Now I get what you're trying to say but still disagree. The truck beds of the people I'm talking about are full every day. They NEED a truck. yet they never exceed the range of the Model S in one day. They spend ten times as much on fuel. I think a Tesla AWD truck would be ideal and they would see this. The fuel savings are extraordinary. These people understand the bottom line.
So honestly I would LOVE a small electric pickup as I don't need to tow 10,000 lbs and could easily live with say a ranger sized pickup. This sized pickup could very well fit the description above without issue. If Tesla's intention is to sell a very narrow segment of say compact pickup trucks for the autozones of the world to haul product 100 miles, they could come up with a cost effective solution but would have a hard time selling more than 20,000 units a year. If we are thinking 300,000 unit a year numbers you cant go for the compact narrowly focused market for the following reasons.
1. GM, Ford & Dodge/Ram got out of the compact pickup truck market for a reason (although they may be coming back). Now personally i think they ignored the segment and didn't update as much as they should, however these vehicles were not selling all that great relative to the full size truck lines.
2. The normal buyer of the compact pickup trucks are 20 something males who don't have a lot of money and retiree's (of course there are always exceptions) who also don't have a lot of money.
3. Corporate buyers (such as small delivery (autozone) or company's that need to get people and equipment) will look at the TCO over a specified period of time.
In the first case unless you can redefine the segment substantially, you may be looking at a niche product category. With number 2 or 3 you need to be able to get a product relatively cheap and be even or better in terms of TCO than an ICE version of the vehicle within 3-5 years. I am sorry but unless there is a battery breakthrough, an EV pickup truck is going to have a difficult time competing with a $20-25k compact pickup. Because the energy storage needs are large with such a big vehicle and the cost associated with that are equally large, I have a hard time believing that Tesla can easily pull off a marketable compact pickup truck without cutting range substantially.
The full sized truck market has a higher top end in terms of cost which can more closely close the gap in terms of TCO on an expensive battery. So if we have to target the full sized market we need a compelling reason to sell them a Tesla over the other competitors. That is difficult because laden range is going to be a major concern without available super fast charging. It is also difficult because of the current level of expectations around what a truck in that category is supposed to do. In order to push Tesla over Ford you need to break there preconceptions about what a truck is supposed to do in order to minimize the impact of limitations of the EV technology (mostly range, cold weather and charge times) and show the strengths (fast 0-60, super high torque, lower fuel bills).
Does that make sense?
when it becomes available....
