Telo is building an all-electric compact truck that can be parked in the city and still be ready for … (+)
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It seems that small trucks are having a moment right now. Consumers are clamoring for practical pickups like the Ford Maverick, which is enjoying impressive popularity since its launch in 2021. Indie EV maker Telo is dialed into the vehicle trend and its co-founders say they came up with a concept for a its all-electric compact truck on graph paper a decade ago.
Telo plans to launch its truck sooner than later with big aspirations: off-road capability like a Toyota Tacoma, “Tesla-like” range and efficiency, a five-foot-long truck bed with an adjustable mid-gate for longer items, and seating for five. All in, it’s a package that’s the same length as a MINI Cooper and nearly identical interior space as a Tacoma. That’s ambitious, but it’s not impossible. The market is ready for it, if Telo can get its truck to the market soon enough.
Telo’s concept truck has the footprint of a Mini Cooper and the interior space of a Toyota Tacoma.
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The success of the Maverick compact pickup has taken even Ford by surprise. Ford vehicle integration engineer Kirk Leonard says the Maverick is the only small pickup in its class with a standard hybrid powertrain, and the 2025 model now comes with an all-wheel drive option and a towing package that matches its non-hybrid version.
Americans are responding to this segment positively, buying the Mav pickup in increasing numbers. In fact, Ford says Maverick sales numbers had nearly matched 2023 halfway through the year with 77,000 units sold. Analysts like Robby DeGraff of AutoPacific said it loud and clear on LinkedIn: “automakers…if you don’t have a player in this key segment, you are missing out big time.”
First sketched on graph paper a decade ago, Telo’s all-electric truck has the potential to shake up … (+)
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In some ways, CEO Jason Marks says, Telo was a selfish endeavor in several ways. Marks drives his 150-pound dog around in a Tacoma (thus, the multiple comparisons) and lives in downtown San Francisco. That’s not the easiest place to park a pickup, as you might imagine. Marks and co-founders Yves Béhar and Forrest North theorized there were a lot more people in the same predicament, yearning for an outdoor lifestyle doing things like snowboarding and mountain biking, but living downtown where a vehicle like a pickup doesn’t fit.
As a result, Telo launched its idea as a consumer product. What surprised them, however, was that they received a storm of inquiries from fleet managers with high enthusiasm for a small all-electric truck. Fleets are big money, considering all of the contractors, plumbers, electricians, and other companies working inside the city.
“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 need to build a product that was actually accessible to fleet customers as well.”
Telo’s all-electric compact truck is an idea in line with current trends. Can they get it to … (+)
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The second motivator for the Telo team was its perception of the proliferation of supersized trucks in the marketplace.
“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.”
Telo set out to create a battery pack with a small footprint and better-than-average range. The company started with off-the-shelf 21700 cylindrical Lithium-Ion batteries, which are the shape of a standard AA household 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 toque that you have, and the top speed.”
The secret sauce is in the way Telo packages it, says company chief technology officer Forrest North. Using a combination of liquid and passive cooling, Telo packs the batteries very close to each other and North says the temperature differential is very small whether the car is off operating. The company assembles its battery packs in its microfactory in San Carlos, California.
But how does Telo get a 106 kilowatt-hour battery pack into that miniature truck, when a comparable Mini Cooper can only fit a 54.2 kWh? It’s all in the packaging, they say. Their battery pack is only four inches tall, tightly packed using Telo’s proprietary process.
So far, only a prototype exists today, but Telo is putting it to the test. Marks shares that the team has taken the prototype truck off-roading already. It helps that the pickup has 10 inches of clearance and wears standard-size Goodrich KO2 tires.
More than 3,000 interested parties have placed pre-orders based on the initial sketches, and the company is bullish about its opportunity in the small truck segment. They’ve raised $8 million so far, with miles to go before any customers will see a production truck in the real world.
This summer, Telo announced a new partnership with Aria Group to produce working prototypes they can use to promote the idea and make these efficient mini-trucks a reality. Those 3,000 pre-order customers are crossing their fingers that it’s going to happen at some point.
