to preorder an unproven brand, but I am excited about this. I'm a Toyota RAV4 owner, and I'd like something (much) more fuel efficient, or a fairly affordable EV, but I don't want to lose moderate hauling capacity for equipment, tools, parts for home, etc. I would seriously consider a very small/compact car but I do need to fit a car seat and I do occasionally move things.
I hope this makes it to market because if I was buying a car today, and this was available today, I'd pick this.
EVs are scam of the century. They have diverted so much economic resources into an end product that isn't even reliable let alone having a long life.
Yet to talk about the amount of mining, its carbon footprint and pretty much irreversible or really high cost extraction/restoration of batteries apart.
Longevity and carbon footprint - If that's not your yardstick than other than that the EVs are great. Have more power than any combustion engine can ever have, have more torque, more acceleration and pretty much zero maintenance as far as the "engine" is concerned. No noise, no emissions, no vibrations either.
> an end product that isn't even reliable let alone having a long life
What's unreliable on a modern EV? And what do you mean by "long life", because you now have 10-15 year old EVs that are fine.
Obviously some cars aged poorly, like some Tesla which had poor build quality (not an EV problem, but a company problem) or cars like the Nissan Leaf that didn't have battery cooling for years, but what's exactly unreliable on a modern Polestar or a Hyundai?
If you're referring to what happen to companies like Hertz, then according to them the problem wasn't reliability.
The cars had more accidents, probably because some were not used to the speed or would get an EV just to test the speed. Why buy Tesla in that case then, when their repairs are known to be super expensive and slow? Then you had people who are not used to EVs and charging trying to use EVs and the companies themselves didn't build the charging infrastructure so customers left with a full battery, but that has nothing to do with reliability. Vehicle depreciation? Again, a Tesla problem because they sold them the cars at a high price before dropping prices (the covid years were very weird).
So again, what makes EVs unreliable? It's a simple question.
> Yet to talk about the amount of mining, its carbon footprint and pretty much irreversible or really high cost extraction/restoration of batteries apart.
Do you also have similar thoughts on all the infrastructure needed for oil, or is that not to be discussed?
I always wonder with the "all the mineral-mining!!!" crowd, do they think the oil infrastructure just arrived overnight? And there was no cost (money and long-term ecological) to it all?
This is a breath of fresh air. Modern pick up trucks post-2017 are giant vehicles with high danger to pedestrians. They are often touted as off road capable with high utility, and I see them in pristine condition on city streets hauling a totality of one human.
Good overviews of the truck https://youtu.be/aEq-vTLimrQ?si=fS-UhjndoWuxwBip
https://youtu.be/1OgN_qctcGs?si=nEysWQHzafRpxfRp
> They are often touted as off road capable with high utility, and I see them in pristine condition on city streets
When I was off-roading and traveling a lot of dirt trails with my truck I would also wash it, wax it, and keep it in pristine condition when I got back home.
What did you expect? That we’d leave the mud on it forever, never wash it, and all of the side panels would be bashed in? If you’d climb under the truck (as I do for oil changes) you could see a lot of scrapes and dings from rocks, but I avoid damaging the side and front because that’s very expensive to repair.
Anyway, most of the trucks sold today aren’t sold in the off-road trim. They’re sold with features like lower clearance air dams up front for better fuel economy, on-road tires for better road noise and fuel economy, and commonly in 2WD trims. A new F150 can get 25mpg on the freeway even without the hybrid option.
I work remote so my truck isn’t used for commutes. I frequently haul things in the bed. I off road with friends.
Yet that doesn’t stop some people from making snide remarks about driving a truck. Some people love being angry at truck drivers and imagining they’re all just making irrational choices. They won’t be happy until we’re driving to Home Depot or UHaul every other weekend to rent a truck or trailer instead of parking one in our driveways.
It doesn’t stop them from calling me up and asking for help moving furniture when they need it, though. :)
You seem very intent (here, and in the loneliness thread) on projecting your own experiences as the baseline on which things should be evaluated.
It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed. Millions of school pickups happening on massive trucks - and SUVs - are not ceasing to happen because you loaded your own with a pile of grass. People buy them because they’re “safer”, comfortable and look good. This is coming from research data for years now, and not only in the USA.
It can be hard to relate to changes happening at societal scale that don’t affect your own microcosm, but how else can we be aware of it, and act on, if not through data, averages and trends?
Let's be honest. I only rarely use most of the features of my vehicles.
What's worse? A not in use bed, or a not in use back seat?
I have a truck, because I find it more convenient to have a truck bed anytime I need it, than to have to arrange to borrow or rent one. The bed doesn't get used often, but it's also a reasonable vehicle for driving solo or with one passenger; two in a pinch. Much better visibility than any other vehicle I have, too. Unfortunately, the single cab, 6-ft bed small truck market disappeared, and I got this one used with too big of an engine, so the mileage is poor... when I had a 4-cylinder small truck, mileage was better, but I don't drive that much anymore anyway.
But, I have lots of space, so I can keep a car for transporting a car pool in comfort, a PHEV with good mileage for longer trips that don't need anything special, a small truck for doing small truck things, and an old van with removed back seats that's fun to work on and can carry things that shouldn't get wet when it's raining. The van visibility towards the front is even better than the truck, because it's cabover, but visibility to the back isn't as good... None of those modern pillars that make it hard to see out the sides though.
You know, for someone who clearly is a bit triggered (reasonably) by dealing with whatever stereotypes and judgements people make about trucks and truck owners, their post is quite positive and respectful. Your reply to it is not. It seems like your argument is “the data indicates a statistical likelihood that someone judging, assuming, or stereotyping will still be accurate.” The factual inaccuracy of prejudice is not the problem with prejudice, the prejudice is
I fail to see how prejudice against waste is a problem.
Prejudice is a bad thing- for things that people can't change, like their race or age. Prejudice against people making bad or wasteful decisions is a good thing.
No, prejudice is bad, full stop. By definition it means to judge someone for something before you actually know for sure that they have/do the thing that bothers you. It doesn’t matter what the thing is, that’s not the problem or the point. The point is you can’t, or shouldn’t, view or treat someone as though they have some quality you dislike when you don’t actually know about this individual and only know that a high percentage of them do. You can’t judge an individual this way! If you hate waste (as do I) and you feel trucks contribute to that and that a majority of truck owners don’t make use of their trucks, then great! Speak about it exactly like that. But you can’t simply take any truck driver and say “that individual is wasteful” without knowing.
You can’t do that any more than you can assume my friends and I are criminals and drug dealers because at some point we decided to use Telegram as our primary messaging app, or like ICE can assume anyone standing near a pro-Mexico protest is an illegal immigrant, you cannot attribute a quality to an individual without having actual knowledge of it.
The point is you can't reliably tell if someone's choice of vehicle is wasteful unless you get to know them a bit. Snap-judging someone's entire lifestyle in the second it takes to recognize a make and model isn't constructive.
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed.
Just want to point out that big pickups are really about the hauling capacity, it's not like their beds are much bigger than a modern Ford Ranger. An F250 can safely pull 10 tons, and a dually F450 can pull 20t. Usually you aren't towing...but when you need to haul nontrivial loads you need a big truck.
> You seem very intent (here, and in the loneliness thread) on projecting your own experiences as the baseline on which things should be evaluated.
I was pointing out that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You cannot conclude that a truck never goes off-road by observing them on city streets. That was your claim, and I explained why it didn’t make sense. I also explained why trucks are not primarily sold as off-road vehicles anyway.
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed
If you read the “studies” that make these claims they use two tricks:
First, they specifically exclude a truck defined as a work truck.
Second, they redefine “using the bed” to some arbitrary threshold, like hauling a large load of loose dirt or hauling something over so many hundred pounds.
If you actually believe that truck owners aren’t putting anything in the truck bed, you’re out of touch.
But why does this one point trigger you so much? If I showed you a similar study that the majority of people with back seats rarely had more than 2 people in their cars, would you become similarly enraged at the people buying 5-seat cars instead of a compact 2-seater?
If I showed you a study that the majority of people rarely use more than 200 horsepower would you start getting triggered by all of the 300, 400, or even 500 horsepower cars so wastefully driving around?
There’s something about pickup trucks, specifically, that makes a vocal minority irrationally angry and triggered. It’s a funny meme to watch because so many comments in this thread are absolutely sure that they understand the situation but they don’t understand basic facts about how you can’t tell if someone goes off-road by judging the condition of their paint, or that using a truck for work purposes doesn’t render it visibly damaged in a way that they can see. They just see trucks, get triggered, mix it with misleading “studies”, and come to believe odd conclusions like “truck drivers don’t use their beds”
Why are you triggered by the vocal irrational minority? You seem quite defensive for someone who is confident and comfortable in the the truck they own and how they use it and maintain it.
Not them, but I find that people who take out political frustration against non-political things quite annoying.
For example, when Tesla was blue-coded, way more comments here were highly forgiving, if not outright glazing. They became red-coded, and suddenly you’d see tons of highly technical reasons they sucked. You can gut yourself into coming up with many reasons this isn’t true, but it’s definitely true.
Trucks have gotten this since the beginning.
It’s not that it’s triggering, it’s just more annoying to have to waste a lot of time reading things that are clearly therapy for the poster more than any sort of interesting opinion.
It's getting harder to find good online discussions devoid of bias and emotions. With user moderation, control goes to those with the most time to waste online, meaning the least happy, productive and social.
And it's a self reinforcing downward loop as those deteriorating online spaces then completely drive away everyone with anything better to do
> There’s something about pickup trucks, specifically, that makes a vocal minority irrationally angry and triggered
Because of the cultural coding of pickup trucks, versus say sports cars that might get just as bad mpg.
People using their trucks for truck stuff know most others don’t. They don’t have to make shit up
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed.
I'm not here to defend brodozers, but you cannot possibly prove this statement. That a _pickup truck_ isn't hauling the majority of the time it is on the road is not some new thing. But of course there are more pickup trucks on the road than ever, so if you argument is aggregate time of all pickup trucks not doing truck things is the highest its ever been is certainly true, but you'd probably have to go back to before the 80s for that number to actually be meaningfully different per truck.
Not sure what you mean by "prove this statement" but answering questions like this is exactly why organizations do consumer research. To wit [1]:
> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
The hauling figure is useless without specifying what they mean.
Usually these “studies” redefine hauling to mean something specific like hauling loose dirt or something extremely heavy.
If you can read a quote claiming 2/3 of truck owners don’t “put something in the bed” more than once a year then and not realize that something is wrong with these statistics then you’re missing something.
The question is not whether they "put something in the bed" — it's whether they use the bed in such a way that the trunk or back seat of a smaller vehicle would be unsuitable.
There’s a quote from some consulting firm that goes around claiming 2/3 of truck drivers don’t “put something in the bed” more than once a year.
It’s a laughable claim for anyone who thinks about it for more than a second.
The way they usually get to these numbers is by redefining what “hauling a load” means to be something extremely heavy or for loose fill materials. So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
The company in question has been doing their survey for two decades. It’s a private data set, but has been reported on by multiple serious news outlets which will have their own data scientists looking over the data, e.g. Axios: https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history
You can also verify the data is coming from real drivers, by searching for “New Vehicle Experience Study” and seeing all the posts from users who receive the survey and think it’s some kind of scam.
That's what hauling means to me, though.
A rack mount on a normal European-sized car is perfectly sufficient for a couple bicycles, I have one, and a trailer for my enduro motorcycle, or a fridge, or anything else I occasionally transport. Anything bigger and I'll rent an actual truck.
> So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
Even if that’s the case, the truck owners doing this probably don’t need a full size truck. A 90s-era small truck or maybe even a kei truck would suffice, and yet more often than not the trucks in question are the likes of F-150s.
Agreed, unfortunately small trucks are increasingly harder and harder to find. A 90s truck also won’t have the amenities that a modern truck has.
I think if they are just hauling mountain bikes, they could get a small hitch installed and purchase a high-quality bike rack. A roof rack can carry 2x4s very well.
> So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
If that's all you're doing, anything more than a Maverick is overkill. Bike racks and wood delivery are a thing. Shit you can fit a mountain bike in the back of a sedan. I see people doing this at trailheads all the time.
Those suburban moms don't need a Yukon to take their two kids to soccer practice either.
