Would be nice to see actual pics instead of silly silhouettes. I am in the market for exactly this kind of truck (especially a manual) but this doesn’t inspire me to want to buy it.
The company was started no earlier than December, according to the articles linked in another comment. Very real possibility that no pics or semi-finalized CAD design even exist yet at this point.
The original reo went bankrupt in 1967 and after series of mergers ended up as part of the truck company diamond reo. Diamond reo then had difficulties and stopped production in 1995. This reo is wholly unrelated, except the guy who started it bought the trademark.
These new guys don't. The descendant of the original REO is Nucor Steel. REO owned a steel roofing company, and through a strange chain of events, that unit became the biggest steel company in the US.[1]
> Physical Controls
Levers, rockers, and real analog gauges. One small screen for diagnostics and CarPlay — nothing more. No subscriptions. No feature locks. Ever.
> Right to Repair
Every panel off in under five minutes with common tools. Plain-English diagnostics on a $30 scanner. A 20-year public parts catalog at fair prices. No parts-pairing — in writing.
I'm very excited about this and pray it is successful.
My first reaction after seeing a website with vibecoded aesthetics was to wonder if this is even real, but apparently, it is - at least to the extent of getting some press coverage:
Am I the only one around here who’s sick and tired of the bitching and moaning on every post about how something was vibe coded or written by AI? Without fail, someone complains and it shoots up to the top of the comments. It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s off topic.
The easiest thing for you to do is just not engage with the post if you don’t like it. You people don’t need to pollute the comment section for anyone else who’s actually interested.
Just about everything is vibe coded or written with AI these days. Assume that’s the default. Comments pointing it out or complaining about it is just noise.
I'm confused by your response. I was trying to understand if the product or the company is real. An AI-generated website is not a positive signal. Neither is the lack of any product photos. And if you go to Wikipedia, you'll learn that the REO Motor Car Company went defunct in 1967, with no mention of any revival.
So my first thought was that it might be a subtle troll or a hoax. So I did a bit more research and found the links. It's not a dig at AI, and I'm confused why you feel the need to defend LLM's feelings on the internet.
It seems like everyone is more worried about how something was made rather than what it is or whether or not the work is good on its own merit. Ironic from a group that is surely using AI tools in their own work.
Vibecoding your whole website is an indication of how seriously you’re taking a project. With how new this company is and how clearly this whole website was made with AI, how can you trust a single thing this website says about a product that barely exists? The AI probably just invented half of it
Worse than vibe coding is vibe copywriting—and it appears to have that in spades. I have a really hard time taking something seriously that reads like it came straight out of Claude Code without even a minimal editing pass.
I hope it's legit, though, and that they succeed! I'd love to buy a product like they're planning to build.
It's weird to see a new vehicle announced like this that's not an EV. I wonder what it's like launching a gas truck when new battery-powered trucks are looming in the distance (or already here).
There are many great EV cars. But when you have a trailer or caravan we still talk about a heavily reduced range (and often they aren't allowed to pull at all, or weight limits get a problem, at least in Europe)
The interesting thing in the US is that a lot of pickups, possibly most of them, are purchased for regular daily driving. None of the people I know with pickups have trailers.
So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed.
The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.
There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/
My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.
It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.
Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot…
I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold.
They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.
4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads
How people use the vehicles that they buy is pretty well understood from the market research done by the car industry. In the US, the widespread use of pickup trucks a passenger vehicles is a known fact.
An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.
And a lot of people have occasional need for a truck but don't want to or can't afford to own more than one car, so they use the truck for all their driving.
some guy left a few hundred pounds of steel in the loading area of my workshop for stupid reasons. maybe about $80 worth in scrap. he kept coming by and claiming someone was going to pick up it up, and getting really threatening about us stealing the value from him. the scrap yard is 200 ft away. he drives a big jacked up truck. after a couple weeks of this I'm like 'look, I'll cut it down, and we can throw it in that truck of yours and you can roll 200ft down the road and we'll be done with it'. he was incensed, his bed liner would get all scratched up.
after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.
I find it somewhat amusing that this attracts a lot of ire, but most of us would prefer a 2,000+ sq ft suburban home with a lawn when we could live comfortably in a 500-700 sq ft apartment, like people do in most European cities.
Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.
I agree though I kinda wish it was a hybrid. Maybe down the line that will happen. The price point is a valid point and it ticks all our boxes - 4WD, manual transmission, not huge. I've priced out components for one of my trucks and $21500 is not gonna buy all of the running gear. I expect that none of this truck's drivetrain will use custom parts and that all of the critical drivetrain parts will come from existing supply lines for simplicity and ease of hitting their "repair in your driveway" messaging.
The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.
I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.
Kind of like the Local Motors Rally Fighter, which was a kit car that kept costs down by using parts from existing cars instead of designing their own from scratch.
A bit like that. I don't see a new vehicle manufacturer spending the time or capital to develop drivetrain components when there are already trusted manufacturers with decades of experience and products on the shelf that already function perfectly together.
I expect this guy will be looking at reliability data for various components, popular aftermarket upgrades, etc and designing a drivetrain that already uses popular components known by the automotive community to be reliable. Otherwise he will have a hard time hitting the 500k mile target I think I saw on the site.
He needs a dependable I4 engine mated to a dependable 6-spd manual transmission, mated to a dependable transfer case that sends power to the wheels through dependable differentials. I bet one could pull data from off-roader forums and configure something in a couple of days for their marketers to build interest.
There is a market for it. Cheap. Good range on a tank. 4WD. I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD Offroad. It's only got about 115k miles (bought it new). I'm not planning on replacing it - toyota hybrid numbers for their trucks suck and an in kind replacement would cost me almost 2x what I originally paid (yes new tech, blahblah). $35k in 2015, $70+k now. Gas isn't going away and rural areas (I've lived in a few) often don't have charging options.
I was at the Toyota dealership today. A TRD off-road with TRD Off-Road Upgrade Package and other goodies has a MSRP of $61k and the tag hanging from the rear view mirror said the no haggle price was $54,608. Still a lot of money and it is a huge truck for the passenger and cargo payload.
I say this as someone who will be buying an EV as his next vehicle:
EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:
- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?
- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.
- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. When I was a teen we used to take week-long canoe trips into Algonquin Park. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, you're an hour's drive away from the nearest city but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.
- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.
EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.
My pickup truck burned 9 miles per gallon when I towed a 35 foot RV. Consider the energy flux and you'll quickly see how hopeless it would be to tow with a battery powered truck.
Not everyone who owns a pickup tows with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a minority of owners who do. Some just need them for hauling plywood, others because they like the aesthetics.
I await real details, currently this is just a promise with nothing to back it up. Would love competition in this space for light trucks, pressuring companies to build better vehicles that last, but this is atleast 3 years away
Do I want to own one of these? No. I want my mechanic to be bored when I show up and need service…I guess that makes me a market laggard.
But I do love the pressure this (and Slate) puts on Toyota to restore some sanity to truck prices. There is a market of people who want reliable transportation without spending $40k++.
Impressive that HN has already found 80 ways to complain about this, even though it's exactly what everyone claims to want: physical buttons, analogue controls, and no-nonsense CarPlay support.
The same CarPlay everyone says is a must-have deal-breaker, yet every major manufacturer is slowly eliminating or putting behind a paywall.
Very true. This truck, if it ever exists in the promised form, ticks almost everyone's boxes. The one thing I would change would be the CarPlay offering. All I want in a vehicle is a DIN or double-DIN slot. I'll fill it with whatever I end up wanting. I don't need a radio or other entertainment device when I'm driving since that is the only time I really get to practice singing all the songs I thought I had learned over the years. I'm comfortable driving for hours singing to myself, inventing lyrics as I go or warbling my way through tunes I've mostly forgotten.
Good luck replacing 800 proprietary battery cells yourself or attempting any kind of repair on contemporary iPads-with-wheels without mandatory specialized equipment and documentation.
I agree. The last thing I want in a dumbed down vehicle is a function that is tied to a smart phone. I know that many people use CarPlay but I think the best way to deal with music, etc in a new vehicle would be for the manufacturer to include suitable slots, like DIN slots, where the buyer can add their own preferred system any time in the future when it becomes useful to them. Just keep a list of popular options on hand that are available in pre-order so that those who want it can have it on day one instead of making everyone have it.
