> 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.
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."
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???
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.
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.
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?
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 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. :)
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 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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Here in Ireland al lot of local "last mile" services (postman, deliveries, council services, repair crews etc) are switching to electric vans. It's such a no-brainer and a great application of evs.
I'm actually wondering why pickups are so popular elsewhere. A van makes so much more sense for a travelling tradie IMO - we need more electric vans!
Partly driven by EU laws, most EU countries have or are introducing (ultra) low emission zones, barring non-electric now or soon from cities. Companies can see the writing on the wall and are making their 10-15 year vehicle investments accordingly.
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.
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 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.
- 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.
I wonder if there's some business model like a mixture of send-cut-send and TSMC where a "FAB" agrees to stamp out 3000 fenders/doors/roofs and ship them to the customer (who then puts together the cars and paints them and such).
This is similar to what lotus did to help bootstrap tesla...
And hey, maybe tesla's going to have some spare capacity lying around so they could be that FAB... ?
I personally really want this truck to succeed. I'd happily trade in my 10 year old model S for this; it'd make dump runs and trips to the garden / home centers a lot easier than in the S...
I do wish they'd go full eccentric and use a citroen inspired oil suspension...
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 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
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.
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.
Personally I find the increasingly large bulbous noses tacked on to the front of US trucks ridiculous. The fact that these "codpieces" are empty on EVs is such a wild metaphor that it seems like an intentional parody.
I'll grant that the Telo may have gone a little too far in the other direction given that they have issues with the aerodynamic drag of the front wheelwells, but it still looks slightly more sensible than a normal truck.
They partnered with Yves Behar for the exterior and interior design, so the current version leans more on the design over function side of things. The interior is getting a whole revamp for the actual units that'll go to customers. One of the things I confirmed is they're going with physical buttons below the screen. The door cards will be slimmed down, and they won't use cork like it currently does.
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).
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.
155 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 74.8 ms ] threadI 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.
Have they never heard of a crumple zone?
* 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.
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.
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?
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
Good overviews of the truck https://youtu.be/aEq-vTLimrQ?si=fS-UhjndoWuxwBip
https://youtu.be/1OgN_qctcGs?si=nEysWQHzafRpxfRp
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. :)
Americans generally don’t want tiny vehicles. The option that leaves them is trucks and, increasingly, SUVs.
If you off-road with a truck and keep it clean afterwards, this is exactly what it looks like on the street.
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.
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.
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.
Like with most cars they have made it is because Tesla has no taste.
I get your point but I also think you are being dismissive of their ongoing contributions to cutting carbon use.
I'm actually wondering why pickups are so popular elsewhere. A van makes so much more sense for a travelling tradie IMO - we need more electric vans!
https://i.imgur.com/omF3Abn.jpeg
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)
The side compartment under the bed / in front of the rear wheel is pretty cool too.
- 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 similar to what lotus did to help bootstrap tesla...
And hey, maybe tesla's going to have some spare capacity lying around so they could be that FAB... ?
I personally really want this truck to succeed. I'd happily trade in my 10 year old model S for this; it'd make dump runs and trips to the garden / home centers a lot easier than in the S...
I do wish they'd go full eccentric and use a citroen inspired oil suspension...
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
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.
Personally I find the increasingly large bulbous noses tacked on to the front of US trucks ridiculous. The fact that these "codpieces" are empty on EVs is such a wild metaphor that it seems like an intentional parody.
I'll grant that the Telo may have gone a little too far in the other direction given that they have issues with the aerodynamic drag of the front wheelwells, but it still looks slightly more sensible than a normal truck.
At least they kept the stalks on the steering column ...
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.
With their distribution and service centers, this would sell like hot cakes.