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.

A $41K ($46K for AWD) “truck” is absurd. This isn’t a viable option for Americans, at all.

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).

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 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'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.

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 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?

> 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?

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

> * 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 only need a Pentium 3 machine to read and write on Hacker News.

You could have written this exact comment on the Slate Truck announcement post.

Too few physical controls on the dashboard.

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.

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.

"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 ...

> 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?

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 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.

> 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 citroen c1 is 3470x1620, the suziki ignis is 3700x1660.

Probably also the open wheels would be an immediate issue, especially for pedestrians.