At some point, the leadership team had a conversation that went something like this:
CEO: “We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars designing, developing, and tooling up to bring a new truck to market at a competitive price. We’ve worked out the entire manufacturing supply chain and have contracts in place with numerous vendors. We’ve placed orders for the thousands of parts, and hired highly skilled labor, and have extensively planned to have the man, machines, and materials all in the same place at the same time to actually pull this off. We have the working capital loans in place to let us run these operations. All that remains is the marketing outreach.”
CMO: “Okay, got it boss. Let’s start with one of the most highly visible parts of the marketing plan that literally every customer will interact with because of our sales model. Our contract marketing agency says they can develop a fantastic site for $200k - they have a great portfolio that shows they can make exactly what we need.”
CFO: “Fuck that, I just asked Claude to vibe code a marketing landing page. Looks great. Ship it.”
can they pull this off - maybe - IDK the team - but this is possible.
cause of concern?
- i4 gas engine instead of using 4 electric motors - then using smaller engine to act as generator. plenty of Chinese have done this - quickest way to start a car company. otherwise they're gonna find out real soon - why other auto manufacturers went out of business or why reliability is a cause of concern even for big manufacturers. engines and powertrains can be complex.
Ford Maverick starts at $28k, and they're running about $3k in incentives at the moment. So it's a competitive price but nothing too wild versus what we have already.
The main reason is scale and support, here in ukraine we bought all 21k pickups in europe, it is very hard to sustain tham at same time, so if you have any enterprise you'd want a park of SAME vehicle, so for single buy - yes, it will your beloved hilux for rest of your long life. but if you want 100 pickups, 1000? and parts are scarse now. and than you can even customize them. but even in retail you will have extra support and guarantee for new pickup. Steering rack is just unabtainium here, so there will be every other part for 20 year SUV/Pickup soon.
This is an appealing price point for the US market for what it is. I suspect outside of the US you'd need to be a little cheaper still, I hear there are various kinds of trucks under $10k in India for example, though I really have no idea about their size or specs.
Depends on the truck. Pickups in the US can get very expensive very quickly, they’re basically luxury vehicles and they retain their value better for some reason I haven’t really looked in to. Budget trucks are not as plentiful, $21,500 is a pretty competitive price.
They retain their value because they _are_ useful for real work and are mostly built for longer lives. Even if new purchases are for luxury reasons used purchases have prices pushed up for working people.
It'd be great if they could come up with a photo of the truck. But an alternative to the oversized absurdities we have on the roads these days can't come soon enough.
"Best value": Over how many miles? A hybrid often has a lower TCO.
"Gas I4, proven": Maybe it's a skill issue, but I can't figure out which I4 they're using or if they DIY. Meanwhile, the "unproven" Ford hybrid system is pushing trucks to 200k miles on a regular basis. (of course, your mileage may vary but it seems like they did a great job with this)
I love how they list refueling only taking 5 minutes from anywhere, but they leave out that you can't refuel at home. The EV side should be updated to say refueling time is zero because every time I leave my home I'm already completely fueled up.
Today it only exists in the imagination of the company CEO and a few trusted others, none of whom have figured out how to hire someone with automobile CAD experience to produce a mock-up that might increase interest for their proposed product.
It's another kickstarter/"pre-order"/vaporware car. Like Slate.
"If all runs smoothly, first customer deliveries will take place in late 2028 or 2029."
Expect price creep and delivery date slippage.
A Toyota Hilux, sold in america would be nice. The small truck market is slim pickings... other than the slate (which is still vaporous), nothing small with a regular cab has been built in a while. Old trucks won't last forever.
My question is: why select a name that for most people, if they recognize the name at all, is a band from the 70s-80s? How many people other than old farts like me even know how to properly pronounce the name? (Because they'll think it's pronounced like the band name.)
It's one thing to ride on nostalgia, but how much nostalgia is there for a company whos heyday was 100 years ago, and went out of business (well, merged) 60 years ago? The only nostalgia this old guy has is remembering my grandfather talking about the Speedwagon he had back in the day.
