Americans aren’t allowed to buy any of the sub-$20k small pick-ups that are available in Japan, Mexico/Central/South America and many other parts of the world but they’ll soon be able to buy a device that looks like one for only twice-plus as much.
The device – styled the MT1 – is supposedly going to be manufactured by a “start up” in (of course) California by Telo, another variation of Nikola and Lucid and Rivian – i.e., another iteration of the Green Grift Operation that began under the auspices of the Biden Thing. Telo is backed by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, two original gangster Green Grifters who were there at the beginning of Tesla, which got the Green Grift going some 15 years ago.
Whether the device ever actually gets manufactured is, of course, another thing. For now there are just prototypes and these – per Nikola – are being trotted out to generate hype and hope for the device and maybe thereby some investors willing to be taken for a ride. No doubt there is government money – meaning taxpayer money – involved, too.
Cofounder and CEO Jason Marks is said to have “a background in engineering automotive active safety and autonomous driving systems.” Of course.
Cofounder and CTO Forrest North developed batteries at pre–Elon Musk Tesla before founding other Green Grift operations such as Mission Motors and PlugShare.
“The company’s first model is an adorable electric pickup truck that’s no bigger than a Mini Cooper while still packing the bed space of a Toyota Tacoma. What’s not to love about a creation like that?” So says Jalopnik.
How about that the device will cost $42,000 to start – without the “long range” battery option, which will add $4k to the cost. It’ll “be able to charge from 20 to 90 percent in just 20 minutes,” too!
Italics added for the sake of snark.
But there is the quickness – the one thing these devices do deliver. Zero to 60 in four seconds, which is just what’s needed to prevent the “climate” from “changing.” 
Telo claims the device will come standard with “around” 350 miles of driving range on a full charge, which would at least give it range on par with a truck that isn’t a device. But whether the device will deliver on that is another matter.
So far, no device ever has – unless driven in not-to-hot/not-too-cold conditions and not too-fast and not uphill and – important here – not hauling or towing anything. Or making much use of its quickness. This is one of the tertiary aspects of the Green Grift, i.e., the touting of range estimates that are fraudulent because of all the asterisks. If a vehicle under-performed its EPA-touted mileage numbers by even 5 percent, there would be recalls – and class action lawsuits. But devices regularly under-perform by 20 percent or more, especially in very cold weather – and it goes deliberately unnoticed, kind of like “died suddenly” in relation to those drugs that were pushed on people even harder than devices.
Motor Trend is at least reticent about Telo’s claims (unlike the keyboard fellation given by Jalopnik):
“With these highlight specs in mind, we boarded the MT1 for Marks to take us for a ride. Even if we had been in the production MT1, our roughly around-the-block ride wouldn’t have allowed for determinations about how it performs. Furthermore, our impressions should be taken with a grain of salt as large as the truck itself, given the Telo team was up until the wee hours of the morning before our meeting putting this prototype together.”
In other words – much like Nikola – the Telo MT1 is not quite-ready for prime time. It’s mostly hype in the hope that people will buy in. The more relevant issue is whether it will ever be ready for the market.
A $42,000 device that looks like a small truck is especially effronterous given we’re denied the freedom to buy any of the sub-$20k small trucks (and SUVs) that are available inother countries, such as the $13k-to-start Toyota HiLux Champ and the $17k-to-start Suzuki Jimny – both of which are real-deal 4x4s, too – as opposed to light-duty (but very heavy) devices that look like trucks.
The MT1 – which is about the same overall size as Mini Cooper, the smallest car available for sale in this country – has a curb weight of 4,300 lbs. This is actually light – for a device. But compare it with the weight of one of the last small pickups you could still buy (new) in this country, the 2003 Nissan Frontier, which weighed 3,196 lbs. In other words, the MT1 device weighs about 1,000 pounds more – and costs about three times as much (the ’03 Frontier’s base priced was around $13,000) and takes at least five times as long (20 minutes) to recover a partial charge vs. the five minutes or less it takes to fully fill the gas tank of the Frontier.
The Frontier could also take you 360-plus highway miles on a full tank. That was 22 years ago. How far we’ve come, eh?
“Telo can lean into building a truck through fresh thinking and design freedom – we’re eager to see disruption in one of the most tradition-bound vehicle segments,” says Motor Trend. 
The language is interesting, isn’t it? Tradition-bound vehicle segments. The implication being that “tradition” is bad, as in hide-bound. As contrasted with “fresh thinking” and “design freedom.”
The MT writer appears to be too young to know better – probably having been raised strapped into a “safety” seat and taught (in government schools) that the “climate” is “changing.”
I weep for the youth – and our future.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here. We also accept crypto (see below).
