fumar
api
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.
kube-system
Maybe we’ll see that change if the recent CAFE changes stick. I think the big bill passed recently set CAFE fines to zero.
mitthrowaway2
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.
adastra22
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…
pantalaimon
The only logical next step is the mini-tank
iambateman
I think that’s part of it, but also about 30% of men apparently have a nearly-unlimited budget for buying the biggest truck.
65
You could have written this exact comment on the Slate Truck announcement post.
carlosjobim
You only need a Pentium 3 machine to read and write on Hacker News.
topato
I don't get it, is the joke, 'stating the obvious'?
daymanstep
You can do it with a raspberry pi.
rambambram
Did that for a couple of years. RPi4 as my daily driver (including image creation and video editing).
yahoozoo
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.
SilverElfin
> 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.
bix6
Except that one vehicle is completely incompetent for its primary use 99% of the time :)
photios
Man, this car is ugly. I'm getting strong Fiat Multipla vibes:
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/remembering-fiat-multipla-quite...
sheepscreek
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.
Maken
But Tesla already did one of these. It's called Cybertruck.
Jach
> 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?
rsync
"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 ...
Dig1t
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.
baby_souffle
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.
sgt
I recommend watching the CTO's story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB-XlCf87hQ
rsync
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 ...
markbao
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
turnsout
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.
markbao
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
numpad0
> 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.
siva7
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.
iambateman
I’d love to drive something like this. Looking forward to these hitting the market!
levocardia
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.
grokx
This made me think about the bagnole, which seems to target the same kind of market: https://kilow.com/en/pages/la-bagnole
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