Would be nice to see actual pics instead of silly silhouettes. I am in the market for exactly this kind of truck (especially a manual) but this doesn’t inspire me to want to buy it.
The company was started no earlier than December, according to the articles linked in another comment. Very real possibility that no pics or semi-finalized CAD design even exist yet at this point.
It's basically an idea without enough funding to exist.
I don't think 25$ reservation slots are going to pay for a full assembly line.
the hat claims that it was started in 1905?
The original reo went bankrupt in 1967 and after series of mergers ended up as part of the truck company diamond reo. Diamond reo then had difficulties and stopped production in 1995. This reo is wholly unrelated, except the guy who started it bought the trademark.
TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REO_Speed_Wagon
The founding date for the original REO. I don't think they have an unbroken line back to the original
These new guys don't. The descendant of the original REO is Nucor Steel. REO owned a steel roofing company, and through a strange chain of events, that unit became the biggest steel company in the US.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucor
also no real mention of body construction or bed dimensions. nice to see a 2 door though I guess
Why are people designing such thoughtless websites?
On the other hand, perhaps it is just that the company here has presented in its totality all existing information about the vehicle in question.
> Physical Controls Levers, rockers, and real analog gauges. One small screen for diagnostics and CarPlay — nothing more. No subscriptions. No feature locks. Ever.
> Right to Repair Every panel off in under five minutes with common tools. Plain-English diagnostics on a $30 scanner. A 20-year public parts catalog at fair prices. No parts-pairing — in writing.
I'm very excited about this and pray it is successful.
My first reaction after seeing a website with vibecoded aesthetics was to wonder if this is even real, but apparently, it is - at least to the extent of getting some press coverage:
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/startup-wants-build-sma...
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a71667299/reo-industries-r...
That cookies notice is awful
What's the best cookies notice?
Well best would be websites not using cookies so there is no need for a notice.
Yes but what's the next best?
Am I the only one around here who’s sick and tired of the bitching and moaning on every post about how something was vibe coded or written by AI? Without fail, someone complains and it shoots up to the top of the comments. It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s off topic.
The easiest thing for you to do is just not engage with the post if you don’t like it. You people don’t need to pollute the comment section for anyone else who’s actually interested.
Just about everything is vibe coded or written with AI these days. Assume that’s the default. Comments pointing it out or complaining about it is just noise.
I'm confused by your response. I was trying to understand if the product or the company is real. An AI-generated website is not a positive signal. Neither is the lack of any product photos. And if you go to Wikipedia, you'll learn that the REO Motor Car Company went defunct in 1967, with no mention of any revival.
So my first thought was that it might be a subtle troll or a hoax. So I did a bit more research and found the links. It's not a dig at AI, and I'm confused why you feel the need to defend LLM's feelings on the internet.
It seems like everyone is more worried about how something was made rather than what it is or whether or not the work is good on its own merit. Ironic from a group that is surely using AI tools in their own work.
How it is made is often a strong indicator of whether or not the work is good.
You don't find many literary masterpieces scrawled in permanent market on a toilet wall.
"...on the subway wall." - Paul Simon
But you do find plenty of dubious traits in the authors (both the toilet scrawlers and the literary gods).
They are not in the website business though.
You could have simply just not engaged…? It’s no different. You’re doing a similar pollution!
The lack of self-awareness is baffling.
There is something to be said about this particular style of argument, as it's akin to the "paradox of tolerance".
Ultimately I think the most fair thing is to let both sides attempt to build support until a clear victor emerges.
Vibecoding your whole website is an indication of how seriously you’re taking a project. With how new this company is and how clearly this whole website was made with AI, how can you trust a single thing this website says about a product that barely exists? The AI probably just invented half of it
Worse than vibe coding is vibe copywriting—and it appears to have that in spades. I have a really hard time taking something seriously that reads like it came straight out of Claude Code without even a minimal editing pass.
I hope it's legit, though, and that they succeed! I'd love to buy a product like they're planning to build.
Damn you, company who isn't making websites for a living, where are your priorities!?
It's weird to see a new vehicle announced like this that's not an EV. I wonder what it's like launching a gas truck when new battery-powered trucks are looming in the distance (or already here).
