Blog How Important Are Electric Pickups to Tesla's Mission?

[Ty_McMahan]

Tesla has more than 400,000 Model 3 reservations, which will take nearly two years to fill at the current rate of production. Despite the “production hell” headlines and questions about how the manufacturing struggles will impact quality, people are still lining up for the car. In fact, last month the Model 3 outsold every BMW passenger...
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[fatmiko]

As long as they make it cool looking they can TAKE MY MONEY. I traded my Silverado for the Model X and miss my pickup's utility. But I love love love the electric drivetrain and everything else Tesla does in the X. So it can't be a bad thing. Especially if it keeps up good range for towing/hauling. Oh, and vinyl floors.

 

[suwaneedad]

Since pickups are insanely profitable for the Big Three, we could see Tesla sprint toward this market because of the ease of making really strong gross margin $$$ on each unit sold. I suspect there are two distinct markets: those who use their pickup trucks to drive to the grocery store, and those who actually use them for getting work done. It was interesting to me to see Elon tweet about features and make it clear that Tesla is going after the true work truck category.

I don't think that buying a Tesla pickup requires work truck buyers to 'give up on' the Blue Oval/etc. Many buyers are fleet buyers, and much as JB Hunt, UPS, Pepsi, etc are adding some Tesla Semi units into their fleets, so can pickup owners begin to find a place for a % of their fleets to be Tesla pickups. In fact, Tesla will find an 'easier buyer' in this space than a typical retail S/3/X buyer, since pickups for commercial use have a different fit/finish need than passenger vehicles do (Tesla will enjoy this same advantage when rolling out the Semi).

Those people responsible for buying fleet pickups can tip-toe into the Tesla waters, which is fine since supply will be limited anyway. As confidence in the Tesla pickup grows, supply will also grow, resulting in the Big Three to gradually cede market share to Tesla in the same way BMW is doing so month by month by month in the passenger vehicle arena today. We all love our Big Three pickups, but when fleet buyers experience 2-3 year payback periods similar to what Tesla Semi buyers have been promised, it is game over for ICE pickups. Purely a matter of how long it takes.

My civil construction business purchases 3-5 F150/250/350s each year. We will absolutely be buying a Tesla Pickup in lieu of one of those Fords, as soon as Tesla makes the product available for ordering. Literally that morning, we're in. It is a comically cheap experiment, even for a company like mine that only buys 3-5 trucks per year. I expect that we will buy one Tesla Pickup per year until I start to see buy-in from the field employees, at which point we will flip all purchases to Tesla so that within 5-6 years the entire fleet is EV as long as the Tesla Pickup specs meet the varying needs of our F150/250/350 users.

I can envision a future Tesla lineup that is Model Y, Model Xv2 (w conventional rear doors), Pickup, and Semi/Bus. We may find within a decade that the two sedans from Tesla are simply no longer necessary (much as ICE US mfrs are now sunsetting their sedan lines). S/3 have been keys to getting Tesla launched and to critical mass, but that naturally doesn't mean they will be around forever.

 

[Beardco]

Fleet managers will have to buy them first. The average person who needs to drive a pick-up to boost their fragile self esteem will not willingly switch. After being forced to drive the Tesla truck on the job, and then get in their own anemic, gutless gas truck to go home; they will quietly switch. Excuses will be made about how the wife demanded it , etc... but, they will secretly look for reasons to drive their new jet powered vehicle. Of course, this will still be done in an alcohol stupor, creating some of the most spectacular collisions of which we will all get to relive secondhand via Youtube courtesy of the built-in Tesla dashcam.

Five years from now I'm going to dredge this post back up.

 

[Ulmo]

Replying to OP:

The smug anti-blue-collar worker attitude of snobby Democrat-type Tesla Model S and X and BMW-like Model 3 owners is toxic to their understanding of how inside the minds of pickup owners many, if not most, of them want to drive a clean quiet awesome Tesla pickup truck. I have met many hard nosed asshole tobacco-chewing spitting cigarette smoking diesel truck driving gas generator using construction bosses in my time as a construction worker that have personally told me they would love to own a Tesla pickup truck. Stop with your goddamned prissy-assed attitude about what is up with pickup drivers. If we abandon them, they will abandon us, and that attitude of yours HAS NO PLACE ON THIS PLANET; you saying coal-rollers are the sum total of all pickup-type people are tantamount to GIVING UP the fight for clean air. Pickup owners HAVE ALREADY extended the olive branch to us by personally having the demand for the Tesla pickup; if we and/or Tesla thwart that olive branch, we could easily close one of the few avenues possible for pickup drivers and most of the drivers in the world to convert to clean energy.

