Crazy how so many people have been begging for bare bones, affordable electric vehicles.
Then when one comes on the scene they do nothing but complain. Can’t please anybody these days it seems.
Edit: sp
Odds are they’re not the same people, but I see your sentiment.
The moron refusing to buy it just because it’s backed by Bezos clearly has no idea about the world he’s living in.
Glad someone has the balls to produce a truck people actually want. Give me power windows, locks, radio, cruise and a cheap radio and I am fine. I guess I throw in 4x4 because I live in Colorado.
I would love to also see an ice or a hybrid version of this truck too. This is exactly want so many people are wanting right now. Very excited to see this EV when it hits the road
The design is bad. The front trunk is a bad use of space, and the Japanese figured this out decades ago with the Kei truck. If you want to see real utility, look at this design.
Americans won’t buy a Kei truck though. Granted, the frunk is a marketing concession, but it’s a fine one, if it can help push the market away from huge and expensive SUVs.
Or, more succinctly, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Americans can’t buy them new because of the so-called Chicken Tax. We can only import them if they’re speed-governed, or at least 25 years old.
Even with those restrictions, lots of Americans want them, including me. There are quite a few importers bringing them over, including one that just started up in my area. They’re desirable enough that major media outlets are running articles about how people who need to get real work done covet kei trucks.
Yes, Americans would buy them. Americans are buying them.
It’s not the chicken tax itself, even if it plays a role. It’s that the chicken tax makes it not economically feasible to try to import light trucks, so they aren’t designed to U.S. emissions and safety regulations. And several U.S. regulations are, in my opinion, misguided, but that doesn’t really change the fact that an importer wouldn’t be able to comply with vehicles that weren’t engineered to those specifications.
Meanwhile, the cars and trucks engineered to American safety and emissions regulations face the perverse incentive to get bigger. This article describes some of the overall issues but contains this interesting nugget:
That’s a sensible recommendation. Except the 3,000-pound 2010 Ranger featured by IIHS has become the bigger and taller 2024 Ford Ranger, which weighs up to 5,325 pounds. Like so many US cars, the Ranger got supersized, a trend fed by a mix of consumer desires and government regulations that carved out gas efficiency loopholes for the trucks and SUVs that make up a swelling share of the US vehicle fleet.
In a sense, the trend of people wanting kei trucks paradoxically comes from the same reason why they’re not street legal: they didn’t get bigger because they weren’t subject to U.S. regulations pushing trucks to get bigger, but the noncompliance with those regulations makes them impossible to import and register (at least until they’re 25 years old).
They don’t make electric Kei trucks though.
Yet.
That’s cute. Do you have any idea how auto regulations work in Japan? The Auto industry owns the politicians and is the reason that cars are forced to be taken off the road after a set number of years. If companies like Toyota don’t want to make an EV, the government will not force the matter.
The front trunk is a safety feature called a crumple zone and is objectively safer to be in a crash with.
European vans are probably the safest of utility cars, they don’t have a front trunk.
I swear, there’s a massive opportunity in the market for robust and inexpensive products.
Stop making shit as ‘thin’ as possible. Stop adding a bunch of nonsense just to drive up the price.
Keep it simple. Keep it basic. Do one thing and do it well.
Already tired of seeing this cool car and now I’m already seeing more “fuck car” articles and post; as well as countries wanting to limit cars on the road. Something is at foot
Yes, more of this please!
No idea why it has no stereo though. That feels like a pretty basic feature. Doesnt even need to be built in. Just iso standard head unit bay would do.
Make it 10k-12k and it would be a yes if parts and repair ability were guaranteed for 10 years.
This is like the electric version of the bare-bones Toyota ICE pickup
It’s backed by Bezos. Wouldn’t even consider it for that reason alone.
What else are you going to do? I hate Bezoz as much as anybody, but if I could actually get one of these for 25k? I’d buy three of them just to keep around for emergencies.
Just not buy one?
And no buyers
You know, I like the design. If I can take a wrench to it and customise it or repair broken stuff easily and for cheap, even better.
The range is kinda meh, but for working in remote sites, bringing a diesel generator is already par for the course, and that bed looks like it fits a lot of stuff.
No stereo sucks though.
I often drive long distances for work, and I NEVER listen to the radio. All my listening is through headphones off my phone. I even keep a spare pair charging at all times. Not only does it sound a million times better than any crappy car system, it’s far easier to take phone calls. I hate holding my phone while driving. It’s also easier to hear the map navigation lady.
All my listening [in my car] is through headphones off my phone.
This is unsafe at best. Illegal at worst.
Nonsense, how is it either?
Too loud? I’m a musician, I value my hearing, so I don’t play anything too loud. I always use earbuds, so I can always hear emergency vehicles. Besides, I’ve heard plenty of car speaker systems that were loud enough to block out sirens easily.
Illegal? In what way? In states that have banned holding phones, they encourage hands-free phone calls. If speaking on the phone is considered a distraction, then why isn’t speaking to another passenger, or listening to music? Both would be just as distracting as a hands free call. Modern cars all connect to a cell phone automatically, and take calls through the speaker system. If it’s illegal, then why are car companies allowed to install them as standard equipment? I don’t use that system only because I like the audio quality of my ear buds far more.