> So if someone routinely hauls a couple mountain bikes in the bed of their truck or gets a few 2x4s from the lumber yard it wouldn’t count.
I don't know how long a 2x4 is, so I don't know about those. But in the summer holiday period (so now) you see a lot of these running around: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thule_(11834033554... Even on surprisingly small cars.
I dislike the whole "justify why you like X" thing. People can always find the flimsiest of reasons why they want to prohibit things they don't like and then demand others justify why they should get to keep what they have. Just simply liking something never seems enough for those fighters against joy.
I really don't like pick up trucks. I also think most of their practical uses can be achieved with other vehicles. But that shouldn't concern me. If the owner of the car gets joy out of it, then that should be enough. I don't have to like what others like, and they don't have to like what I like.
>If the owner of the car gets joy out of it, then that should be enough.
For most things, yes, absolutely! However, considering the dangers of huge trucks it is very valid to have concerns about them. An exaggerated analogy: if the owner of a gun gets joy out of free firing it into the air that should be enough.
Respectfully, if you don’t know how long a 2x4 is, I think it would be very reasonable to look this up, as it will make you much better equipped to make this argument.
I generally agree with what you are saying, and frequently haul 2x4s without my truck - but the solution to that is a long flatbed trailer, not a Thule hitch attachment.
it does depend a lot on what you buy it for, but obviously 8' is a good benchmark.
But honestly... at 8' I'm not sure why you're bothering with anything (unless you're getting a lot of them), i usually just threw 8 footers in my Honda Fit and closed the hatch.
Ironically most pickup truck beds are shorter than 8' and most likely a 8' piece of lumber would have to lay diagonally sticking out over one of the edges.
Still good for occasional piece of furniture, lots of lumber, or plywood.
The Thule hitch attachment was responding to GP saying they throw their bikes in the bed of their truck.
> That we’d leave the mud on it forever, never wash it, and all of the side panels would be bashed in?
That's exactly how we always did it growing up.
> A new F150 can get 25mpg on the freeway even without the hybrid option.
As a non-American it's super weird that this is considered a good thing. That'd be considered utterly atrocious in most parts of the developed world.
I completely get that a truck is absolutely the best tool for the job for many people. But it's pretty obvious the OP was pointing out the people who own a truck and use it to get from home to their desk job.
The average fuel economy for cars on the road right now is around 25mpg.
You can also get a 40-50mpg brand new sedan here if you want, but they serve different purposes.
You can also get a hybrid F150 that gets better mileage.
You can also get a fully electric F150 that doesn’t use any gas at all.
I was trying to make a point to counter the silly assumptions throughout this thread, such as the person who keeps claiming trucks are “incompetent” at being normal vehicles.
25 isn't good? That's what my tiny sedan used to get and I sold it not even 5 years ago.
No, not even close to good.
I'm having to convert to US gallons to Imperial here but...
My old ICE car was getting approx 50mpg (which is approx 41mpg for you) and was considered poor for its age. My new one (hybrid) is 60mpg (approx 50mpg for you).
For a fairly modern car (e.g under 10 years old) in the UK you'd expect at least 40–50 MPG (UK) / 33–42 MPG (US), and even that would be considered on the lower end. Most modern cars are either electric or hybrid here these days so you'd expect 60–100 MPG (UK) / 50–83 MPG (US).
Few modern gas cars will get over 50 US MPG in city usage. 35 MPG is probably a better estimate for the hybrid fleet which is still much, much better than gas cars of a decade ago.
A Toyota RAV4 (the best calling ICE car in the world) is about half that. They do a hybrid model that’s lower still.
The Toyota Corolla (second best selling) is then lower again.
US cultural perceptions on fuel efficiency are bonkers.
Genuinely terrible, a 15 year old Civic handily gets 35mpg highway, a 2025 non-hybrid gets 47+.
A 2025 non-hybrid gets 47+? I don’t think so. That’s pretty close to the EPA rating for the hybrid model.
25 is terrible highway mileage. When I (USA) had a pickup truck as my daily commuter for a few years 5-10 years back, I got ~22 mpg on "city" roads, and >30 mpg on highways. And that's not considered good.
My sports sedan gives 25 mpg, and my parent's Toyota hybrid SUV gives 58 mpg.
My 2019 subaru forester only gets 27 mpg.
This is a deeply emotional response to someone making the completely obvious point that the vast majority of trucks are grocery haulers. That's not opinion - it's statistics.
People addicted to online forums love to comment and upvote posts which trash talk trucks. People who own and enjoy trucks are busy leading fun and productive lives and can't be bothered to waste their time with online arguments.
There's a nice Jay Leno video on this truck with the founders as well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw250Va1JFo
The primary purpose of a pickup truck is gender affirming care for men in an increasing confusing world.
> I see them in pristine condition on city streets hauling a totality of one human.
It’s about having one vehicle that can do it all. Maybe you’re noticing when there’s one human but you don’t really know how else that person is using the vehicle at other times. Trucks can haul people, things, do road trips, etc. pretty well.
You Don't Need a Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume - https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz... - March 15th, 2019
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42638394 - January 2025
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21631704 - November 2019
Ray Delahanty | CityNerd: Rural Cosplay is, Unfortunately, A Thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_BE5KPp18
(Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay, not realized utility and rational TCO, based on the evidence and data)
> Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay
This is a hilarious take for anyone who has spent any time living outside of a big city.
Yes, there are some people who buy trucks because they want one but don’t actually use the truck features.
Generalizing to “Americans are cosplaying” is just trolling.
Study Claims That Most Pickup Truck Owners Don’t Actually Use Them For Truck Stuff - September 2023
https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-...
https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history
You’re spamming this same study throughout the thread without realizing that is uses a different and much stricter definition of “hauling” than the average person.
From that own study it shows more than half are using it at least “occasionally” for “hauling”.
I’d like to see the study on what percentage of people use all 4 seats in their car so you can dunk on people who buy 4 seaters next.
I live in a big city and two children under 10 have been killed by large pickup trucks within a half mile of my home in the last five years. Two that I know of anyway, because I'm acquainted with the families. One had been modified with a "bull bar" making it more dangerous to pedestrians.
And 80% of americans live in urban areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullbar
>based on the evidence and data >Evidence and data show that cake taste better than bread, why are they starving? Let them eat cake
I really wonder what kind of world people live in who write such articles and what kind of world people live in who seriously read them. It's hard to believe that they live among us, there must be some separate island in the ocean or something like that where they can write their articles in complete isolation from the rest of the world.
Ehh, vehicle affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem if people can’t make financially rational choices themselves. As of this comment, the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000, while the average price of a new mid-size pickup truck is about $42,690. This is before tariff impacts are baked in. Doesn’t include operating costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance), putting monthly payments around $1k/month (at least). Let them drive studio apartments around I suppose, if they can get financed and not repo’d in the near term.
Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it? You would not. This is different? Everyone is entitled to wildly conspicuous consumption? I argue no.
>affordability rapidly accelerating away as the middle class evaporates solves the problem
But that complete bs. Vehicle affordability is not in any danger, average price of a new pickus trucks depends on the amount of money the population has. Even if the middle class completely disappears, people will just drive cheaper pickups.
>Would you cry for me if I wanted a Lambo but couldn’t afford it?
But they could. And that the reason why "the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000"
> But they could. And that the reason why "the average price of a new full-size pickup truck is around $64,000"
Car Repos Hit Levels Unseen Since 2008 Financial Crisis - https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev... - March 27th, 2025
Late Car Payments Hit Highest Rate in More Than 30 Years - https://www.pymnts.com/loans/2025/late-car-payments-hit-high... - March 6th, 2025
St Louis Fed FRED: Average Amount Financed for New Car Loans at Finance Companies - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DTCTLVENANM
I’ll see if I have access to the Cox Automotive pickup truck specific repo stats as soon as I’m not mobile. Based on the auto loan delinquency and repo rates, the evidence is fairly robust that people cannot afford these price levels. They get off the lot with the vehicle, certainly, that’s super easy due to easy credit, but then the clock starts ticking on when the car gets repo’d.
(~100M Americans are sub 700 FICO subprime, 33-40% of consumers depending on credit reporting agency providing the data)
> Americans buy trucks out of emotion and cosplay,
You don't need anything besides tent and food!
Every person buys almost everything for emotion.
Sure, but large trucks come with a ton of very negative externalities.
The original comment is just about how "irrational" it is.
And truck owners pay more - for the vehicle, for tires, for registration, for gas, etc which are all taxed by the public to reflect their greater usage of public roads.
You would need to argue that trucks have a disproportionate impac. For example, if I commute 2 hours to work in an Accord, is that a greater negative externality than owning a Truck a commuting 15 minutes?
I suspect the answer is no - a truck is some small multiple of a smaller vehicle.
What I see in this thread is that the narrow demographic here is merely expressing a preference - they don't like trucks, and they wish that could be imposed on others. Ultimately, you need to convince your fellow men in an election.
Small multiplier, I think not.
Pickup trucks weigh about 1.5x as much as a sedan (comparing Camry to F150). Due to the fourth power law, they should be taxed about 5 times higher than a sedan simply for road maintainence. I don’t have the numbers, but I doubt that is so. Toll roads typically charge per axle, and as below, gas tax is probably only about 2x. Ironically, EVs should pay more tax for maintenance since they are usually quite a bit heavier—though the OP truck is still ~600 lb lighter than an F150.
Fuel economy is about half in a pickup vs. a sedan, so they pollute that much more. Gas tax obviously scales here, but do the other taxes? Does gas tax go towards remedying the pollution impact at all? I don’t know.
Then there’s the safety impact on pedestrians and other vehicles. I don’t have numbers here, sorry.
Also, if you consider the externalities of cars in general, there's the additional issue of designing our communities around them rather than around the people who live there.
This quote is kinda a meme by now but here's SimCity lead designer Stone Librande on how the team had to make parking lots unrealistically small for the game to be enjoyable [1]:
> When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.
[1] https://archive.ph/z7hZG#selection-753.65-753.506
If you spend any time looking at parking lots on satellite maps you quickly realize parking lots are nearly always at least twice as large as the building they are for.
Right, carbon emissions, excess deaths incurred on others, etc.
This is one of the dumbest takes I’ve seen on trucks. It attacks a straw man.
If you buy something for one of its features and don’t use the others, it doesn’t have anything to do with cosplay.
This is like saying people who buy electric cars should just buy race car driver costumes instead. Unbridled ignorance.
> Unbridled ignorance.
Ironically, I don't think ignorance means what you think it means. It simply means not knowing something; it's not, for example, an attitude in itself.
Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.
If you buy a product that comes with a ton of negative externalities and then don't use the single feature that distinguishes it from other products, people will rightly judge you.
> Most race cars aren't electric though? That analogy makes no sense.
No, they aren't. I attend a significant amount of track events as a driver and I will see maybe 1 electic car every few events. Besides the lack of charging infrastrucutre at most race tracks, the one positive of instant torque/power is significantly outweighed by their overall mass and significant heat generation.
The latter tends to result in a Tesla S being unable to last more than 20 minutes at Laguna Seca or Sonoma before the battery pack overheats and reduces power output requiring the car to exit the track.
A lot of modern “trucks” are pretty crappy for actually hauling anything. A few months ago I had the pleasure of loading some furniture into an Escalade. The outside is huge, but the inside is remarkably small. The height of the interior floor is also ridiculous, so it’s extra difficult to lift anything into the vehicle. I don’t think most full size pickups are a lot better.
Also, check out the underside of most of these monster vehicles. The approach, breakover, and departure angles may be awesome, but that’s only because the definitions assume uniform height transverse to the driving direction. If you drive these things over any substantial bump that the wheels don’t go over, the differential will bottom out. Oops. This means that, for many practical purposes, the height of the vehicle and the absurd suspensions don’t buy nearly as much capability as they might appear to.
I wouldn’t consider an Escalade a truck, just a luxury SUV. A Hilux/Tacoma, Tundra or F150 are trucks. And they pretty capable of doing all the things. My Tundra might be one of the best cars I ever owned.
Rule #1 of driving offroad is that tires contact the ground, not other parts of the truck. If you see a bump, drive over it; don't straddle it.