Followup: above my post are three posts, two from actual pickup owners who said HELL YES (just like my many bosses), and one prissy-assed who makes assumptions about other people and thought pickup owners wouldn't buy Tesla pickups, EVEN AFTER the other two posted in plain sight. Amazingly dividing the naysayers are. Mend some of those attitudes and start to understand actual pickup owners better. The things that make most people who like Teslas makes pickup owners also like the Tesla pickup that has been imagined.

Of course, turning that imagination into reality will be its own chore; we've seen how much effort Tesla has gone through for each of their successive models. However, my point is to actually do it, regardless of outcome; at least Tesla will offer something, and if Ford or someone else beats them to it with a great EV pickup, great, otherwise, Tesla Pickup will be extremely compelling!

 

[tjkessler]

Ford and GM sell well over 1/2 million pickup trucks per year each. It's one of the most profitable vehicle segments and there are significant fleet sales which would work well with Tesla's sales model. If you think about the long term need to be profitable, this market segment is critical.

 

[FlyinLow]

I’m interested. It might be a bit of a wait.

 

[RobStark]

Atlis founder said base crew cab target price is $45k. If they can't do it for that then they won't make the truck at all.

 

[ai4px]

Fleet managers will have to buy them first. The average person who needs to drive a pick-up to boost their fragile self esteem will not willingly switch.

Naw... they'll just put a Harley sticker on the truck, or even a king ranch sticker and sell even more of them!

The honest question I have is that of towing. I have a very light trailer (boat trailer conversion) and it saps the hell out of my Bolt's battery. THe purpose of a pickup truck involves a lot of towing so how's that going to work?

 

[RobStark]

Naw... they'll just put a Harley sticker on the truck, or even a king ranch sticker and sell even more of them!

The honest question I have is that of towing. I have a very light trailer (boat trailer conversion) and it saps the hell out of my Bolt's battery. THe purpose of a pickup truck involves a lot of towing so how's that going to work?

Battery packs much larger than 64 kWh and much faster charging than 50 kWh.

 

[Olds442]

Since pickups are insanely profitable for the Big Three, we could see Tesla sprint toward this market because of the ease of making really strong gross margin $$$ on each unit sold.

i was going to say the exact same thing.

 

[ai4px]

Atlis founder said base crew cab target price is $45k. If they can't do it for that then they won't make the truck at all.

I just looked over their website... some of the specs seem really optimistic, but we'll see what they do. I've said before that GM needs to create a smaller pickup and market it to construction workers... show the truck with a 2kw inverter running all the tools on a site, then show the truck's torque by yanking a boat out of a boat ramp, etc.... So flash back to the Atlis website... under the heading of charging, they show a guy in a sweater with a fancy coffee flirting with his cell phone. That's not their target audience. This would be the macho people who drive a truck....

 

[RobStark]

So flash back to the Atlis website... under the heading of charging, they show a guy in a sweater with a fancy coffee flirting with his cell phone. That's not their target audience.

Atlis isn't planning to sell half a million plus trucks per year the first 5 years.

Eventually, yes.

But getting things started my guess is they will target wealthy liberals.

They also buy trucks, own large properties that need a work vehicle.

You have to start somewhere, and especially for a new company, you pick the lowest lying fruit first.

 

[Brando]

What about Bob Lutz company?
VIA Motors

PS- @tjkessler from the article - 2 million trucks in 2017 from GM, Ford, Dodge RAM

PPS- Like diesel trains (Volt architecture) , they should have been making 3cyl/generator set and 4 wheel electric drive and a few batteries. Use the Gen set on the job site. Electric motors for max. tow. And get the best mileage they could muster. Should have started with the Volt project.