Press tools for car body panels are extraordinarily expensive, which is why low-volume manufacturers generally avoid using pressings wherever possible. It's just inherently very expensive to carve two huge blocks of steel into a smooth curved shape, so you need to sell an awful lot of units to amortise that cost. Tesla's deal with Lotus only worked because they used a fibreglass body - expensive per-unit, but very low tooling costs.

Desktop Metal are developing a sheet forming solution that requires no bespoke tooling, but it's a slow process with fairly poor surface finish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqeVLILGHY

Isn't that exactly what the automotive component suppliers (Magna, Bosch, Denso, Aisin, etc) do?

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.

A truck needs to have an 8 foot bed so you can haul plywood and lumber. I see this one does allow it by a “mid gate” and folding the rear seats but that’s still a bit cumbersome. And I prefer to have a metal wall between me and the 2x4s in case of an accident.

40k with 300hp and 350 mile range? This sounds pretty awesome imo.

Kei trucks and the maverick seem to disagree.

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

Certainly not at $41k

Outside of farmers and heavy machinery workers, trucks are only a status/culture symbol these days. In my town, 1 out of 10 vehicles is a truck... a very clean and shiny truck that has never carried anything.

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.

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.)

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 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.

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's interesting to note that Béhar has founder credit for Telo Trucks, he's not a one-shot contractor. I guess his designs studio is involved with the new version as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telo_Trucks

I believe small trucks were unintentionally killed by CAFE. The regulation gives companies fuel efficiency targets. Prior to 2011, there were separate targets for categories like "passenger" and "light truck", but since 2011 it's been based on a formula of wheel footprint. Manufacturers realized that instead of trying to make current models more fuel efficient they could make bigger trucks instead. It was definitely one of the greatest failures of regulation and unfortunate that Congress never fixed it in 14 years. CAFE was essentially gutted in the recent budget bill.

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?

> 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.

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.

Nobody wants to tell you you can’t buy a truck, but the rest of us shouldn’t bear the negative externalities of every person who wants to buy a truck - especially when the facts show most of those people would be served (practically if not emotionally) just as well by a smaller vehicle.

Why should we subsidize truck (and SUV) ownership? They ruin roads, are vastly more dangerous, require wider lanes, have worse visibility of pedestrians, pollute more, are louder, and take up more space than other options. Yet we don’t make SUV owners pay for any of that. We subsidize their gas, their road repairs and expansions, their car insurance, their storage space, their car payments, not to mention ignore the injuries, deaths and discomforts they cause.

My 2011 VW Golf gets 40mpg… so I’m not very impressed by an F150 that 99.9% of the time performs the same job (carrying one person and no cargo) getting 25. (Even if this isn’t your experience, the facts show that for most people it is)

You should be free to make your own decisions! I support you in that. I can believe that your lifestyle justifies owning a truck, even though that doesn’t generalize to most SUV owners. I just don’t want to pay for other people’s lifestyle decisions. It’s like we have socialism for truck owners, but market capitalism for people who need healthcare

My truck is used purely and solely for truck shit - getting in and out from where we live, which is absolutely impassible with anything other than a high 4x4 with mudder tyres, and hauling everything from trees to gravel to water to batteries - there’s almost always something substantial in the bed.

It gets washed maybe twice a year, as it ends up filthy within 20 minutes anyway - and the panels all have scratches and dents from forging through brush.

For car shit, I have an (electric) car which I park on the main road.

The idea of waxing my truck is up there with the idea of waxing my legs.

25mpg is still insanely, obscenely profligate when a reasonable vehicle (say a Renault Clio) gets somewhere between 50 and 70. That will make some people angry and it’s hard to see that as entirely irrational.

In the U.K. I see many pickups owned by hairdressers (judging by the livery) in suburban areas. Something tells me they’re not transporting generators around with them…

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.

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.

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…

I think that’s part of it, but also about 30% of men apparently have a nearly-unlimited budget for buying the biggest truck.

Maybe we’ll see that change if the recent CAFE changes stick. I think the big bill passed recently set CAFE fines to zero.

Yea, it's not like men have a natural preference for tools, liking to repair things, cool toys to carry on the back, or think "why get a mini-cooper when I can get an F-150 to carry my hunting gear, tow the boat". It obviously all culture-imposed gender preferences.

It's also because of CAFE standards.

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)

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.

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 :)

> Trucks can haul people, things, do road trips, etc. pretty well.

Yes, as can most vehicles?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

Having a CPU sitting idle doesn’t cause massive externalities.

I don't get it, is the joke, 'stating the obvious'?

You can do it with a raspberry pi.

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..