This. I have had a 2016 F-150 since late 2017 - I'd never owned a truck before. I can go get mulch, take an entire bed-load of stuff to the dump (couches, mattresses, etc). When we go on vacation within driving distance (usually up to 500ish miles for us, we can bring more or less anything we want without concern for space. We took my wife's SUV 2 weeks ago on a 700 mile trip (her mid-sized SUV is much newer) and we had to pack very carefully compared to when we take the truck. Our son plays ice hockey, his hockey equipment stinks (yes it gets aired out...he's still a stinky teenager), but it's never an issue because with the truck, it's not in the passenger compartment. We live in the south but drove to Pittsburgh through 2 snowstorm there and back...lots of SUVs stranded on the road...my 4x4 F-150 made it through without any trouble. When my father in law passed last year, we moved all of his things out of his apartment with my truck. I let my neighbors borrow it when they need to move something large. The only thing that sucks about it is parking in store parking lots. That and buying a newer (not brand new) costs 2x what I paid for my 2016 in 2017. I've toyed with getting rid of it for something smaller, but it's just too versatile for me to give up.
> Maybe you’re noticing when there’s one human but you don’t really know how else that person is using the vehicle at other times.
95% of big trucks I see on the road have one person in them and beyond my anecdotal experience we know statistically that most vehicle trips involve 1 person. It's not super hard to extrapolate from there.
I'm not even particularly "anti" truck, though I do think the increase in size and weight has gotten totally ridiculous.
Except that one vehicle is completely incompetent for its primary use 99% of the time :)
In a sane society "knowing someone with a truck" is all you really need. In a highly individualistic society "having a truck just in case" is the dominant precept
Fully agreed. Although to add, I literally never met someone with a truck, and in fact never owned a car myself either, but rented a car and also ranted a van plenty of times during a move, even with a driver.
Same reason I don't own an airplane, I just rent one with a driver if I go on holiday trips.
Big caveat: I've always lived in a (capital) city of my country and I have no kids yet.
But by and large I think renting for the 3 day a year use-case makes more sense than owning 365 days of the year, even if you have no friends to rely on.
If you tow anything, renting is not an option. Rental contracts almost always prohibit towing or restrict it to only 1st party trailers.
This. I learned as much when I was clobbered by a distracted teen and my SUV ended up in the shop. I use it a lot for moving people, things and towing (like daily). Nobody would rent me a SUV and allow me to tow with it, only commercial truck rentals at ridiculous rates.
And for the truck driver haters three things:
- Are you speaking from experience or projection? Stereotyping doesn’t work. After owning a large SUV for 25 years I can say with conviction that the price is worth the utility to me. No question. - I would LOVE to also own a small electric scooter for small trips. The cost and poor quality have put me off for years but it’s inevitable I’ll end up with one soon. - Our next sedan will be electric as well, and probably weigh more than the SUV.
Truck owners aren’t idiots or evil.
In most places in the 1st world you can rent a truck if you need one *
For other times, use a car.
* a truck is just a car that misses a roof over the back part of it
I own a truck.*
*It’s stored at Home Depot and whenever I need it, I just pay them $19 for the hour or so that I use it.
I did this for a while. You’re leaving out some ancillary details: time driving to and from home depot to pick up and drop off the truck, needing a truck and no rentals available, picking up a rental truck and there’s some issue with it, something happens out of your control that requires more time with the truck but you can’t extend the rental… all things i’ve encountered.
At some point the number of times i needed to use it picked up (hah) which multiplied these inconveniences enough that it became worth it to just pick up (hah) a used truck.
I use it exclusively for hauling work, but that usually entails at least one trip without a load, which may lead people to incorrectly judging me for driving it unnecessarily.
> * a truck is just a car that misses a roof over the back part of it
Respectfully, a truck is not just a car missing the back part of it. It often has a lot more power, is lifted, has off-road springs, larger wheels, low and high speed gear box, roll cage for the front cabin, raised air intake - the list goes on.
Most people, though, do just need a car with a removable back.
In any case, the "truck" from the article doesn't seem to have all that.
>In a sane society "knowing someone with a truck" is all you really need.
Yes, yes, we all know. "You'll own nothing and be happy". Fewer and fewer people believe you.
You don’t know that. You’re making assumptions. But even if that were true, so what? Maybe it is important to that person’s quality of life to have the truck for weekend adventures or chores.
If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs. Most people buy trucks as a lifestyle choice, not as a practical one.
That’s not to say there aren’t real uses for trucks, or people who use them for their designed purpose.
That’s also not to say people should be required to purchase only vehicles that meet their basic transportation requirements. People drive sports cars even without ever going out to a track.
Trucks (and full-size SUVs) specifically push some pretty crappy externalities onto other road users, so it’s not exactly crazy to be annoyed with people who buy and drive big trucks a personality trait.
> If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs.
I generally beat the crap out of my truck and the exterior looks just fine.
It's really not hard to avoid damaging your exterior. In fact, you have to have a total accident or be completely negligent to cause actual damage. Stuff goes in the bed of the truck. The bed had a bunch of nicks and dings in it, but you're not going to be seeing that while casting judgement.
Heck, go take a look at the work trucks. Find something like a welding truck, an electrician, or a plumber. These are all trucks that people literally use every single day for work, tossing stuff in and out of the bed. They just don't look that beat up. That's because it's just not that hard to avoid completely destroying your vehicle.
> If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs.
You can tell how few people in this thread have any idea how light off roading or hauling works.
Driving your truck down a dirt road or putting something in the back of it doesn’t destroy the paint job. You can have a work truck and keep it nice.
Sorry, but I have driven off-road and you inevitably get dings, nicks, and scratches from gravel, tree branches, and random detritus.
I know people that use their trucks for hauling for work and they are never pristine. They don’t look destroyed. They look used.
I'm sitting here smh. Everyone in my (rural) neighborhood owns a pickup truck. Except for the one dude who towed a skid steer with an Escalade. Those trucks are often towing trailers, hauling messy crap, etc. and don't look any different than any other truck on the road.
Hell, I just unhooked a horse trailer less than an hour ago and the year-old truck that was hauling it looks like it just drove off the showroom floor.
>If this were the case, you’d see more trucks with wear and tear on them and fewer with five years in and pristine paint jobs. Most people buy trucks as a lifestyle choice, not as a practical one.
No you wouldn’t. Off-roading, hauling things, and towing trailers does not require destroying the finish or exterior of the truck in any way.
Yep. Trucks that actually get used as trucks look like it with dings, scratches, and scuffs because they’re tools, not toys.
Ironically they’re also often old small models that owners have been keeping running forever because they’re cheap to fix, practical, and easy to park unlike their embiggened modern counterparts.
> Trucks that actually get used as trucks look like it with dings, scratches, and scuffs because they’re tools, not toys.
Not really. Lots of people use trucks and keep them in pristine condition too. Beds have liners now to keep them looking new. And you aren’t getting random dings on the outside unless you drive into things.
The amount of effort required to keep them pristine scales with the quantity and intensity of the work performed, no? The most serious truck drivers probably aren’t going to have time to buff out every little mark when it’s going to get covered in them again on the job tomorrow.
People who drive a truck for work aren't going to crash it into things all the time, what are you even talking about? Do you regularly crash your car into things while driving it? Like on a daily basis?
Like..you get that mud and dust just wash off, and the reason to wash them off is that once dried they can mess up the paint over a long period which then gives you a rust problem you really don't want?
The people I know who drive trucks are doing things where constant small bits of damage are inevitable. Think kicked up gravel, tree branches scraping against the body, unintentionally bumping up against the truck with equipment, etc. Damage is frequent enough that it’s one of the reasons they find buying a new truck difficult to justify and would rather buy something that’s got some visible wear and tear on it already.
I do know that because I see the same trucks driving around my neighborhood with Jerry cans and recovery boards 7 days of the week!
Best case you’re looking at 28.5% weekend utilization which isn’t that bad, much better than the 1% I joked with, but how many people do you know taking an offroad adventure every single weekend?
So what? Yeah I don’t really care. It’s mostly hilarious watching them try to park.
Does it have to be an off road adventure specifically? I feel like most people will want to get two vehicles in their family that can do many things, since that’s what they have room for, rather than more. A truck could be used for off road stuff but it could also be used for taking kids and gear to their games, or for a weekend camping trip, or just for commuting. It can do whatever you need without needing to rent a different vehicle or borrow from a friend or whatever. That’s peace of mind and flexibility. I don’t even own one but I do appreciate that aspect.
Why do you need a truck for that? A cross over can do all that.
The other day, I was just remarking how my minivan makes a better pickup than most pickups for most tasks. For years I've wanted to get another truck (had an old Dakota that I had to sell when kid #3 was on the way). Practicality reigns, though, and I'm extremely satisfied with the usability of the van.
The people I know with pick-ups don't use the bed half the time "in case it rains today" and have to tow a covered trailer to haul anything that wouldn't like to get wet.
Getting a cheap minivan with an ugly, worn out interior that’s been through the rigors of family and ripping the seats out seems like it’d be a great cost saving hack for a number of businesses that people often buy trucks or small commercial vans for.
You can do all those things with a vehicle half the size. Modern F-150s are industrial vehicles. They weight 5000 pounds. They and their large SUV cousins are a menace to pedestrians, normal-sized vehicles, and the road itself.
> Trucks can haul people, things, do road trips, etc. pretty well.
Yes, as can most vehicles?
Not to the same ability. Sedans and mid size SUVs have far less space, and also less ground height. If you’re traveling on gravel roads or camping, most sedans and smaller SUVs aren’t ideal. If you have kids, space fills up quickly even for small trips. If you’re moving something larger (like drywall or a TV) it may not fit at all in a smaller vehicle. Even most full size SUVs also have less space than a full size truck (even one that isn’t one of the larger models).
The argument Telo makes is that you can have high utility in a smaller vehicle designed well. I was my own GC for a site-built home and sub contracted out many parts of it. I did it while owning a 2 door Mini SE. Only twice did I need to rent truck from my local Home Depot to haul some unwieldy and heavy debris. Most stores will deliver what you need (lumber, large pipes, insulation, etc) because consumer trucks are rarely large enough. I would not have been able to load any significant amount of lumber into an F250. That leaves large vehicles for recreation or family space. I hope car manufacturers rethink vehicle packaging now that EV motors and batteries allow for different confirmations like putting the motor in the wheel hub.
And, the sub contractors - the ones doing the work (immigrants) - they had a wide variety of vehicles. I took note that some had Camrys, Prius, old Golfs, small picks ups like Rangers, and some older mid size trucks that were visually heavily used. Else, they used commercial trucks or vans. When did I see the prestigious full cab F150s or Silverado RTs? When I originally interviewed GCs which is when I noticed they drove their clean and new trucks.
They did a good job maximizing wheelbase given the small size, which is very important for safe and comfortable towing. I look forward to their launch and some real-world reviews and drive tests.
The vast majority of dirt roads are fine. I put hundreds of miles on my 1996 Honda Civic hatchback in the Cascades with no problems many years ago.
If the road existed in the 1990s, it's quite likely accessible by a mid-size SUV. Similarly, if families of 4 could go camping with cars from 1950-2000, you can today as well. In fact, you can get more compact tents, etc. today.
Trucks and huge SUVs come in handy if you want to bring lots of modern toys like gigantic prestige coolers and 4x4s.
I have multiple times driven a Mustang Mach E (a heavy, very low ride height EV) out to a friend’s property an hour off of anything resembling a road, down multiple dirt switchbacks into the bottom of the Yuba River canyon.
Vehicles these days are shockingly capable.
Where I'm from, people often own a car for their commute to work, and rent a van when they're moving. Their regular car is way less of a hassle for other people than the van is, but that's okay, cause the van is just for a few days.
I now own a truck. I’m actually regretting not getting a bigger/heavier duty one. The biggest limitation is payload capacity. Payload is anything that puts weight on the vehicle - occupants, dogs, gear, food, supplies, bed covers/caps, etc. You must legally be under payload capacity or you can risk fines or liability in an accident. A lot of people are willing to push these limits, but cops pay a lot more attention to people towing/hauling.
If you want to actually tow with your truck, you need to allot a good portion of your payload to trailer weight (and hitches) that rests on the truck (tongue weight). This can range from 200lbs to 1k+ lbs, but is typically in the 500 to 600lb range for something like a boat or travel trailer. It can easily go higher if you load the trailer up with stuff.
