Yes, more of this please!
No idea why it has no stereo though. That feels like a pretty basic feature. Doesnt even need to be built in. Just iso standard head unit bay would do.
Sure, but it’s American, so it’ll somehow shit out a connecting rod around 150,000 miles and will cost $8000 to repair.
Do EVs have connecting rods? The article does go into right to repair, sounds like the company is pro DIY repair so that’s promising at least.
Oh fuck. Where buy
It’s backed by Bezos. Wouldn’t even consider it for that reason alone.
This looks awesome.
The msrp of this truck is $28000. For having nothing in it that is absurd. Not to mention the rebates put it at 20k but you still have to pay upfront which deters most people from getting. Overall shit truck, shit design, shit price.
But does it break when water ?
There’s no radio, no Bluetooth, and no speakers of any kind beyond for those required to play basic warning chimes.
Many will consider this a cost-cutting step too far, but the interior was designed for ease of upgrading, with easy mounting space for anything from a simple soundbar to a full sound system.
There’s an integrated phone mount right on the dashboard, but there’s nothing stopping you from bringing something even larger. I expect the low-cost Android tablet and 3D-printing communities to have a field day coming up with in-car media streaming solutions.
If only that money wouldn’t be partially going into the pockets of Bezos, it would be amazing.
And while easily replacable panels and such are a good thing. Having the mounting screws exposed like that is a horrendus idea. Because I suspect I know what much younger and very drunk people would do, based on the Mercedes hood ornaments I have in a box somewhere.
I don’t really see a downside to this, so why not line Bezos pockets if he is providing¡g a sane alternative?
framework truck😭
This is 100% it.
All I want is a modular car system. Everything modular. Dashboard. Body panels. Whatever. I want 3+ cars possible on one frame, and to not need anything more than basic tools to swap parts around.
You wanna drive a FOSS OmniMech and so do I
I do. I really do.
Gm said they’d build a sled drivetrain that they could just plop bodies on top of but that never happened sadly.
Wonder why? Seems to me like a money printing machine for them, the factory and non- factory repair shops and the aftermarket.
Unless it’s seen as a way to hide your car from illegal activities, which well now that I think about it is probably the reason they didn’t follow through with the idea.
Probably a balance between it would make it cheap for them to produce, but also bring down the barrier to entry for third party manufacturers to compete with them.
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This is like the electric version of the bare-bones Toyota ICE pickup
Is it a networked surveillance nightmare?
Am I reading this right and it only offers 1000lb towing capacity? Isn’t that kind of utterly useless?
Oh, not at all. Not at all. Now as a full-fledged TRUCK, and hauling, yeah it’s pretty pathetic. But the truck platform that this uses is clean, simple, and fucking brilliant.
A lot of non-truck city people like to cite some damning statistic, something-something-87% of truck owners haven’t hauled anything significant in the past year. Correct, and I think most people simply don’t have that need. The number of oversized trucks I see, that go from home to cubicle work to WalMart & back home again… 🙄🙄🙄
Full-sized trash cans don’t fit in a car very well. But they fit nicely in a truck. This truck can “haul”…all kinds of bulky, awkward shit that doesn’t weigh much. I’ve got a lot of that in my life.
I could use this as a nice, basic farm shuttle vehicle. Chores. Daily driver to & from work. Camping even, obviously light tent camping. Drive-in movie theaters. Parties. “I don’t have room in my car for [junk] .” Well, throw it in my truck. Problem solved, yay 🥳
It’s electric, so you could even drive it part-time & fully recharge it with the fucking sun.
I adore the standard cab, small, working man’s truck. It is not kind of utterly useless, it just doesn’t allow you to be the manliest man that ever manned, bro. Lift kit & shoxxx for offroading, bro. Best in class for towing, bro. Extended cab, bro. It runs on endangered species of owls, bro. …you can keep all that. I’ll take this. 🤗
Full-sized trash cans don’t fit in a car very well. But they fit nicely in a truck. This truck can “haul”…all kinds of bulky, awkward shit that doesn’t weigh much. I’ve got a lot of that in my life.
Yep, furniture especially. A Queen-size bed is bad enough, but at least you can tie that onto the roof of most sedans. A table and some chairs? Some dressers? Doesn’t matter how light they are, you run out of space real quick, and that’s assuming you’ve got your Luggage Tetris skill maxed so you can cram everything in perfectly.
…or you could just set it all in the bed and put a net over it if you really wanna make sure it won’t go anywhere. I know which one I prefer.