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
If you like items like the Baaaaaa! baseball cap pictured below, you can find that and more at the EPautos store!
The bitcoin code is: 3GAfymoqSUbaFvY8ztpSoDKJWCPLrkzAmi if you’re unable to scan the QR code above!
Another turd that no one (except maybe a handful of rich people looking for new toys) will buy.
I’ve never heard the term, ‘The brutalist style’ before, a.k.a. Brutalist architecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture
Same with, High-tech architecture, and the architectural style Deconstructivism.
Seems to explain the butt-ugliness of the E-Turduckens and the replacement of the cheery & colorful MacDonald’s restaurants with those gawd-awful grey & white monstrosities which resemble a prison.
…Is that why the styling of the E-Turduckens is supposed to appeal to younger people? They all grew up with butt-ugliness all around & it’s a reflection of the Fun House they played in & the view they had of the back of the seat when they were strapped into the child-car seat?
Boston City Hall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_City_Hall
gets my vote for World’s Ugliest Building.
Quite the contrast with the Massachusetts State House.
Boston City Hall has a lot in common with Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY, which began around the same time in the mid-1960s.
I call it the architecture of fascism. Agency buildings 1-4 — gaze upon the mighty works of government, ye serfs, and despair:
https://tinyurl.com/5e5uewt6
Oh man, those are some fugly-assed buildings you guys posted links to photos of.
Lego Hell.
[Also, gee, Jim H, you must be raking in the big Bucks, all those robot clones taking your name on here & all & saying how easy it is to make money doing blah blah blah. …I kind of wonder how that scam is even begun. …It starts, in some Dungeon…?
I saw this movie once, about a giant call center in India which focused on ripping older people off… I digress. Totally.]
It’s actually communist architecture. I saw lots of these concrete monstrosities in eastern Europe.
Drive the thing to the landfill and leave it there.
People will think it is a dumpster and use it for trash.
“another iteration of the Green Grift Operation that began under the auspices of the Biden Thing. ”
Actually, the EV tax credits were made possible by the auspices of The Chimp, when he signed the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 into law. (And as far as I know, the Donald has done nothing to rescind them.)
The carbon credit ruse was made possible by the Chimp’s daddy, all the way back in 1990, by some amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970 [takes breath] which was signed by Tricky Dicky Nixon (although an extension of the Clean Air Act of ’63, brought to us by El BJ…err, LBJ).
Of course, all of those things were made much worse by the likes of messes of …err..Mssrs Obama and Bidet….
Not trying to be nit-picky, but notice a pattern here? It’s not something new. Vote for whomever you want. It makes no difference other than in the words you hear. They are all working for the same people and for the same agenda. Now that enough people realize that EVs are a scam, thus thwarting that ruse as a way to destroy the manufacture of affordable, durable vehicles, tariffs will now apparently be used to do the same thing.
https://tinyurl.com/2r7rv3my
You’re not the only one weeping for our children.
As with giant pickup trucks, so with houses:
‘The house next door towers over ours. Through my dining room windows, I’m staring at the Giant White House’s above-grade basement. Through the windows of the GWH’s dining room, our roof serves as a kind of horizon line. From the second floor, you’re looking down on the neighborhood through the upper branches of the lot’s few remaining trees.
‘[The developer] told me that this kind of total disconnection from one’s neighbors is not a bug but a feature of this kind of house. “People want their second floor much higher up, to be removed from the street, for more privacy,” he said.
‘He compared this “escalating preference” to cars getting bigger and bigger, because it makes drivers feel insecure to be at the wheel of a sedan when everyone else has SUVs. People buying GWHs, Preissner said, “want to be higher up so they’re not looked down upon.”’
https://slate.com/business/2025/03/houses-real-estate-luxury-sale.html
The author of this article made me howl with laughter, in this sentence:
‘Giant White Houses are white, with jet-black accents: the shutters, the gutters, the rooves.‘
The rooves — BWA HA HA HA! I never learned that English.
If only it had a nice 1.8L 4cyl with an 8 speed automatic trans, and optional 6 speed manual s available, with the durability of an early ‘70s Hi-Lux.
Imagine Santa’s reindeer’s hoofs on those rooves! 🙂
Sick thing is, in many places where they have “zoning and planning” and such, they have enacted minimum square footage requirements for gnu houses, so that it is illegal to build a small or reasonably-sized house. Wanna build a simple 1000-1200 sq. ft. cottage, like the one many of us grew up in, and which served us and our ancestors just fine? Uh-uh.