A typical light duty truck might have 1500 lbs of payload capacity. Four people and their belongings can easily add up to 800lbs. Add pets, bikes, travel gear, food, etc and your suddenly well over 1k lbs of payload. You literally have no capacity to tow anything but the smallest of trailers.
So what do you do, well you get a bigger truck. You don’t need it all of the time, but it just doesn’t make sense to own a vehicle that cannot legally handle a family road trip.
Before people say “rent”. That comes with its own major set of issues. The biggest being little to no ability to tow with a rental vehicle. Most rentals flat out prohibit towing (even if technically capable and equipped). Those that do allow towing, generally limit it to 1st party trailers (U-Haul truck can only tow u-haul trailer).
Let’s not play this game.
The main objection is the buffoonish size. Look at trucks in the 1990s and compare the size.
There is absolutely an element of clownish machismo involved.
> Look at trucks in the 1990s and compare the size.
If you actually compare similiar configurations, you'll find basically no difference in size.
Compared to a 90's F-150, a modern f-150 is
* 1" wider
* Either 0' longer or 1' longer depending on the exact configuration
* 1" taller
* Nearly 1k lbs less heavy (lots of weight optimization in the past ~35 years)
I agree generally, but blame the makers I guess. One important thing to remember is bed length. Trying to haul plywood or 2x4s with a 5 ft bed is a joke, and not easy with even a 6 ft bed.
The old, small rangers used to have a 7 ft bed option! I believe the longest you can get today is 6. So if you want a longer bed, you're kinda forced into the full size fold.
I don't know how well they'd actually sell, but it'd be neat if they at least offered something maybe a hair bigger than maverick sized with a 7 ft bed.
The typical number of times an American non work truck is used to haul a load each year is zero. Same for using it's bed capacity.
I don't think this generalization is quite fair. I'm sure this is true for some folks and their social circles, but for those of us who engineer and know our way around a Home Depot, the capacity is a game changer. I used to have to rent or borrow trucks for my projects.
Not to mention Christmas trees, moving, helping friends out, etc.
Yes this has actually been studied. Though I don't have a link on hand I remember the numbers being quite stark
> The typical number of times an American non work truck is used to haul a load each year is zero.
If you specifically exclude work trucks and define “haul a load” as filling up the bed with loose dirt or gravel or something then I could believe this.
I haven’t put a cubic yard of anything in my truck bed this year but hauling a cubic yard of anything is a rare occurrence for someone who isn’t doing landscaping.
But you have to really stretch the definitions if you believe that people never put anything in the bed to haul.
If you’re not hauling a cubic foot then why need a truck?
Hm, sounds like you don't really need a truck... The world is racing to +4C and you're over here defending 25mpg gender affirming care mobiles - you're on the wrong side of this one buddy.
It fully misses the main reason people buy trucks in the US -- to signal where they stand on the political spectrum.
those are the trucks that people who buy trucks like. This truck is designed to appeal to people who don't buy trucks.
It's also because of CAFE standards.
Those effectively don't exist anymore. The fine multiplier was reduced to zero, so there's no penalty for violating the standards, retroactive back to 2022.
I wonder what this is like for driver safety though - not a lot of crumple zone in that nose!
Not as much crumple zone as you might think in a "traditional" truck if most of the space is full of a solid metal block
You're both right!
I noticed the lack of a "crumple zone" the instant I saw the image.
...and a moment later, I also realized it's usually a solid engine block that sits there. I shudder to think of what actually happens when that zone "crumples".
Back to the Telo MT1, it's great that they redesigned it from the ground up, around it being an EV -- it's like the Phelps Tractor having reins, and then somebody asking "why does it need to have reins if there's no horse?"
Don't shudder, learn about it.
The engine is designed to move based on the design of the frame rails and mounts -- it is pushed under the passenger compartment, absorbing and deflecting more energy.
I'm sure the Telo is designed to modern standards and would perform similarly. I'd be more worried about expensive damage to the vehicle in less personally dangerous collisions.
This would be my concern. A fender bender hits the wheels on this thing and suddenly you're doing major surgery to repair it.
> ...and a moment later, I also realized it's usually a solid engine block that sits there. I shudder to think of what actually happens when that zone "crumples".
I believe the engine drops down and the rest crumples inward, at least in theory.
Decades of research, innovation, crash tests and rule changes have been put into improving safety in head on collisions. It’s not like you’re the first who wonders what will happen with engine block. It’s designed to go down.
Although I don’t know about American trucks. I think they are meant to wreak havoc on every single person involved.
My neighbour designs the crumble zone on Volvo's heavy duty trucks. They at least spend a shit ton of effort (continuous, multi-decade) on making anything hit by the truck having as little effect as possible (at least).
Quite a challenge with heavy duty trucks shipping tens of tons of stuff, but anyway.
Vehicular elephantiasis is largely the result of perverse incentives from emission regulation. Make something big enough and it fits into different more lax categories. The way we do emission and mileage standards might do more harm than good unless you’re an oil company.
Maybe, but it's clearly worked it's way into fashions as well. The F-150 lightning doesn't have to worry about emissions categories, but it's just as elephantine as the rest, including a child-killing vision-obstructing front hood and grille whose only purpose is to enclose a frunk.
I like that’s the lightning is giant. I don’t particularly like small, low to the ground vehicles.
Your comfort shouldn’t outweigh the safety of pedestrians. There is a reason those cars do not pass regulations in Europe.
I’ve driven plenty in Europe. Those small cramped roads can’t handle big vehicles and parking anywhere is non existent or highly inconvenient. I bet that’s the main reason European cars tend to skew smaller.
But why is that? Is there any chance it's at least partly to protect yourself from everyone else in giant cars?
I have a Subaru Forester. When I drive a sedan everyone shines their headlamps into my face. I parked my Forester behind a sedan and drove back and forth. My lights were not in their cabin.
So other people drive in a way that is not compatible with my driving because I don’t want headlamps in my cabin. Occasionally there’s a lifted truck behind me and it brightens my cabin.
In those moments I fantasize about placing retroreflectors all over my rear seat headrests but then I pull over and let them past and the moment passes.
Besides, a HN truism is “Yield to gross tonnage”. I liked that. It makes sense that HN users who believe that if you’re big others should get out of the way also get large cars.
“The cemeteries are full of people with right of way” so smaller vehicles should get out of the way of larger vehicles or risk death. It’s a good lesson. Can’t say it’s false.
I guess there should be rules about the height of headlights. It seems like exactly the sort of safety and compatibility problem that standards exist to solve.
US mainstream belief is that standards can be enforced at factory but no laws should be enforced on individuals. I act in that ecosystem. Not worsening it, but not sacrificing myself to it.
It is obviously true.
What is also obviously true is that road damage scales with the fourth power of vehicle mass, and that therefore vehicle taxation should increase at a similar power, so that the drivers of the 3-tonne trucknutted Canyoneros stop freeloading on the community.
… and that’s why I bought a Marauder MPV to go get groceries.
Nothing less than a decommissioned Abrams tank will do for taking little Billy to school!
Also the arms race of collision survivablity. I have no interest in driving a big truck, but with all the other big trucks out there I’m seriously tempted just for my own safety…
The big trucks are not evaluated for safety to the same standard as other vehicles. They aren't rigged with exploding gas tanks anymore, but the feeling of safety is mostly psychological.
That’s not the safety risk. The safety risk is not being in a big truck and getting hit by one. It’s not so much to do with the vehicle’s safety features as to (1) mass; and (2) height of the cabin.
That’s part of the issue. The safety ratings of a pickup truck do not incorporate the risk of the front end causing fatalities in collisions.
The feeling of safety is part of that - drivers think they have better visibility due to seating position. They are also more likely to roll and spin out than other vehicles.
Causing fatalities to the other drivers and pedestrians. This is, unfortunately, a selfish incentive that works against the common good.
The only logical next step is the mini-tank
I've been looking at the GTK Boxer since it was first announced. The modularity means you can bring the kids to school then swap the rear module for one more suited to transporting raw materials, you just need a garage equipped with a 15t crane to do the swap at home in just a few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn_WblYc4xk
Just wait until 2050 when we all have our own killdozers [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
The killdozers will all be self driving with no passengers and we will be the target. This will surely come to pass long before 2050.
How did I never hear of this? That was an epic read, thank you.
It isn’t an arms race, as being in those bigger vehicles only feels more safe; it isn’t actually any safer.
It is much safer to be in a big truck hitting an another big truck, than in a small sedan hitting a big truck. Physics of momentum beats out safety features. Actual studies do show this: it is safer for the occupant of the truck in a two-vehicle collision.
More trucks on the road make the chance of fatalities overall higher. You often find articles saying that fatalities go up when you introduce a truck, and that is true. But that's because trucks are more likely to kill pedestrians or drivers of smaller cars, NOT because of risk to the truck driver. []
It would be better if there were fewer trucks on the road. But if everyone else is buying a truck, it becomes your selfish incentive to do so as well, for the safety of your* family. It is a tragedy of the commons situation.
[*] The exception is single-vehicle accidents, e.g. rollovers. Those are riskier and more likely for the driver of a truck, but also less of a concern in suburban driving.
Maybe we’ll see that change if the recent CAFE changes stick. I think the big bill passed recently set CAFE fines to zero.
I think that’s part of it, but also about 30% of men apparently have a nearly-unlimited budget for buying the biggest truck.
> This is a breath of fresh air.
But for $41,000? To me that's an automatic nope... I can import a used Kei truck that works just fine from Japan for less than $10,000.
You could have written this exact comment on the Slate Truck announcement post.
It's a failure of law and regulation that those things are even allowed. Their existence is a direct attack on the freedom of third parties.
The risk to pedestrians is pretty much a non-factor in this. It’s going to come down to business / agriculture adoption where I see the largest market opportunity. Think service technicians such as HVAC, plumbers, construction. If these can make financial sense in terms of ROI and cost of ownership then Telo can make it. Currently the base price of $41,500 is a bit on the higher end, though of course will save dramatically on fuel and maintenance over industry standard vans and light trucks.
>They are often touted as off road capable with high utility, and I see them in pristine condition on city streets hauling a totality of one human.
If you off-road with a truck and keep it clean afterwards, this is exactly what it looks like on the street.
This is the originally unintended side effect of regulation that applies to cars.
Americans generally don’t want tiny vehicles. The option that leaves them is trucks and, increasingly, SUVs.
I want a tiny car. The problem is that road design is unsafe so people buy bigger cars so they are safer when they get into an accident. I've seen the aftermath of a Chrysler Fiat getting into a collision with an SUV and lets just say the Fiat driver had much worse day than the SUV driver.
You only need a Pentium 3 machine to read and write on Hacker News.
I don't think you thought this one through... if anything you're making the opposite point you're (I believe) trying to make.
I'm writing this on a macbook air that sizes up to <2.5% of the weight and volume of a desktop computer you're describing (screen, case and peripherals). It's also idling at about 2-3 watt, which is also <10% of the computer you're describing. It also produces much less sound, it's entirely quiet.
So size, weight and power usage and noise are way down.
The idea that I'd use a pentium 3 instead is ridiculous for these very reasons (heavier, bigger, noisier, using more energy), even in private use, and especially in public use.
It's also the reason why bigger, heavier, noisier and more energy-consuming cars, are also ridiculous to many people, particularly those not driving them and having to face them in the public sphere.
I don't get it, is the joke, 'stating the obvious'?
Why is it wrong to have a powerful vehicle if you don't always use it for tasks demanding that power, but it's okay to have a surplus of power for low-demanding computing tasks?
Same reason I don't want to have dinner in a restaurant next to someone trying to cut their steak with a chainsaw: at best they are being incredibly obnoxious, at worst they are going to maim me. Just because it is better for your once-a-month weekend lumberjack trip with the boys doesn't mean it is an appropriate one-size-fits-all cutting tool for day-to-day use.
Contrast that with someone having a needlessly powerful computer. How does that impact the rest of the world? Not at all, it only impacts the owner's wallet. Someone's needlessly-powerful computer has never killed a child, or taken up four spots in public. Heck, it'll even downclock when idle, so there isn't even any extra power use to be worried about!
Because accomplishing the same task with a more powerful (i.e. larger) vehicle is a) more polluting, and b) more dangerous for other road users; two things that are not true for a surplus of computing power.