Fair enough, I guess I’ve been considering my own use case, which is moving lumber.
Wouldn’t you put the lumber in the bed instead of on a trailer?
Lumbar can easily get longer than a truck bed.
I have an older Ranger. I don’t do much truck stuff. The bulk cargo area is the draw, not the weight capacity. The heaviest load I carried was 800lbs of plywood, which was 15 sheets or something. I have a 4x8 trailer that can also help haul bulky household goods for moves, a motorcycle, lumber, or furniture. While the trailer is rated for 1700lbs payload and weighs 300lbs itself, I have never put more than 500lbs on it, despite filling the 4x8 floor stackef 4ft high. I made the trailer before getting the Ranger, so now they’re redundant and never actually hauled together.
If you’re already towing, this probably isnt the truck for you. If you aren’t towing, it provides an option to tow something if you have to. The reason I chose the Ranger is because it’s cheap, gets good fuel economy, and has the capacity to grab full lumber sheet goods on my commute home. While I could find a 30mpg car for the same price, I’m still in the mid 20s. Maybe I could spend 30k on a new F150 V6 and get similar, but then it costs 10x what I paid. Bulk space and handling scratchy cargo is the main goal. I think of the Slate as being what the Ranger should’ve been now.
Yeah, for towing that’s basically useless unless you’re only using it to tow around a wood splitter or something.
That said, my family has had a 1993 Ford ranger for many years. I’m pretty sure even with the 4-cylinder engine it still has a towing capacity several times that much, but we have never towed anything with it. We have gotten a lot of use out of it as a truck though, moving furniture, camping gear, small loads of firewood, trips to the hardware store, etc.
I can also potentially see this being big for certain fleet vehicles. Growing my dad worked on a military base as a civilian in their wastewater treatment plant. Part of his job involved driving around the base once a day or so to take water samples from a couple places. The public works department had a couple small trucks, Chevy S10 I think, that he’d use for that. They got used by other public works employees, never for anything particularly heavy duty but they did occasionally tote around some bulky tools, equipment, materials, but a significant amount of what they used them for could probably have used a golf cart. I’d be amazed if those trucks went 10 miles most days, they sat most of the time, kind of a perfect sort of situation for them to sit on a charger.
Ranger fam unite! 4cyl towing is only 3500 I think. Less than a car+trailer because that’s what people always ask about in the ranger community. And that’s with the proper frame hitch. The bumper is like class 2
It does only have the bumper, I’ve never looked into it because we’ve never needed to tow anything. We have the long bed so anything we’ve ever needed to haul fit in there just fine.
I love that truck. It has yet to hit 100k miles because until the last couple years my parents had 3 vehicles and especially now that they’re retired they never really go anywhere anyway.
And for a 32 year old truck, it still gets pretty decent gas mileage, pretty damn close to 20mpg, the new rangers don’t beat that by much.
It’s not without its downsides, it’s rwd so it’s kind of shitty on anything but dry pavement unless you have some weight in the bed, and it’s 0-60 time is probably best stated as “eventually,” but it’s done everything I’ve ever needed a truck to do.
If Ford came out with basically that exact truck with a modern engine to get better gas mileage but otherwise kept the performance the same, it would probably be my next vehicle. Wouldn’t mind AWD/4wd too but I could live without.
I really like the maverick but the small bed is kind of a deal breaker. I’ve heard some rumors that they may add a midgate in a couple years to open the bed up into the back seat so if they do that I’m probably sold.
My 98 has the 2.5 Lima/Pinto, the slightly larger version of the 2.3 in your 90s Ranger, and consistently hits 21mpg on 50mph highway with traffic lights. My buddy with a 94 2.3 also gets about 20. However, I’ve read lots of good things about the 2.3 Duratech/Mazda L that started in 01. I just picked up a 2008 in much better condition but have yet to check the fuel economy. It’ll be interesting going from a clapped out long bed to a short bed with a hard tonneau and a bedrug liner. But, realistically, I’m driving empty 95% of the time so I’ll take the cover for a little extra aero.
I’ve looked at the maverick as well. The price (of any newer car) is the main reason I went with an old ranger. That’s neat about the midgate, I hadn’t heard about that. While the 4ft bed of course reduces cargo space, my main concern is about long lumber. With an adjustable tailgate angle and bed pockets for cross boards giving it 6ft of support, the community seems perfectly happy with it for 8ft goods. That’d be awesome if a midgate fit 4ft wide goods through it, almost containing 8ft from rear seats to tilted tailgate. And a 40mpg hybrid? I’m in… Except for the price right now.
