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Telo: An Yves-Behar-Designed Micro Pickup Truck EV

Mini Cooper footprint, Toyota Tacoma bed length

By Rain Noe - June 14, 2023

in Cars

It's fun times to watch the automotive design space, as EV architecture allows startups with no design legacy to jump into the game. Starting from a fresh sheet of paper, with no pre-existing expectations, designers are free to imagine new, funky forms.

The Telo, designed by Yves Behar and fuseproject, is a micro pickup truck EV headed for production by a startup also called Telo.

While the vehicle has the same 152" overall length as the MINI Cooper...

...it also has the same 60" bed length as the short-bed Toyota Tacoma. And it has a crew cab. The bed is also 60" wide, and there's at least 48" of clearance between the wheel wells. The Telo has been designed with the space efficiency of a Japanese apartment.

Strangely, the company doesn't mention which wheels get power. I assume the vehicle is not a 4x4 and is FWD.

The newish form is aimed at a new customer, as opposed to existing pickup owners. While the company boasts of the vehicle's 500hp output (and the bed size for bragging rights), they don't mention the payload capacity, a crucial stat for folks who regularly haul stuff. Instead the "urban adventure vehicle" and its 350-mile range appear to be aimed, as the Rivian is, at city folk who travel to do outdoorsy stuff on the weekends; people more likely to be carrying mountain bikes rather than bags of concrete.

That being said, the bed has been designed to fit a full 4x8 sheet of plywood (or an 8' surfboard) with the tailgate up, by extending the cargo area into the second row via a folding midgate.

There's also a "storage tunnel" running laterally across the bed, just aft of the midgate. This tunnel also features on the Rivian, but on the Telo it does double duty: A third row of seats can be mounted in the bed, and the tunnel then becomes the footwell for that row.

The company will offer a sliding tonneau cover and a bed cap as options.

Another feature urban buyers will love: The diminutive footprint means it's darn easy to park.

The Telo's base price is $50,000. The company is taking pre-orders now, and expects to deliver in 2025.

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david copeland

a year ago

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What's that on the door...a 'pill dispensary' icon?

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  david copeland
  
  a year ago
  
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  Get your daily dose of adventure™ :p
  
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Ryan Cee

a year ago

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Any of Japanese Kei truck has a similar bed, a way smaller overall length, and costs a 1/5 of that. Swap in an electric motor and some batteries and you're golden. Every extant automobile company is going eat all these VC churn fronts alive the second they get serious about EVs.

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  Ryan Cee
  
  a year ago
  
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  Can't wait for that second to arrive! :)
  
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