Are you sure your house is the minimum you need? It's looking a little bit nicer and more spacious than others.
Because by and large the apps and programs you are running on your computer requires lots of resources just to open and allow you to do your low-demanding tasks.
Having a CPU sitting idle doesn’t cause massive externalities.
You can do it with a raspberry pi.
Did that for a couple of years. RPi4 as my daily driver (including image creation and video editing).
https://www.heyhomepage.com/?module=blog&link=1&post=4
The things you listed are _why_ people buy them. If they wanted something smaller, they would go with a Toyota Tacoma or a Nissan Titan.
People by and large don’t really know what they want, they purchase based on vibes and manipulation. If people in general really wanted these trucks they’d be more popular outside of America. The truck has been a boiled frog, slowly growing in size and people haven’t realised it. Also Americans in general have a bit of a cultural issue with ego, individualism and all that, which doesn’t help.
Even Tacomas are larger than they used to be. One day not too long ago when I was running errands I came across an early 2000s Tacoma (before they got bumped up to midsize trucks) and was almost dumbfounded, because it’d been so long since I’d seen a truck that size. It’s a great size, but nobody makes them like that any more.
I’d like a small truck for DIY house projects in a suburb, but even the “small” Ford Maverick is nearly a foot longer than a 2000 Tacoma and the 2025 Tacoma is about two feet longer, both of which would be awkward to park and maneuver on the tight streets around here. Their increased height is dangeorus with all the kids running around, too. So, well, I don’t have a truck.
The Telo and maybe Slate are the first two modern trucks that I could realistically consider. Hoping for an R3T that’s sized similarly to Rivian’s upcoming R3 (which is comparable in size to a VW Golf) but that’s probably not going to happen.
Titan is full-sized. You mean the Nissan Frontier.
Still those have basically caught up with full-sized vehicles from ~15 years ago..
I find no problems with them being giant. I drive a F150 Lightning and since it all electric I love that it’s big.
I spoke to them a lot at OpenSauce.
- The body panels were composite but they want to go to stamped metal for production. - It's based off of the subaru ascent; at least most of the frame and suspension is. - NMC chemistry, didn't get an OEM name for the actual cell/pouch though. - Mostly off the shelf Bosch power-train components. Will be interesting to see a tear-down once they're for sale. - No commitment on how "open" the vehicle will be to modifications. They have designed in attachment points for upgrades but it didn't seem to be anywhere as extensive as what Slate is doing. This makes some sense; they have a more "finished" vision where Slate is intentionally taking the "our vision is for you to buy the canvas from us and then make it your own" approach.
On that last point, I don't think Slate has released anything substantial either w/r/t the CAN bus either. As far as I know, their plan is still a BYOD approach for the head-unit so here's hoping that it'll be relatively straight forward to interrogate the busses from an android or linux device. The Telo had a head-unit integrated so who knows how much control you'll have over the vehicle.
Neat, but I imagined what an accident with a semi head on would do to me...
This is cool I guess but I don’t get why some of these electric car companies have to design cars that look like toys. Rivian and this. It looks like a golf cart with a flatbed. I think an electric kei truck would have a huge market in the US but the design needs some work to be taken seriously.
There’s something to be said for being distinctive, but you can do that while not looking silly (Lucid is a good example). And simply being a small electric truck is enough differentiation anyway
They had a ton of design constraints, and looking like a toy wasn't one of them. This is what their solution to those constraints (such as more range via a low coefficient of drag) looks like. Very few people are capable of evaluating a vehicle without their biases influencing them, such as what a masculine truck needs to look like.
> Very few people are capable of evaluating a vehicle without their biases influencing them, such as what a masculine truck needs to look like.
Right, thats why looks would have been a good additional constraint.
I just want my 2000 Toyota Tacoma but with a small EV(0-60 in 10s is fine, 150hp is fine, 200mi range is fine).
Late 90s/early aughts Tacomas are GOAT vehicles.
I had a stick shift one in high school. Absolutely loved it.
The Slate truck is probably pretty close to what you’re looking for?
I dream of a low-milage early 2000s Taco with aftermarket Carplay
Oh man I would scoop that up in a heartbeat.
I think it looks great? It evokes a Kei truck to me, but with more modern styling.
To 99% of consumers in the US, kei trucks look like toys, so I'm not sure that's the best example.
Honestly, if you look at the truck market, it's dominated by masculine designs like the F-150. Arguably this has created a gap in the market for designs that are more compact and approachable. It may never be the majority, but TELO looks perfectly suited to address that niche.
I find it amusing that people are discussing the masculine design language and how men driving trucks are overcompensating (OK, not so much in this particular thread), but for as long as I can remember, it's been women that have always told me that they prefer bigger vehicles.
Kei trucks are small but they look like a workhorse in a similar way to a classic Hilux giving them a respectability that I think this design lacks.
I agree there should be more approachable designs, just seems like this went way too far in the direction of toy-like
This looks like a kei truck, who by definition looks like a toy.
Seriously though, it has the same shape and look of any kei I've seen. Like others, I wish for a 90s era Ford Ranger or Tacoma, but between safety requirements and capability demand from people that's probably not practical.
The kei truck itself has a ridiculous toy-like design also though.
I love the fantastic designs and form factors popping up in mini-EV truck/SUV space. My worry is for the business feasibility for these. Why isn’t Tesla making these? They have the supply chain and expertise to easily pull it off and they’d be such a big hit. People switching to them for light cargo would be a REAL contribution in cutting use of carbon.
I can think of one possibility. At Tesla’s scale, production becomes feasible only if they can produce X million units. This is because setting up production tooling, supply chain channels, and other associated costs is prohibitively expensive. Additionally, the demand for these vehicles will be relatively low until influential YouTubers in the construction, farming, and rural sectors become advocates and start promoting them.
In my opinion, electric vehicles (EVs) are perfectly suited for this task. They are ideal for transporting heavy items between nearby destinations, such as moving Home Depot supplies to a construction site or Costco products to a restaurant or store. A range of even 200 miles is practical for this use-case and keeps the cost low (MT1 is a beast by my standard).
For clarification, I am all for more competition. But I am also selfish and I really want this segment to become wildly successful . In any case, I really and truly hope they can make the business case work and be profitable/sustainable.
I don't think Tesla's judgment should be the litmus test. They have capacity to produce 250K Cybertrucks / year, currently on pace to sell < 20K and it's only going down from here.
To be fair, the main reason for this is that the CEO of Tesla looked at "people who buy electric vehicles", and spent the last four years turning himself into a caricature of a villain to those people.
At the best maybe it was some sort of misguided attempt to encourage the American right to buy EVs?
If so it royally backfired and just decimated his own customer base right at the time real competition was entering the market. The Equinox EV roundly beats the Model Y head to head on range, price, AWD, etc. The Ioniq 5 is more expensive but is lovely.
I kind of think it's cool that reality is configured such that Cybertruck exists, but only in a very meta way. Lazy-think me: It feels dumb and is probably just bad focus from a company focus standpoint.
Sadly, trucks like these are like the automotive "small smartphone". At first it appears there is a large vocal market, especially if you read the comment section. Alas, nobody will buy it, just like nobody actually buys small smartphones.
Certainly not at $41k
Sadly true: and I’m one of those who walks their talk wrt. small phones. I don’t need a ute, though, so I drive a cupra born instead
Kei trucks and the maverick seem to disagree.
the maverick is a few inches shorter than the ranger. it’s huge.
40k with 300hp and 350 mile range? This sounds pretty awesome imo.
40k will not get you a 350 mile range. There is no way they get to market at that price for that capability.
40k gets 240 mile range.
> Additionally, the demand for these vehicles will be relatively low until influential YouTubers in the construction, farming, and rural sectors become advocates and start promoting them.
This is a surprising claim to me. Can you point to any other vehicles (even something from John Deere or a competitor) whose demand significantly rose in a way directly attributable to influential youtubers in those niches, and which influencers in particular you think would be particularly influential?
A John Deere is not a fashion statement. A car, or a daily commute truck, very much is, for many. (Sneakers, jeans, or t-shirts could be completely pragmatic, brand-oblivious items, too.)
A John Deere is absolutely a fashion statement, lol. You gotta meet more farmers, because the fights I see break out over Case IH, John Deere, New Holland, and Cat are unreal.
Oh, you would be so surprised. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8agst9o_0
"I love the fantastic designs and form factors popping up in mini-EV truck/SUV space ..."
Exterior designs.
The interior has no design - design and UI were given over to a touchscreen. Go look at the interior renderings to see for yourself ...
>My worry is for the business feasibility for these
hopefully the success of the ford maverick can allay some of this concern - i don't think anybody was really expecting it to be as successful as it has been, but it seems like there's actually pretty decent demand for a smaller truck.
> Why isn’t Tesla making these?
Like with most cars they have made it is because Tesla has no taste.
> Why isn’t Tesla making these? They have the supply chain and expertise to easily pull it off and they’d be such a big hit. People switching to them for light cargo would be a REAL contribution in cutting use of carbon.
I get your point but I also think you are being dismissive of their ongoing contributions to cutting carbon use.
They have to solve a real problem for people hauling cargo, they don’t really do that as they currently exist. They get significantly worse range when hauling than a normal gas or diesel truck, their only benefit is making feel better about their carbon footprint.
I was legit considering getting an F150 lighting for a little while but when I saw how much your range decreases when towing something it became obvious that it’s not really practical. It’s just objectively worse at hauling than a gas car.
Hopefully we see more battery tech breakthroughs that make electric trucks viable work vehicles.
It’s pretty complicated. The issue with hauling is that it craters your aerodynamics and explodes your rolling resistance, so you need massive battery capacity. Or to slow down, but most people don’t want to do that.
Aging wheels has a recent video on the subject: https://youtu.be/UmKf8smvGsA
They are cheaper to run almost everywhere (depending on the cost of electricity versus gas of course). No breakthrough in battery technology needed for that.
It is worse at hauling. I can get between 150 to 200 miles while towing my 4000 lb RV with my lightning. What’s nice though is I can get a full charge at my campsite for the night so I never really pay for transportation. Turns out 200 miles per day is good enough for cross country RVing.
For everyday driving, I pay about $8.50 for a “full tank” of charge that gets me around 300 miles. That’s about $100 worth of gas in an equivalent gas truck.
That’s being said I think the ideal truck would have about 2x-3x the current battery capacity of the extended range lightning.
The new huge GM EV & SUV trucks do have way more battery - and weight. The GM Silverado EV Work Truck is EPA 492 miles, tested at 530 by edmonds. So take the common rule of thumb, divide range by half or maybe a little more and you get about 250 miles of towing range. https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/topic/us/en/2025/....
In a couple of recent youtube videos, "Aging Wheels" thoroughly tested a variety of trailers towed behind a variety of vehicles and then also added weight to the trailer to see the efficiency impact of towing a trailer with a lot more weight. They found a 4.3% efficiency drop by adding weight to max out the towing, compared to towing without the extra weight. Weight isn't what matters on towing impact, it's the wind resistance of the trailer that matters much more.
They did a long series of comparison drives (in the about 30 mins video) with different trailers and then loaded them with extra weight to see the impact. It was smaller than you expect. The video with all the tests is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA.
I heard about this on the batteries included podcast where they interview the author of the video above, and kind of give high level summary with some details, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJv-xAqcTI.
But Tesla already did one of these. It's called Cybertruck.
The CT is a truck and it is electric, but it has some limitations, one being the range is not that great. And it has some weaknesses.
It also looks like shit and carries huge social baggage. ;)
I immediately searched the site for interior pictures and had my pessimism confirmed ... it's a design-free interior with no physical controls.
At least they kept the stalks on the steering column ...
Also what's up with the knit dashboard?
> 152 in Length 73 in Width 66 in Height
This is 3860 x 1854 x 1676mm, or 14% x 25% x -16% bigger than Japanese Kei car specifications(3400 x 1480 x 2000mm max.) Closest match in features among Kei cars would be Daihatsu Hijet Deck Van, except that one is 465mm / 18" shorter that this having an awkwardly short 880mm / 35" long bed.
well, one thing you'll learn from their marketing is that Mini Coopers are kind of big
Still as ugly as last time it appeared on HN, it has none of the charm of a Kei truck. I wish any company would just take the old Ford Ranger designs (2011 and earlier) and make a truck on that. Or better yet, Ford themselves could redo the electric version of the Ranger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV) from 25 years ago with modern tech but the same look.