By your logic, sound systems and phones in cars should just be totally illegal.
Edit: Wow, I thought there were a lot of judgemental old ladies on Reddit, I expected less on Lemmy. Time to ban sound systems and passengers because we can’t have anybody getting the slightest bit distracted. I don’t know what the problem is anyway, in my city, the traffic is so bad at any tine of the day, that nobody can drive over 25 mph, even on the highway.
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Only 6 states ban headphones in both ears.
I’ve driven hundreds of thousands of miles, and never had anyone question it. I’m not stopping now.
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Its illegal to drive with headphones in most of Europe. You can use a one-ear headpiece to make calls, but not full blown headphones.
This, along a bunch of other rules that I’m sure you think are absolutely stupid, are probably why so many Americans die on road accidents when compared to the rest of the world.
Headphones are considered like ear plugs. A tendency to block out surrounding noises like horns and sirens.
I use earbuds, not headphones, but use the terms interchangeably. I don’t have any problems hearing emergency vehicles. If you are using them so loudly you can’t hear sirems, then you are going to go deaf soon anyway, and by your logic, deaf people shouldn’t be allowed to drive, right?
And whether you can hear properly or not, it’s still not illegal.
Looks like it’s illegal in 17 states, some with various exemptions for using a single earbud either for anything or for select purposes only.
Depending on the earbud/phone design, even if off they can really reduce your ability to hear the world. Sure playing an open stereo too loud can have a similar effect, but it’s much easier to drown out things when your ear is stuffed or fully covered, without some sort of audio passthrough system.
In most states that don’t have specific laws about them its considered distracted driving. I wouldn’t wear them because it opens you up to legal scrutiny if you do fuck up while driving. Insurance will throw you under the bus the moment they can prove you had headphones on.
Your car just has a shitty sound system in it. That experience is in no way representative of most vehicles. I drive almost 200 miles a day.
I spent much of my career in the music business, with a significant portion in the audiophile audio business. ALL car stereo systems are a shitty compromise to real high quality audio.
I used to have a 2006 Dakota quad cab with a better sound system than most living rooms. There is a reason car audio is a giant market. I can’t even take you seriously.
It’s a giant market because people spend a lot of money on it, mostly being loud. Loud is not the same as high quality sound.
Your ignorance is showing.
What the fuck?! Why would you ever drive with headphones?
Driving with headphones is illegal in most, if of not all of Europe, for what I though were rather obvious reasons…
The msrp of this truck is $28000. For having nothing in it that is absurd. Not to mention the rebates put it at 20k but you still have to pay upfront which deters most people from getting. Overall shit truck, shit design, shit price.
No stereo is fine if it has ports for me to just buy my own car stereo kit and add it afterwards. I don’t see the point of no paint, like don’t you need it to protect the metal from the environment
Paywalled.
Anyone got a battery range on this vehicle?
150 miles per charge
This will never come to market. Perhaps in a different timeline, but not this one.
Why not?
The past is prologue. If this startup was happening in any other country I would give it a chance. But it has zero chance of success here because of… checks notes… greed, corruption, weaponization of venture capital, weaponization of regulatory state and many many more.
Weaponisation of venture capital?
Believe it or not, some people will spend money to gain a position of power to run a company into the ground. If you cant just buy it and kill it, you make sure someone gets near the levers of power to run it into the ground.
Fucking FINALLY.
I’ve been waiting for a small pickup like the old 90s 4-banger Toyota. And this is electric, simple for function, and actually affordable?
Capitalists must be seething. If it doesnt have leather interior, 19 speaker surround sound, and cost 80k, get it out of our country! /s
Relatively affordable. It is 20k after the federal discounts and kick backs. Meanwhile, the Chinese EV market has been making cars as low as 4k. https://greenspeedx.com/cheap-electric-cars-available-in-china/
I’m not a pro China person (because one time in Ark, a Chinese team kept destroying my thatch base), but they seem to have the things. Apparently Mexico is aiming to compete in the EV market as well.
If by “the things” you mean underpaid labor, then yes.
Small gas-powered trucks are effectively illegal in the US.
It’s regulation made in response to automakers calling everything a “light truck” to get around fuel economy and emissions standards in the 90s and 2000s.The straw that broke the camel’s back was the PT Cruiser being classified as a truck by Chrysler.
So, starting in model year 2012, vehicle fuel economy standards started being based on vehicle footprint. The side effect was that small, powerful vehicles designed for moving cargo more efficiently or in tighter spaces than large trucks were impacted. It’s why 2011 was the last year model of the old Rangers, S10s, Dakota, etc.
That’s why the new Rangers are larger than the old F150s. They have to make them bigger to meet CAFE standards.
Same issue hit the small cargo vans in 2021/22. As the CAFE standards went up, it became impossible to meet fuel economy standards for the NV200, Ford Transit Connect, and Ram ProMaster City compact cargo vans, so they were all discontinued.
New York City was changing its whole Taxi fleet to NV200s due to their flexibility and accessibility options, and now can’t buy new ones because a Toyota Camry has less-strict fuel economy requirements.