Just as an FYI, aerodynamics can be a little complicated, it depends on the exact vehicle, the speeds you’re going, etc. but there’s a lot of cases where a tonneau cover will actually hurt your mpg.
Price is definitely the thing holding me back from a new vehicle as well, even though the maverick is one of the more affordable trucks out there it’s still too rich for my blood. I have a friend who just got one though, so I plan on using him as a guinea pig for the next few years until a new car is hopefully in my budget.
I don’t need a truck, but this is perfect for people who want to take a bunch of mountain bikes out to the downhill mountain bike park. Throw 5-6 bikes in the back, take the riders in a separate car.
That said, I hope they come out with a smaller wagon or sedan with clearance (so a hitch can be installed for mountain bikes).
I didn’t need a truck back when I bought an Isuzu pickup. But it was the cheapest new vehicle at the time and did come in handy. Didn’t even have power steering or brakes.
my trailer weighs like 350lb total, that gives me 650lb to haul in it still
Equivalent towing capacity of a Chevy Impala, so yes.
This is less of a truck and more of a truck-shaped go-kart.
If you need to tow something, sure. The vast majority of people who own a pickup don’t tow jackshit. That goes for urban and rural areas.
And this will not fit all requirements of all people all the time. Nor does it intend to. But my god, trucks are such a practical platform & they used to be a lot smaller. The Asians do the tiny utility trucks…so well. But noooooo, Americans simply can’t have anything small, or affordable, we won’t allow small trucks to enter market. 🙄
It fits most cases, and a change 60-75% in the right direction is better than a 0% change in the right direction, cranking out oversized & overpriced trucks that don’t fit our lifestyles.
There are lots of men not entering relationships, lots of couples not having children. This is perfect for daily living & daily tasks. Long-distance trips? Fuck no. But how often are you doing that? Price is right, if it’s cheap-running & simple & reliable – what are we waiting for?? Let’s go, the Toyota Stout isn’t coming to save us anytime soon. Let’s go with this tiny truck until then.
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I have a stereo in mine. Has BT. I still usually just roll with ear buds. Lol.
I don’t care at all I almost prefer that. I have a Bluetooth headset I wear 90 percent of the time anyways.
You should not be wearing anything in or on your ears while driving.
Motorcycle riders wear ear protection for wind noise.
Riders can hear better than people in cars even with earpro though.
completely different scenario. real apples to cats comparison
The rise of headphones that allow you to hear the outside world while wearing them is gunna make that law obsolete
Make sure you say that to the cop while he writes your ticket
it’s really not though. it’s way easier to just not put on headphones than it is to put on headphones and prove you had them in pass through sound mode
You make it seem like someone would put on their headphones just for the ride. They would have them on already before hand. And they would keep them on afterwards.
Especially in a vehicle that doesn’t have a radio
why would we make driving rules surrounding that exactly one vehicle doesn’t have speakers and some headphones have passthrough?
I think they meant open ear style headphones / earbuds, not closed ear ones with pass-through function.
Personally, despite having a pair of those, and they are great, I still prefer using the car’s speakers while driving, but that’s me.
then i’m confused because those aren’t new. those are the oldest designs on the market
I’d be surprised if people couldn’t put in a simple and cheap aftermarket deck and a couple speakers, which would only be around a couple hundo. If these things are easy to work on so you can install it yourself, even better.
I had a truck without a working stereo so I just used some Bluetooth speakers
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or a bluetooth speaker that connects with a smartypants phone
Standard DIN stereo slot, heat, and AC, and id buy it in a heartbeat.
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You don’t even need a stereo. Bluetooth amp and a phone/tablet holder.
Id prefer to at least have the slot for one as an option. I grew up with professional aftermarket sound systems in cars (thanks for the tinnitus, dad) so it just wouldn’t feel right to me.
That and android auto. There’s nice options for head units with screens last i looked.
Seems built In speakers will be optional
Lost me at “American”.
Crazy how so many people have been begging for bare ones, affordable electric vehicles.
Then when one comes on the scene they do nothing but complain. Can’t please anybody these days it seems.
Good luck, independent car manufacturers usually get bankrupted out of business directly or indirectly by a market dominated by traditional car manufacturing lobbies designed to be replete with minefields that usually go up in difficulty just before it’s supposed to reach mass production. There have been plenty of innovative EV designs that have died off because of this, and it’s telling how much power those lobbies have when its the one thing countries will unite against to keep Chinese competition off of their borders.