Without a doubt one of the best American pickups of all time. I cannot fathom how a company fumbled what was essentially a perfect product.
41k ?!
The entire point of the Slate truck is to try to come in under 20K or around it, and without the EV subsidies that's probably not going to happen.
There's a reason limited production vehicles are almost always sports cars. Huge economies of scale are needed to target the budget market that you're not going to get as an unknown brand.
When I scrolled quickly through the landing page looking for the price, I noticed it wasn't there and figured it would be expensive. I didn't think it would be this much though...
It's twice the capabilities of the Slate though.
One thing I'm really happy about with the rise of EVs is that they seem to be unlocking a fresh wave of innovation. This is in part because at a fundamental level, they are much simpler and easier to manufacture and more flexible in terms of design, so they are far more accessible for the startup ecosystem to break into. I'm really looking forward to what else we see emerging in the next few years once all the basic EV technology is commoditised.
For $41k, I can buy 20 chang li explorer trucks off alibaba and have $1000 leftover.
I just fail to see how anyone sane would try and enter this market right now.
It's aesthetically not pleasing in my eyes. They even have a comparison with ford trucks on their page and all i'm thinking is yeah i'd take that ford instantly over that thing.
It looks like a pug:
https://i.imgur.com/omF3Abn.jpeg
I am glad to see EV companies doing something different, aesthetically. In this particular case I do not like it -- at all -- but I much prefer a high-variance aesthetic distribution to the genetic every-car-looks-the-same world we have now, sans a tiny few exceptions.
The side compartment under the bed / in front of the rear wheel is pretty cool too.
I can't customize that ugly front into a cooler design unfortunately.
This made me think about the bagnole, which seems to target the same kind of market: https://kilow.com/en/pages/la-bagnole
6kWh (or 12 in option) is quite a lot less than 106kWh tough.
83 mile range vs 250+, max speed of 50MPH vs 100+, 20HP vs up to 400HP, only seats 2 and a tiny bed. I don't think this is remotely the same market.
One thing I have learned. If you own a pick up like vehicle You will be helping even people you barely know to move. and your extended friends and family whenever they buy something too big to fit in their car
This is a truck that appeals to car buyers because it's not sacrificing a compact body or efficiency, while providing immense utility and off-roading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEcI967gXUg
I thought electric cars are simpler and should be cheaper. You can tariff out competition only for so long...
The real question is whether it's compatible with standard truck nuts: if not, the Florida market will remain inaccessible.
I was thinking a while back about how you could roll coal in an EV. Maybe a huge Tesla coil throwing lightning everywhere would be analogous? Or a giant Jacob’s ladder?
Seems like the Cybertruck is sort of that.
Maybe a few people get some functionality out of the design.
Spark gap ozone generator
... proceeds to throw harmonics from DC to daylight
Interesting to see how much the perception of trucks varies globally. For many, it’s about versatility and utility beyond just daily commuting. The off-road and hauling capabilities often get overlooked in city-centric debates.
Man, this car is ugly. I'm getting strong Fiat Multipla vibes:
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/remembering-fiat-multipla-quite...
At least the Fiat Multipla was a great car. It is filled to the brim with small features which improve the driving experience, and it is a miracle that it can fit six(!) people. It has a massive amount of storage space and great visibility, what's not to like?
Besides the way it looks, of course. But if you're inside a Multipla, at least you don't have to look at its exterior?
Fiat multipla - car so ugly that Michael Schumacher had to do a commercial for it.
They have a very strange presence. They are quite wide. All the proportions are odd. It catches one’s eye. I uggly-puppy like it.
The width is why the design was so clever from an interior perspective - seated six comfortably with three abreast front/rear in a car shorter than a three door Ford Fiesta!
People tend to focus on demand, but just getting vehicles like this into production at a profitable cost often turns out to be impossible.
It is a 10-15k/year product at best. How does an independent maker get that profitable at <$50k, despite all the costs of setting up a sales and service network?
On one hand I agree. It makes me sad but I'm skeptical they are going to make it.
On the other hand, electric cars seem to be relatively "easy" to build. Sure, Fisker went bankrupt, but Rivian seems to do sort of fine. Xiaomi even managed to build a car, and I actually saw one of them by chance charging next to me today.
Seems to me like a lot more newcomers succeed in getting cars built, than was and is the case with ICE cars.
most profit in autos is in personalization and financing, which in principle you can do at any scale, with whatever fixed costs. I believe these guys are building on top of a Subaru with vendor motors.
that said, the problem with these utilitarian vehicles is that they appeal to people who buy cars once every 20 years, whereas most of the industry is serving the very large, very abundant population of Americans buying 2 cars every 2 years
Doug DeMuro did a review a couple months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYe-QNRkdz8
There's a video walkthrough of all its "quirks and features", of which there are plenty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYe-QNRkdz8
Too few physical controls on the dashboard.
Welcome to 2025.
This can fun a fun and practical vehicle, and it has a lot nifty solutions, and should serve sub(urban) life well.
but if you really need a pickup truck, this cannot compare to a Tacoma
That said I dont think anyone buying a Tacoma will be tempted by this vehicle, and I dont think the buyers of the MT1 will be comparison checking the Tacoma either.
Separate markets the way I see it, as do they
""EV pickup for urban living and weekend adventuring""
So why the comparison?
In my experience (US), the Tacoma is often the first vehicle that comes to people’s minds when they think of a small pickup truck.
Part of the problem, of course, is that the Tacoma is no longer even remotely small.
I really want a modern version of a mid-90s Tacoma.
Slate is coming in at around 175 inches..
It wouldn't cost much less than the big Tacoma, so it would simply not sell (like this won't sell).
> but if you really need a pickup truck, this cannot compare to a Tacoma
Can you elaborate? This has the same bed size, same crew capacity and greater horsepower than a tacoma.
Did anyone reserve? If yes what’s your preorder position number?
I really like the idea of taking advantage of there not being an engine bay in the front, and moving the driver position forward, and eliminating the unused length of the engine bay - but this looks very unsafe for the driver in a crash, with no crumple zone to speak of - not to mention it turns a simple fender bender into a front axle replacement (though with modern cars and their sensors, there's no such thing as a cheap crash anyway)
Looks good and a step in the right direction (speaking as someone who thinks the modern day trucks are getting too big for the danger of those driving alongside them on the roads).
I wonder though if the interior trim can be ordered without this felt-like material. I can easily see that being stained or dirty in a short period of time. I am sure there is.
This isn’t a mini truck, it’s a truck. It’s just that the others are giant trucks.
What's the tow capacity and range when towing? No 4WD either. It's not a truck it's a UTV.
6600 lb towing capacity
Towing range is an issue with all EVs and the battery on this one isn't that big, but if you're regularly doing long distance towing I'm not sure why you'd start with a city truck
It has 4WD
Ah yeah with a 1700 pound payload and no tow capacity. Many UTVs are 4WD too.
6,600lb tow capacity. You can dislike a thing, but like, you should probably at least get the facts straight.
Let's see the production model pull 6600 pounds on an 80% charge. Which by the way I see no stats on this on the site. But I'd much rather see production demos before I trusted those even. Even Cybertruck struggles to tow full weight at full charge further than 90 miles.
How much you want to bet you'd be calling a real truck to tow your ass out of that situation? There's a reason electric trucks haven't taken off for real work use cases.
> Even Cybertruck struggles to
The cybertruck is built pretty poorly. I think we can use truck stats from reputable automakers.
> There's a reason electric trucks haven't taken off for real work use cases.
When were electric trucks realistically available on the market for a reasonable price?
I use a truck regularly (forestry industry), there's huge desire for them, they just haven't been around until very recently. You can't buy a secondhand ol beatup electric truck yet, so I don't expect them to be taking off yet.
I really like the solar roof and bed cover add-ons. They don't have specs but should be roughly 4 square meters combined or so? so about 800w at peak power. Not enough to let you rely on it even if you live in a sunny place, but it could add up to a nice reduction in cost per mile if you use it to commute and park it in the sun.
Apparently nobody speaks spanish in the team. Telo MT1 can be read as "te lo mete uno" which translates to sombedy puts it into you.
still better than “doesn’t go”
I recently learned that being a issue for them was a myth.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...
This rules. I hope it succeeds. More smaller vehicles designed for urban spaces please!
> We're tired of oversized, impractical trucks designed for show over substance.
I wonder if Telo is attempting to define a new category. Substance in a truck, in my lived opinion, is about utility. Towing capacity, ruggedness, ability to go (very) off road. An electric power train shows promise, but is limited by infra.
If that’s not the target, then maybe it’s a different target, such as San Francisco residents where space is limited and a slight nod to utility is adequate.
Further down the peninsula, and specifically in the Santa Cruz mountains, this is less interesting. I can’t imagine this for outdoor (e.g. mountain biking) or project oriented (e.g. landscaping) people.
So back to the top: if they’re marketing substance over show, maybe they’re really marketing to people who desire show over substance.
Edit: let me also throw in my drive down to the bottom tip of Baja a few months ago. The roads were rough in places, and I definitely went off road to reach some interesting places. It reminded me of some rough terrain and roads in Wyoming and Oklahoma - truck states. Without big wheels and tough suspension - I wouldn’t take a Telo.
A tremendous portion of the truck market are people who live in urban to suburban areas and need to move things. For that audience, the ability to fit a 4x8' plywood sheet easily puts this ahead of a surprising number of conventional trucks on utility. The 2k lbs payload on the 2WD drive model is more than a Tacoma and some configurations of the F150, for example, popular models that also don't fit a 4x8 sheet without strapping it down over the cab or another awkward technique. It also lists a towing cap of 6,600 which is competitive with many production pickups.
There's a divide in needs between off-roading and moving things around, and this seems oriented in the moving things around direction. I can easily see it working for a landscaper in a suburban environment, for example, where the driving miles per day are really not that high and 6,600 is plenty for a typical landscaper's trailer.
From everything I've seen, true off-roading applications are a pretty small portion of the overall truck market, and one that many popular trucks right now are also poorly optimized for (popular 2WD configurations, middling clearances, etc).
I just put down a deposit. I make things from plywood sometimes, and even in my wife's R1S it's a pain. When we don't take the R1S, all 5 of us have to fit in my car (Honda Clarity). I coach robotics teams and sometimes need to haul a lot of stuff. Sometimes we do some light offroading in the R1S.
Looks like this will do all the things I need OK. I would like to drive something small and easy to park, that I could offroad a bit, carry my family a bit, haul stuff a bit.
And I've always liked the weird aesthetic of kei trucks and things like the Jeep Forward Control.
> I wonder if Telo is attempting to define a new category.
It's a Kei truck. That's not a new thing. Online discourses categorizing Telo as one leads to people pointing out Kei are equipped with weaker engines for legal reasons, that doesn't matter. US finally started making its own Kei truck.
I would say "kei" does pretty specifically refer to vehicles adhering to those Japanese regulations. I think "minitruck" or "compact truck" would be a better, more general name.
What would be the limitation that prevents you from mountain biking? It seems to have a similar sized bed to a Tacoma?
I’m unsure why people think they need such big vehicles for outdoors sports. We drove thousands of miles around Europe with 4 kayaks on the roof of a Ford Fiesta. Or you can easily fit three mountain bikes on a rear bike rack.
I also used to throw my mountain bike on the back of my sports car! It was, in retrospect, ridiculous.
I’ve also seen a motorcyclist having a bike mounted on a hitch!
Optimization for tiny isn’t a factor in the big outdoors. Indeed, I see more people in Sprinter vans than Teslas by mountain biking hot spots. So it’s not about “could you”, it’s about comfort and practicality of anything / everything else you may want to do beyond just lugging a bike to a trail. Such as: the optionality to go truly off road - in the vehicle not on the bike.
Depends on what you're in to, but there's a HUGE amount of land in the US and a lot of lakes and mountains don't have paved roads to them.
(Check out Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, etc.)
I need to tow a 5000lb boat 300 miles without charging and I need to fit 6 passengers. It needs to be $30K or less.
I realize Europeans have a much different understanding of distance and cargo needs; I do. But, 300 miles and 6 passengers is a pretty common requirement here in the US.
Why without charging? Are there time constraints?
