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Just a few months again, my colleague Tina Casey did an article for CleanTechnica concerning the tiny, fashionable, and oh-so cute TELO electrical pickup truck. TELO is a California (the place else?) startup based by Jason Marks as CEO, Forrest North as CTO, and Yves Béhar, who based the design studio fuseproject and holds the title of Chief Artistic Officer. “We are a team of enthusiastic automotive, battery, design, and robotics experts, all with the hands-on skills building real world things,” Marks and North say.
TELO secured a $5.4 million strategic funding spherical led by Neo this spring and has engaged California producer Aria Group to construct the primary two totally purposeful prototypes of its electrical pickup truck. “Aria is a major player in the early stage development of concept vehicles and rapid prototyping, and has partnered with notable automotive, aerospace, maritime, and entertainment companies,” TELO informed CleanTechnica by electronic mail. “They will help make the TELO truck a reality combining the latest advances in rapid manufacturing technology with innovative design and creative engineering.” Now, right here’s an fascinating tidbit. In March, TELO let phrase drop that Marc Tarpenning, a Spero Ventures companion and one of many two precise founders of Tesla Motors (Martin Eberhard is the opposite one), has been appointed to its board.
On the time that it led the newest funding spherical for TELO, Neo mentioned the corporate “builds electric pickup trucks with the same capacity of an F-150, the range of a Tesla, in the footprint of a Mini Cooper. Trucks are too big, not just because people want big trucks, but also because of a misinterpretation of government regulation by automakers. (That would be the much maligned footprint rule the industry got the Obama administration to accept years ago.) “This resulted in trucks nearly doubling in size over the last 15 years, all time highs in pedestrian fatalities, and trucks now contributing 10.5% of all US carbon emissions. The only way to shrink the mobility footprint is to rethink the form and function of the truck,” Neo mentioned.
The TELO Truck
To say the TELO electrical truck has “the same capacity of an F-150, the range of a Tesla, in the footprint of a Mini Cooper” is a daring assertion. Can it actually be true? Based on Forbes it’s, relying on the way you outline your phrases. TELO says its truck can have the off-road functionality of a Toyota Tacoma because of its 10 inches of suspension journey, “Tesla-like” vary and effectivity, a 5 foot lengthy truck mattress with an adjustable mid-gate for longer gadgets, and seating for 5. All in, it’s a package deal that’s the identical size as a MINI Cooper and almost an identical inside area as a Tacoma. Placing the cab as far ahead over the entrance wheels as potential helps.
The key is in how TELO builds the battery for the truck. When it got down to create a battery pack with a small footprint and better-than-average vary, the corporate began with off-the-shelf 21700 cylindrical lithium-ion batteries, that are the form of a normal AA family battery. “A lot of people think that the motor of an electric vehicle is equivalent to the combustion engine in an ICE vehicle, but it’s really the battery pack that’s more of that equivalent,” North says. “It defines how far you can go, how fast you can go, the torque that you have, and the top speed.”
The TELO magic is in the way in which the corporate packages the battery, CTO Forrest North tells Forbes. TELO packs the battery cells very shut to one another and makes use of a mixture of liquid and passive cooling that retains temperatures in verify throughout operation and charging. The corporate assembles its battery packs in its micro-factory in San Carlos, California. The battery pack is barely 4 inches tall, and since it’s so tightly packed, TELO can get a 106 kWh battery pack into its tiny truck when a comparable Mini Cooper can solely match a 54.2 kWh. The corporate says its truck can have a spread of 350 miles, speed up to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds, and pack a 500-horsepower punch.
The Proper-Sized TELO Truck
Co-founder Jason Marks says TELO was a egocentric endeavor in a number of methods. He likes to drive his 150-pound canine round in a Toyota Tacoma and lives in downtown San Francisco the place parking is at a premium. Marks, Béhar, and North theorized there have been much more individuals in the identical predicament — craving for an out of doors way of life doing issues like snowboarding and mountain biking however dwelling downtown the place a automobile like a pickup doesn’t match.
Because of this, TELO launched its thought as a shopper product. What stunned them was that they obtained a storm of inquiries from fleet managers with excessive enthusiasm for a small electrical truck. Fleets are massive cash, contemplating the entire contractors, plumbers, electricians, and different corporations working inside the town. “These major big name fleet companies said to us, ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’” Marks says. “They asked why nobody has been building a small truck and we realized very quickly that we needed to build a product that was actually accessible to fleet customers as well.”
The second motivator for the TELO staff was its notion of the proliferation of supersized vehicles within the market. “When the electrification wave began, there were already big trucks,” Marks says. “[The thought was] ‘well, let’s just electrify this 6,000-pound vehicle by throwing 3,000 pounds of batteries on it and now we’ve got our electric truck,’ We don’t think that’s what really people want in this space.”
The Time Is Proper
Forbes says that small vehicles are having a second proper now. Customers are clamoring for sensible pickups just like the Ford Maverick, which is having fun with spectacular reputation since its launch in 2021. The success of the Maverick compact pickup has taken even Ford without warning. Ford automobile integration engineer Kirk Leonard says the Maverick is the one small pickup in its class with a normal hybrid powertrain, and the 2025 mannequin now comes with an all-wheel drive choice and a towing package deal that matches its non-hybrid model.
Individuals are responding to this section positively, shopping for the Maverick pickup in growing numbers. Actually, Ford says Maverick gross sales numbers had almost matched 2023 midway by way of the yr with 77,000 items bought. Analysts like Robby DeGraff of AutoPacific mentioned it loud and clear on LinkedIn: “Automakers … if you don’t have a player in this key segment, you are missing out big time.”
Many CleanTechnica readers will see a connection between TELO and Canoo, one other electrical truck startup that seeks to make competent electrical pickups and supply vans which might be fairly a bit extra compact than the behemoths obtainable from corporations like Ford, GM, RAM, and Toyota. To this point, Canoo simply hasn’t been in a position to truly get its act collectively to get its merchandise into manufacturing, a lot to the consternation of many potential consumers. Will TELO be the one which cracks the code on compact electrical vehicles first? It actually has poured a formidable quantity of artistic considering into its prototypes.
They could not be capable of haul 100 bales of hay or a quartet of heifers — towing 10,000 kilos appears unlikely too. However for a lot of people, what TELO has to supply feels like simply what the physician ordered. The place does the corporate go from right here? “We’ll see,” says the Zen grasp.
A tip of the CleanTechnica hat to Dan Allard, who actually would love TELO, Canoo, or somebody to make an reasonably priced electrical work truck very quickly.