Hell, I’ve never lived in anything bigger than 1200 sq. ft. -but have lived in much smaller. And much of the housing stock in the big cities -whether apartments or houses- is that size or much less. But NOooo! Gotta make huge McMansions to keep the sheeple in debt and mired in high energy bills. And keep those tax revenues up.
Build 4 giant houses on 1/2 and acre where one modest house with a nice yard used to be, or one giant house where a small bungalow on a tiny lot used to be. It’s how ya save the planet, ya know! And an EV in every garage (or pile of charred wood where the garage used to be before ya got the EV).
Yes, this is the most educated and enlightened society, ever! So you know this stuff has to be good!
‘Imagine Santa’s reindeer’s hoofs on those rooves!’
… with little red soxen on their dainty hoooooooves.
Purloined from reddit:
‘Well, the plural of “tooth” is “teeth”. So why isn’t the plural of “booth” “beeth”?
[And the plural of “youth” “yeeth”?]
Get off my lawn, you rowdy yeeth!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Believe I’ll pass on that ugly duck.
It’s called the Future, Eric. In the future things are more advanced, humanity drives electric cars. People worship government power and cheer on destruction:
Idiocracy – Frito’s Car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwR1-aRTyyM
“All movies are about us right now. Idiocracy is not about 500 years in the future, it is a reflection of our society right now. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho is the President of the United States, and a former pro wrestler and porn star. He delivers over-the-top, vulgar speeches when he addresses the nation, and gets people’s attention by firing a machine gun into the air.”
War with Iran? “Hell yeah”.
Back in my 1970s college days I saw a mockumentary about our future, I forgot the name of the film, but one clip showed a crappy futuristic car called the Ford SUC2000. The future is now, cars suck and they are getting suckier.
Why oh why the turd on wheels?
“the political circus called government continues to destroy this country and the world in order to bring about a fully controlled population of slaves”
https://www.garydbarnett.com/crash-stocks-bonds-real-estate-and-much-more/
———————-
I agree, a huge crash is coming. What Trump is doing is engineering a crash of Biblical proportions. Forget all the bullshit about making Amerika great again, what is the wave count? See Daneric Elliott Wave latest post.
—————
Barnett also wrote this:
The Controlled Demolition of the U.S. Is Fully Underway While Saturated in a ‘WrestleMania’ Environment
March 4, 2025
“worship for the evil and deceitful Trump and his dictatorial and Israeli worshipping administration. At this point, rule is by aggressive executive orders handed down from on high by Trump, the self-described choice as ‘god;’ and one who is ‘supposedly’ above all others. The ludicrous nature of such a belief by the controlled poser Trump, is telling of any number of gross human faults overlooked by the idiocy on the political right, including most all so-called ‘libertarians,’ who at this point have turned their lives over to a totally tyrannical president, and an inside member of the technocratic new world order.”
Nanny-Tech Spyware Clown Screens and now this fake and gay gem..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8afNJTCG9z0
We are being treated like 5 years old children. 😀
As I’ve mentioned here on this site many times and places before, “climate change” is NOT the existential threat to the human race that it’s being ginned up to be, and that’s because what TPTB say and what they do are vastly different. If it were, TPTB would be embracing sub-$20K small vehicles like the Hilux with open arms—because these vehicles Burn Less Fuel. Plus, their low price (people can actually pay cash for them) means mass adoption is feasible.
But then, there’s not much money to be made on these kinds of things, and besides, it’s not about controlling the weather…it’s about controlling YOU.
Remember YOU are the carbon they want to reduce
NetZero = zero humans. All based on the lie that CO2 forces warming.
Yep. They must destroy all life in order to “save the planet” so it can continue to exist as a home to rocks and dirt….
There’s not enough surface area to accommodate all the solar panels they want to put up to provide power for the sheeple so they have to cull the herd.
Grift.
The desire for sub-$20k pickups is there, but even if the Feds lifted the restrictions tomorrow, one of the manufacturers would have to step up with significant volume to overcome dealers catering to well heeled types desiring to be first in line to get one as a kid car or toy.
Used to like Motor Trend. Liked the tech guy Frank Marcus at Car and Driver too.
But then they started turning climate alarmist and full-on e-whores. That pissed me off, goodbye subscription.
Con Ed has proposed an 11.4 percent electric rate hike for NYC, moans the New York Slimes this morning.
As usual in articles written by a-technical art history and English lit majors, actual prices in cents per kWh are never mentioned, since that ‘kWh’ thingie with its odd capitalization baffles them. It might even be something that DOGE made up. :angry face:
But AI informs me that the combined rate including delivery charges is 22.2 cents per kWh for eight months of the year, and 24.3 cents per kWh during June-September — both soon to rise by another 11.4%.