I often find that I want to take a break after a couple hours of driving, and even when I drove a gas vehicle, those breaks would be 30-40 minutes long unless it was an exceptionally long day of driving. With a little planning I’ve found that I can do 90% of the trips in my EV that I used to do in my gas car. I probably can’t replicate the couple 1000-mile-in-one-day trips I did in my previous vehicle, but those experiences also made me not want to.
FWIW, in the last two years alone I have driven my EV from MA to Nova Scotia and back, MA to Iowa and back, MA to MD and back, and all over the eastern seaboard (trips to the Adirondacks, WV, etc). Lately I have not even had to plan anymore. It was surprising to discover that I could plug my car (a Bolt) into a GM charger in Indiana this summer and not even need to fiddle with an app. Things have improved dramatically for road trips in the last two years, and I have probably one of the slowest charging cars out there. Really, the only thing stopping me from buying an EV pickup is that I don’t want to pay that much for a vehicle with such an absurdly small bed. My Bolt can pull a small trailer just fine.
I started looking at camping trailers recently to tow with my Rivian. I quickly went off the idea when I realized that each time I’d need to charge en-route I’d have to find somewhere to park the camper, unhitch, go charge, then do it all in reverse. That’s going to add at least 20 mins to each charging session. None of this is necessary if I were filling with gas. For typical places I go camping here in CO that could be two or three times per journey direction.
Because he can tow 300 miles easily with a ICE vehicle, and he can fill up anywhere in 5 minutes or less. Once you can charge cars in 5 minutes or less, I doubt he’d have made that a requirement.
Because I travel to places without charging infra.
I hear you. I love to go to very remote places. But I guess I see it more of a personal challenge.
I was responding to someone worried about the practicality of carrying mountain bikes to the Santa Cruz mountains 50 miles from San Francisco.
I don't think it's possible to buy a new 6 passenger vehicle rated for towing 5000lb in the US for under $30K.
Europe allows towing with much smaller vehicles. There you can do 4400lb in a Golf and 4850lb in Passat though you might still struggle for 6 passengers for $30k new.
Well, you were responding to me, after I noted my excursions through Baja, the mountain west and Oklahoma.
Santa Cruz Mountain roads tend to be well paved. Though, large exceptions definitely exist! (E.g. Highland Way)
No pickup will do that. Even crew cab pickups normally max out at 5 people (4 passengers), because there is no bench seat up front anymore. Even a Ford Maverick is $30k or so, and that won’t tow a 5000lb boat. Max listed towing is 4klb.
> I need to tow a 5000lb boat 300 miles without charging and I need to fit 6 passengers. It needs to be $30K or less.
Then you need a used diesel pickup truck. 6 people is a stretch unless at least one of those is an infant or you have people on laps.
OK buy a different fucking vehicle then? Sorry this one isn't for you.
"I commute 400 miles each way to work, every day, towing my 5000 pound boat, fully equipped outdoor kitchen trailer/classroom, my home-schooled family of 6, 6 dogs, a portable sawmill, solar-powered game freezer + ammunition, and an extra trailer because I might have to go to home depot."
1. I don't commute; I work from home.
2. I would use a truck as it was intended to be used--as a truck.
3. I have a lake home 150 miles from my primary home and I don't want to have to drive 4 kids and 2 adults in two separate cars every time.
4. There is no charging infrastructure near my lake home.
Do you have power at the lake house? Then you have charging infrastructure. Also, why are you towing the boat to and from the lake house?
And again, which new production pickup fits 6 people?
> I need to tow a 5000lb boat 300 miles without charging
That's a 4-5 hour trip and you don't want to stop to charge for thirty minutes? One bathroom break or stop for food and you've already spent probably half of those 30m stopped anyway.
> fit 6 passengers
This truck does? It has a third row.
But I'm curious what truck you think will comfortably fit six passengers for under $30k. If the second row fits three people and the front row fits two passengers (and frankly, having a person ride in the middle of the front row is ridiculous), you only seat five passengers. Even if you count the driver as a passenger, at best you've got one uncomfortable occupant.
- Ram 1500 starts at 40k
- F150 starts at 38k
- Silverado 1500 starts at 37k
- Ford Superduty starts above 40k
- Sierra 1500 starts at 38k
And most of these are just bench seats in the front, not a third row.
Do the Ranger
It's base MSRP is 33k and it only does five passengers
I'm American and this sounds really off. AFAIK pickups in the US typically have space for five passengers, not six. And good luck finding new pickups that can tow 5000 lbs under 30k; as a category, pickups have experienced quite a lot of price inflation, as I understand it.
Right. What I’m saying is if you’re going to make a compact car with a bed, it better cost less than a pickup.
The CEO pretty clearly says it's meant to be a city truck with small size but just as much utility (or more) than something like a Tacoma.
https://youtu.be/pw250Va1JFo?t=469
I'm failing to see how this could have as much or more utility than a Tacoma. I don't see any mention of towing or payload. Not to mention, the clearance will be limiting for anyone who wants to venture off road at all.
Payload's around 1700-2000 pounds, TBD.
Towing is possible but limited-- this is a weak point for all electric vehicles-- but good enough to haul a trailer to the dump or a boat a small distance.
But the bed is better in some ways than the Tacoma.
Big question is whether they can reach production and really deliver for this pricing, etc. They have ~11k preorders and could develop a lot more.
A $41K ($46K for AWD) “truck” is absurd. This isn’t a viable option for Americans, at all.
I’m not sure what you mean. The 2025 F150 starts at $39k. https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/
And if you want it to be electric, it starts at $55k: https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150-lightning/
Slate is targeting mid-twenties and has over 70+ prototypes vehicles on the road.
Last I checked Telo has... one prototype?
Telo's doomed, anyways.
Slate is ugly and not nearly as functional. Predicting who is doomed at this point is silly. But there will be a small electric truck soon, which is nice.
> Last I checked Telo has... one prototype?
As of OpenSauce last month, they had 3 that were roadworthy. I think the company is 15 people big so it would be odd if they had a fleet with mfgr/prototype plates.
They were cagey on their manufacturing strategy but I got the sense that it'll be mostly contract manufacturing. I think slate is trying to keep as much in-house as possible and that means saying "no" to some design decisions that would require a step-up in terms of manufacturing capabilities. E.G.: Composite panels are a hell of a lot cheaper to make than stamped metal panels so slate isn't going to contract the metal stamping out.
Slate: $27k, 150 mile range
Telo: $41k 350 mile range
Slate: 2 door with bed, or 4 door no bed.
Telo: 4 door with bed.
I’d hardly say telo isn’t a viable option compared to slate.
Anyway what really matters is if any of these companies can get a vehicle to market, and at what price point. I’m not about to buy an imaginary car, and neither are you.
Fwiw if they were for sale i would strongly consider buying a telo. It looks perfect for my needs - slate less so, but if they’re all that’s available i’d strongly consider it
I don’t think slate has a four door option. It’s still two door, but with a rear seat that you can clamber into after pushing the front seat forward.
Oh! Yes that’s true! I thought at first glance the ones with an enclosed back seat had doors but it looks like they don’t.
This isn’t a F150; it’s a mini with a bed. They’re apples to oranges.
Why did you put airquotes around truck? It's got a 60 inch bed and seats 4. What truck quality is it missing?
People are buying Rivians that cost much more.
People who can afford $100K+ for a new one and $65K+ for a used one are not most people.
Many people finance cars well beyond their means…
$41k is not an absurd starting price for a truck. Look at f150 prices, starting at 39k.
I’d love to drive something like this. Looking forward to these hitting the market!
I recommend watching the CTO's story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB-XlCf87hQ
A fabric interior? That's one I didn't see coming. Seems like it'd be harder to clean.
As much as I like the novelty of the design, there isn't much of a crumple zone for a head on collision. I could see the wheel placement making this a fun off-road vehicle, though.
Next level ugly. One of the worst designs I've ever seen.
$42k. If you're making a tiny truck, it should have a tiny price.
Most of the cost of building a truck is the same whether it's big or small. Hence why we only get big trucks - that reaction.
You'd pay for a useless hood?
This seems dangerous. Where's the crumple zone?
Exciting to see new development, especially in this terminal economy.
What sort of ANCAP rating do they get with such a short front hood?
This is incredibly sensible design (if they pull it off), it's a reasonable size (unlike a lot of 'Murcian utility vehicles), has some good options (like the dual solar roof) and a useful carry layout.
I like the mini idea. I want a small car thing and this might be just the type of thing that is practical for me
The reason why we don't generally have vehicles this small any more is because they don't pass crash tests so I'm wondering how this fares in a crash test. I can't see any way this could be sold in Europe unless there's some very clever engineering to make the front end more resilient in a crash.
> I can't see any way this could be sold in Europe
It's 3860 x 1854mm, there are vehicles smaller than that being sold in europe right now (in the A segment, not quadricycles): the fiat 500e is 3632x1683, the suzuki ignis is 3700x1660. The citroen c1 (discontinued 2022) used to be just 3470x1620.
Hell there are B segment cars which aren't much bigger, the R5 e-tech is 3920x1770, the yaris is 3940x1745.
There are smaller vehicles being sold but the distance from the front bumper to the driver's legs is much longer because they don't have a bed taking up space at the back.
The vast majority of tractor trailers in Europe are cab over designs. There’s definitely less room between the bumper and the driver’s legs in those than in any standard pickup truck.
I guess modern crash safety does require decent crumple zones, but I'm not sure in how far Europe is different than North America in this.
If anything, small vehicles aren't a thing in NA, but extremely popular still in Europe, even though SUVification is also happening here.
There's plenty of small cars left, like the Toyota Aygo X. Renault is also working on a new electric Twingo, and the new 5 isn't huge either.
Probably also the open wheels would be an immediate issue in Europe, especially for pedestrians.
I love the look of the front wheels though!
Light and medium duty commercial vehicles in Europe seem to be almost entirely cab-forwards designs; how do they pass crash tests?
The Smart ForTwo and Smart ForFour sold pretty well in Europe, and they are minuscule: the ForTwo was only 270cm (106in) long and 150cm (61in) wide!
The ForTwo has two seats and no truck bed so it can have enough space for a crash structure in front of the driver. On top of that its NCAP rating expired in 2021 and it is no longer being sold. The next generation of the ForTwo is likely to be longer in order to improve safety (if it ever makes it into production)
Love the footprint, hate the cloth interior. I want to be able to spay it out after my mountain biking trips.
I'm stuck with a cloth interior. I bring a beach towel to drape on the seat after my rides. Mud falls onto the towel which makes it easy to clean out of the vehicle.
Sorry am I being an idiot or is there no rough price for this?
EDIT> Price is $50k 350m range . Nearly London -> Edinburgh
Pre-Order pricing:
> $41,520 | 260 mi | 300 hp
This will be a giant success.
In Australia, BYD Shark 6 is currently conquering the market for the EV utes.
Really hope enough people buy these new so that in a few years time I can get a second hand one. ;-)
The information you're looking for is $41,520
Let's hope now that CAFE is dead or at least disarmed, more cars like this will come from the woodwork. I was always jealous that the japanese had so many cool small kei cars like the Subaru Sambar or Suzuki Cappuccino
This is a bad marketing idea to compare a golf cart like this to a Toyota Tacoma. There is practically zero ground clearance and a unibody frame, this will high center in places where I regularly drive my Tacoma. Tacoma wins on ruggedness, lower total cost of ownership thanks to a significantly lower price and having limited depreciation.
Unless these are priced at under $30,000 for the AWD, these will flop commercially.
If the CAFE standards could be fixed, we could get ICE and hybrid trucks that are smaller and more affordable, the EV route is too expensive and the products are strange.
It has ten inches of ground clearance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEcI967gXUg
I know the CAFE standards are bad, but isn't it just a tax if you miss the target? Anyone know how much would it cost a car company per vehicle if they made a modern version of the '80s Ranger or Hilux?
They got "fixed". He penalty was set to zero.
why are there no pictures of the backseat? tired of cars with four doors and backseats made exclusively for children. and they say it can fit 8 people???
You can go on YouTuber and find reviews of the car and most people seem to say the backseat is fairly roomy (the one 6'5" reviewer said he fit). I put a reservation down a few months ago and at 6' (1.9 m for the sane people), I'm really banking on that one off-hand comment.
