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A few months back, my colleague Tina Casey did an article for CleanTechnica about the tiny, trendy, and oh-so cute TELO electric pickup truck. TELO is a California (where else?) startup founded by Jason Marks as CEO, Forrest North as CTO, and Yves Bรฉhar, who founded the design studio fuseprojectย and holds the title of Chief Creative Officer. โWe are a team of enthusiastic automotive, battery, design, and robotics experts, all with the hands-on skills building real world things,โ Marks and North say.
TELO secured a $5.4 million strategic funding round led by Neo this spring and has engaged California manufacturer Aria Group to build the first two fully functional prototypes of its electric pickup truck. โAria 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,โ TELO told CleanTechnica by email. โThey will help make the TELO truck a reality combining the latest advances in rapid manufacturing technology with innovative design and creative engineering.โ Now, hereโs an interesting tidbit. In March, TELO let word drop that Marc Tarpenning, a Spero Ventures partner and one of the two actual founders of Tesla Motors (Martin Eberhard is the other one), has been appointed to its board.
At the time that it led the most recent funding round for TELO, Neo said the company โbuilds 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.) โThis 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,โ Neo said.
The TELO Truck
To say the TELO electric truck has โthe same capacity of an F-150, the range of a Tesla, in the footprint of a Mini Cooperโ is a bold statement. Can it really be true? According to Forbes it is, depending on how you define your terms. TELO says its truck will have the off-road capability of a Toyota Tacoma thanks to its 10 inches of suspension travel, โTesla-likeโ range and efficiency, a five foot long truck bed with an adjustable mid-gate for longer items, and seating for five. All in, itโs a package thatโs the same length as a MINI Cooper and nearly identical interior space as a Tacoma. Putting the cab as far forward over the front wheels as possible helps.
The secret is in how TELO builds the battery for the truck. When it 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. โA lot of people think that the motor of an electric vehicle is equivalent to the combustion engine in an ICE vehicle, but itโs really the battery pack thatโs more of that equivalent,โ North says. โIt defines how far you can go, how fast you can go, the torque that you have, and the top speed.โ
The TELO magic is in the way the company packages the battery, CTO Forrest North tells Forbes. TELO packs the battery cells very close to each other and uses a combination of liquid and passive cooling that keeps temperatures in check during operation and charging. The company assembles its battery packs in its micro-factory in San Carlos, California. The battery pack is only 4 inches tall, and because it is so tightly packed, TELO can get a 106 kWh battery pack into its tiny truck when a comparable Mini Cooper can only fit a 54.2 kWh. The company says its truck will have a range of 350 miles, accelerate to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds, and pack a 500-horsepower punch.
The Right-Sized TELO Truck
Co-founder Jason Marks says TELO was a selfish endeavor in several ways. He likes to drive his 150-pound dog around in a Toyota Tacoma and lives in downtown San Francisco where parking is at a premium. Marks, Bรฉhar, and North theorized there were a lot more people in the same predicament โ yearning for an outdoor lifestyle doing things like snowboarding and mountain biking but living downtown where a vehicle like a pickup doesnโt fit.
As a result, TELO launched its idea as a consumer product. What surprised them was that they received a storm of inquiries from fleet managers with high enthusiasm for a small electric truck. Fleets are big money, considering all of the contractors, plumbers, electricians, and other companies working inside the city. โThese major big name fleet companies said to us, โThis is what weโve been waiting for,โโ Marks says. โThey 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.โ
The second motivator for the TELO team was its perception of the proliferation of supersized trucks in the marketplace. โWhen the electrification wave began, there were already big trucks,โ Marks says. โ(The thought was) โwell, letโs just electrify this 6,000-pound vehicle by throwing 3,000 pounds of batteries on it and now weโve got our electric truck,โ We donโt think thatโs what really people want in this space.โ
The Time Is Right
Forbes says 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. 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 Maverick 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: โAutomakers โฆ if you donโt have a player in this key segment, you are missing out big time.โ
Many CleanTechnica readers will see a connection between TELO and Canoo, another electric truck startup that seeks to make competent electric pickups and delivery vans that are quite a bit more compact than the behemoths available from companies like Ford, GM, RAM, and Toyota. So far, Canoo just hasnโt been able to actually get its act together to get its products into production, much to the consternation of many potential buyers. Will TELO be the one that cracks the code on compact electric trucks first? It certainly has poured an impressive amount of creative thinking into its prototypes.
They may not be able to haul 100 bales of hay or a quartet of heifers โ towing 10,000 pounds seems unlikely too. But for many folks, what TELO has to offer sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Where does the company go from here? โWeโll see,โ says the Zen master.
A tip of the CleanTechnica hat to Dan Allard, who really would like TELO, Canoo, or someone to make an affordable electric work truck very soon.