So even as companies like Telo try to build new EeeVees, electric utility monopolies are jerking the rug out from under them by erasing any cost savings vs hydrocarbon fuel. Who could have possibly seen this coming? That’s a rhetorical question, comrades. 🙂
Hi Jim,
The cost of electricity is the turd in the punch bowl that never gets mentioned. Despite all the other shortcomings of EV’s no one ever considers electricity costs, which are on a constant upward slope, especially with all the AI data centers sucking up every available kilowatt. Costs about $.25/kwh here, sure it’s more in Commifornia but I guess that’s just a badge of honor for the virtue signaling Gaia worshippers.
Don’t be ridiculous. Electricity is free! It comes from the sun, and the wind, and if the technology weren’t being suppressed it could even be generated by powering the generators with clean, efficient electric motors!
>more in Commifornia
Here in SCE land,
https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Standard-Residential-Rate-Plan
$0.32 for Tier 1 (0-384 kwh)
$0.42 for Tier 2 (385-1535 kwh)
I used 414 kwh in January, for a monthly cost of
$90.23
Riverside, Anaheim, and Los Angeles (maybe some others, IDK) have their own electric utility companies. I do not know their rates.
AI power demand will dwarf electricity consumption by EVs.
Home AI servers are coming in June from Nvidia via their Project Digits.
How is the Telo going to comply with front-end collision saaaaaaafety regs, when the driver’s feet are maybe six inches behind the front sheet metal, which lines up with the front edge of the front tires?
Used to think about this in my old Chevy G-10 van, in which the seats were mounted atop the front wheel wells. It wasn’t going to be a stand-out performer in a head-on collision, which fortunately never happened.
What Chrysler used to call ‘cab forward’ design, but with no forward-protruding hood at all, is one geometric solution to making a pickup with a two-row cab plus an adequate bed length. But it’s hard to see how it can pass regulatory muster.
It gets a pass on those regs, save the planet, donchaknow.
Good grief, that is one ugly truck! Put a bag over that thing already!
Make Car Covers Great Again!!!!
That’s what this “truck” screams to the world.
>“truck”
Trucks have 18 wheels and a diesel engine.
Hi Shadow,
I’d have to agree with you regarding that thing being ugly. And I thought Tesla’s Cybertruck was the ugliest truck I’ve ever seen until I read Eric’s piece on the MT1 and saw a photo of one. But that raises another question. What is it with automobile manufacturers making their new vehicles ugly compared to automobiles of the past?
“What is it with automobile manufacturers making their new vehicles ugly compared to automobiles of the past?”
It’s not just cars.
In general there has been an uglyificcation of nearly every thing since the Victorian era.
Look at old gas lit lamp posts from the Victorian era, they used to have style. Now it’s a simple pole with a LED atop.
Architecture the same – look at an old French Chateau. Nothing is uglier than modern Federal buildings.
Everything has been “modernized” into some bare bones aesthetic that sucks . . . Not the least of which are automobiles.
Hi BID,
One could also make the case that the design of the buildings of fast food restaurants is ugly compared to the more colorful designs of years past. It seems the buildings now are all square shaped with a variation of gray.
Reading the other comments, I cannot help but wonder if the “uglification” is a way of making everyone and everything equal. Sort of like how in Communism, everyone is equal, no one is unique, but dull, much like the Soviet Union was. No surprise that there has been a push towards Communism, and now, outright, and our politicians are not even trying to hide it anymore. And sadly, as Ernie says, “ugly buildings for ugly people and for a society that has turned ugly”. And for those who are not ugly, and do not want to be, it is fight against such a system.
Where theres ugliness theres beauty.
Hopefully they go out of business even faster than they went into business. Another thing is almost every EV manufacturer must think they’ve designed the ugliest one yet until a newcomer says “Hold my beer” and we wind up with stuff like this.
Are famous designers of the past spinning in their raves? You know it.
Graves not raves. Spell check is not your friend. 🙂
Landru: Then again, they are certainly raving while spinning in their graves
.
They really don’t get style or class, any more than they get irony or sarcasm. Communism leads to ugly buildings, ugly vehicles, and ugly people. Check, check, and check. The brutalist style is the ultimate expression of it.
Recall Bob Lutz’s comment that American cars look “like a whole family of angry kitchen appliances: demented toasters, furious bread machines and vengeful trash compactors.”
That’s a hilarious metal image, Bill in RI!
Also, a bit sad.
At least, kittens & pony’s weren’t hurt.
[Angry, demented, furious,& vengeful. Man, that’s deep.]
Hi Bill!
That’s the post of the day!
Looks like the grifters have halfstepped back from stupid edrone octocopturd transports for now.