The third row is just planned. They do not have any publicly available views of it, and the currently non-removable back glass of the prototypes inhibit actually installing and using them.
Bottom of the page:
> Copyright © 2024 TELO Trucks. All rights reserved.
Can you explain the relevance of this?
Nice, how much do I need to cut to get 33s on it?
Wow, that is one ugly vehicle. It looks like it's been in an accident.
Is there some reason they have to make these have 300 or 500hp? Or is there nothing to be gained in terms of cost and weight from having, say, 90hp (like my completely functional Mighty Max had).
For the most part there is a floor with EVs where if you go small in battery, weight, and motor... You have a golf cart, not nearly enough range.
As you increase each of those, a larger motor will probably be more efficient for propelling a heavier load with a larger battery.
Because of the instant torque plus high speeds of an EV motor, it's not hard at all to have high HP figures.
Telo vs Slate.... Fight!
It looks like a pug. I’m not saying that is bad :-)
Why is the design so… awkward?
What’s the range when loaded with things or people? That’s what matters. I find that most EVs have too many impracticalities to be convenient. For a fixed commute, sure. But for versatility, absolutely not.
This guy did tests in a different EV truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA
The results were:
1. Adding weight to the bed, if it doesn't affect aerodynamics, doesn't affect highway range much. For stop-and-go traffic I assume the range would get worse, but he didn't test it.
2. Adding a big air pusher to an otherwise empty trailer murders the range
3. Adding an aerodynamic car or truck on a trailer is better for your range than the air pusher
I do wish it was a hybrid. Maybe small companies don't have the knowledge built up to make a good hybrid drivetrain but hell, Edison is going for it. They're planning to build logging trucks with a diesel generator under the hood as prime mover for a series plug-in hybrid drivetrain. It looks very practical and their initial tests show it tows great. (Since that's their entire selling point, they'd have to fold if it couldn't haul logs)
Is this cheaper to run than the gas equivalent?
What a great form factor.
I like that it's small and potentially even more functional than whatever idiotic American small-dick-compensating nonsense people buy these days but why does it need to be so ugly?
If you want more people to buy sensible vehicles, make them look nice i.e. not like something NASA would send to Mars.
Super ugly and super pricey.
This is what Tesla should have built instead of the Cybertruck.
With their distribution and service centers, this would sell like hot cakes.
When your legs are an integral part of the crumple zone.
Man, I'd love something like this. I was happy with my small, early 2000s pickup, but everything in the used market when it died were obnoxious show-off vehicles that quite literally don't even fit in most of the parking spaces in my city. This has that cute kei truck look... well... Maybe an inbred kei truck. But it seems just the right size for utility (and my much-missed tailgate naps).
But $42k is just so much money to me. I've never spent more than ~$15k (financed) on a vehicle and I feel like I'm fairly well off...
Looks like a Kei truck
If it had full physical controls in the interior, this would be my dream vehicle. I'd reserve one today.
The second I saw that touchscreen garbage dashboard I closed the window. I'll never buy a vehicle with that nonsense.
I saw this on JerryRigEverything and was thinking that this is the perfect city pickup. Compact, yet with a reasonable payload size. It has a good range (which, in my case, is not as important) and the horsepower is good. The dash takes a bit of getting used to, but OK.
It's the second electric vehicle I actually like (Rivian being the first - but it's a full-size).
way too expensive for its size and capability
how are you supposed to put some big tires on this thing
Too small, this won't sell.
Can't wait to see what mental gymnastics are done to make this illegal or heavily taxed in some US States.
That will only happen if the right-wing propagandists manage to turn these into a wedge issue. But ultimately more EV cars and trucks (as opposed to e-bikes) won’t threaten the car-dependent culture that enables the population-density-driven fear or urban culture driving their narratives to begin with.
The extreme regulation of automobiles in the US is entirely from the left, specifically from people who dislike cars and want everyone on public transit (except for the few special people of course).
Why do you think cars are so hated? Just curious if you could steel-man what you believe their arguments against cars to be, so I know we’re on the same page of understanding.
This is what Ford e-transit could’ve been. Another missed opportunity by Ford.
Telo MT1 - "your knees are the crumble zone"
Is it much worse than having an engine there?
Another Canoo bankrupt future and lose my 150 bucks?
Sorry. But to me it looks like a truck i can order on alieexpress. Does not show any robustness, strength and is not sexy at all. Nice for your local laundry delivery service at your beach resort. But thats it.
Just make a gas-powered one that's repairable. This is not complicated. I love my Tesla, but my other vehicle is a Hardbody for a reason. EVs SUCK as trucks.
I'd love an EV truck but not the weird little thing highlighted in this post. I watched an overview video someone linked but turned it off as soon as I saw the guy trying to fit inside the tiny cab.
Also, why is this goofy little truck so powerful and so expensive? Can I please just get a modestly powered EV work truck with capacity for sheet goods, a few tools, and a single passenger other than the driver? Can it not cost $50k?
>EVs SUCK as trucks.
What makes you say that?
I want power density and off-grid capability in my truck. I want to be able to go camping and not plan for charging. I also want to be able to repair it without dealing with software. I also want to be able to tow without stopping to charge every 100 miles.
Battery energy density and the huge amounts of energy required to tow or haul heavy, un-aerodynamic loads.
Very little information about safety other than marketing speak "Utilizing the latest in advanced safety technology—sensors to predict and classify collisions before they happen, airbags, and structural technology—to make our vehicles safer for everyone on the road."
Have they never heard of a crumple zone?
You think a crumple zone isn’t required by current FMVSS, which they are designing against? That is, in fact, what they referred to with “ structural technology”.
I'm pretty skeptical of the safety as well. It's also pretty hard to judge where there don't seem to be any actual photographs of the vehicle, only computer renderings.
I would love a small truck like this, but I would honestly buy an old Tacoma or Ranger before even considering buying this on spec.
*edit: digging around I did find some footage on YouTube with actual vehicles. I'm definitely skeptical on the safety now.
'22 rangers are in a sweet spot right now.
It doesn’t matter how capable, efficient, affordable, powerful, etc. the truck is. That’s not the point.
The point of a truck for 90% of American pickup truck drivers is that it signals to the world around them what team they’re on. This truck is a signal for the wrong team.
This is a good illustration of what's wrong with American not politics, but, I'd say, psyche. Every little (an not so little, like a truck) thing is used to signal allegiance to one of the two irreconcilable warring factions. No union, no values, no common cause, just us vs them, doubtless virtue vs doubtless vice.
It's really, really disheartening to see; not in the parent comment, but generally in life.
I wish an electric truck could alleviate even a small bit of that.
My wife caught a glimpse of this over my shoulder, "What an ugly truck." she said immediately. Pretty much sums it up.
Who is the target market here?
* Purely subjective opinion: It's ugly as hell. The front of vehicles isn't just for engines, it's also for aerodynamics.
* It's crazy expensive.
* The bed looks too short to be practically useful.
* The wheels look comically small.
* The ground clearance doesn't seem to make it useful for more than suburban and urban road environments.
I'm the target market.
- I think it looks fine
- I don't need a full sized bed for anything I'd be transporting
- Tricked out it's a little over half the cost of an R1T Dual and $10K less than a comparable F150 Lightning upgraded to the long range battery
- The wheels are small because it's a small truck. Big wheels would look ridiculous.
- This isn't a truck for off roading or unmaintained dirt roads.
What would I use this truck for?
- towing a motorcycle trailer
- Picking up stuff from Costco that won't fit in my trunk
- Buying and transporting dirt, gravel, and stone for my yard
- Going up to my cabin with my partner and two friends and having enough room to seat everyone and have room for all the luggage
Exactly. I love that it's small. I used to have a 4 door full length bed GMC and it felt like driving a boat. Seattle was particularly awful. My current garage is only 210 inches deep (5.334 m) so most trucks will not fit in my current house (very first world problems I know). But yes, smaller, lower cost, and does everything I need a truck for.
I'm excited to hear your review after purchase.
I'll be eager to post one! After the cybertruck I won't be preordering any more vehicles. Right now I'm looking to replace our Model 3. I'm waiting for now details on the 2026 R1T Quad, and to see if Mazda actually really makes an electric MX-5. We have two other EVs (cars) so a truck would make sense but we're keeping our options open. An R1T would be cool but putting the 50k difference into a home battery system would be a smarter play, and an electric MX-5 would just be fun as hell.
A friend of mine who works at a tech company doing charging tech is urging me to hold out for a year, so I might delay a decision another year. We'll see.
Isn’t a ford lightning much bigger and more capable?
More capable how? It's more capable if it does more things that you want it to do, but in my case it doesn't add more utility. When you compare it based on range and power, it's still more expensive.
Maybe it's more capable because driving small truck could make people think your genitalia is small?
Not my personal opinion... but wonder how much of a factor this is :)
The stereotype is that a big truck implies you're compensating. The only people who think an unimpressive vehicle means you have small bits are the people who think that an impressive vehicle means you have big bits.
> It's ugly as hell.
So is a Ford Transit van? Who cares. This is a work truck.
> The bed looks too short to be practically useful.
The bed is 5 ft long. From TF website: "Same truck bed length as the Toyota Tacoma. Larger than a Rivian R1T."
> The wheels look comically small.
They look fine? How big should they be?
> The ground clearance doesn't seem to make it useful for more than suburban and urban road environments.
Oh, so they designed it for the environments it was...designed to be used in? And the same environments most macho big boy trucks spend 99% of their life in? What's the problem here?
Honestly, what's your problem? Why is your comment so harshly negative? You can't fathom a target market for this because you don't seem to be in it?
> * The bed looks too short to be practically useful.
Have you looked at the mainstream 'small' truck market lately?
Small in quotes, because actual small trucks disappeared, and we're left with mid sized trucks as the smallest. Used to be you could get a 6-ft bed standard and an optional longer bed on a small truck. Fuel efficiency standards now dictate you can't have that without a larger truck and worse fuel efficency.
I'm not willing to preorder an unproven brand, but I am excited about this. I'm a Toyota RAV4 owner, and I'd like something (much) more fuel efficient, or a fairly affordable EV, but I don't want to lose moderate hauling capacity for equipment, tools, parts for home, etc. I would seriously consider a very small/compact car but I do need to fit a car seat and I do occasionally move things.
I hope this makes it to market because if I was buying a car today, and this was available today, I'd pick this.
EVs are scam of the century. They have diverted so much economic resources into an end product that isn't even reliable let alone having a long life.
Yet to talk about the amount of mining, its carbon footprint and pretty much irreversible or really high cost extraction/restoration of batteries apart.
Longevity and carbon footprint - If that's not your yardstick than other than that the EVs are great. Have more power than any combustion engine can ever have, have more torque, more acceleration and pretty much zero maintenance as far as the "engine" is concerned. No noise, no emissions, no vibrations either.
> an end product that isn't even reliable let alone having a long life
What's unreliable on a modern EV? And what do you mean by "long life", because you now have 10-15 year old EVs that are fine.
Obviously some cars aged poorly, like some Tesla which had poor build quality (not an EV problem, but a company problem) or cars like the Nissan Leaf that didn't have battery cooling for years, but what's exactly unreliable on a modern Polestar or a Hyundai?
You don't need to ask me, check what happened with car rental companies and EVs.
It's all pretty evident.
If you're referring to what happen to companies like Hertz, then according to them the problem wasn't reliability.
The cars had more accidents, probably because some were not used to the speed or would get an EV just to test the speed. Why buy Tesla in that case then, when their repairs are known to be super expensive and slow? Then you had people who are not used to EVs and charging trying to use EVs and the companies themselves didn't build the charging infrastructure so customers left with a full battery, but that has nothing to do with reliability. Vehicle depreciation? Again, a Tesla problem because they sold them the cars at a high price before dropping prices (the covid years were very weird).
So again, what makes EVs unreliable? It's a simple question.
Car rental companies hated EVs because of the large depreciation. That's a sign that the technology is progressing quickly.
> Yet to talk about the amount of mining, its carbon footprint and pretty much irreversible or really high cost extraction/restoration of batteries apart.
Do you also have similar thoughts on all the infrastructure needed for oil, or is that not to be discussed?
I always wonder with the "all the mineral-mining!!!" crowd, do they think the oil infrastructure just arrived overnight? And there was no cost (money and long-term ecological) to it all?