There are many great EV cars. But when you have a trailer or caravan we still talk about a heavily reduced range (and often they aren't allowed to pull at all, or weight limits get a problem, at least in Europe)
The interesting thing in the US is that a lot of pickups, possibly most of them, are purchased for regular daily driving. None of the people I know with pickups have trailers.
I love seeing Ram 6000 Max Diesel Rampage Pros who’s sole job is going to work and Walmart.
And when they pick up groceries they load everything onto the floor of the back seat because the bed is so high up you’d need a step ladder to use it
I think the more important reasons are to prevent the groceries from sliding around in the bed and to protect them from the sun and precipitation.
Another reason is to avoid letting the inside of the bed get scratched. I lived in Texas for a while, and people were that fussy about their trucks.
So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
The safety aspect is intersting. The driver might be safer, but they are vastly more likely to kill anything they hit.
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...
Isn’t the Ram Rampage a more compact non US market 4cyl variant? Like a maverick competitor?
I just made up a name. I know Rebel is a model that’s hilariously large. Don’t know about others.
Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed.
The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.
There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/
My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.
It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.
Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot…
I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold.
They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.
“Compensation” and extreme loneliness (cannot find my tribe without spreading its dumb peacock wings so they know I fit in)
The suburban people buying Ram 9001 Warlord Editions are not the target market for this truck.
4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads
That some people buy them and don't really need them has zero relevance on whether any people have need for them.
How people use the vehicles that they buy is pretty well understood from the market research done by the car industry. In the US, the widespread use of pickup trucks a passenger vehicles is a known fact.
An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.
And a lot of people have occasional need for a truck but don't want to or can't afford to own more than one car, so they use the truck for all their driving.
some guy left a few hundred pounds of steel in the loading area of my workshop for stupid reasons. maybe about $80 worth in scrap. he kept coming by and claiming someone was going to pick up it up, and getting really threatening about us stealing the value from him. the scrap yard is 200 ft away. he drives a big jacked up truck. after a couple weeks of this I'm like 'look, I'll cut it down, and we can throw it in that truck of yours and you can roll 200ft down the road and we'll be done with it'. he was incensed, his bed liner would get all scratched up.
after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.
I find it somewhat amusing that this attracts a lot of ire, but most of us would prefer a 2,000+ sq ft suburban home with a lawn when we could live comfortably in a 500-700 sq ft apartment, like people do in most European cities.
Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.
I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t an ev. Very aggressive price point for a new IC vehicle.
I agree though I kinda wish it was a hybrid. Maybe down the line that will happen. The price point is a valid point and it ticks all our boxes - 4WD, manual transmission, not huge. I've priced out components for one of my trucks and $21500 is not gonna buy all of the running gear. I expect that none of this truck's drivetrain will use custom parts and that all of the critical drivetrain parts will come from existing supply lines for simplicity and ease of hitting their "repair in your driveway" messaging.
The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.
I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.
Kind of like the Local Motors Rally Fighter, which was a kit car that kept costs down by using parts from existing cars instead of designing their own from scratch.
A bit like that. I don't see a new vehicle manufacturer spending the time or capital to develop drivetrain components when there are already trusted manufacturers with decades of experience and products on the shelf that already function perfectly together.
I expect this guy will be looking at reliability data for various components, popular aftermarket upgrades, etc and designing a drivetrain that already uses popular components known by the automotive community to be reliable. Otherwise he will have a hard time hitting the 500k mile target I think I saw on the site.
He needs a dependable I4 engine mated to a dependable 6-spd manual transmission, mated to a dependable transfer case that sends power to the wheels through dependable differentials. I bet one could pull data from off-roader forums and configure something in a couple of days for their marketers to build interest.
There is a market for it. Cheap. Good range on a tank. 4WD. I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD Offroad. It's only got about 115k miles (bought it new). I'm not planning on replacing it - toyota hybrid numbers for their trucks suck and an in kind replacement would cost me almost 2x what I originally paid (yes new tech, blahblah). $35k in 2015, $70+k now. Gas isn't going away and rural areas (I've lived in a few) often don't have charging options.
I was at the Toyota dealership today. A TRD off-road with TRD Off-Road Upgrade Package and other goodies has a MSRP of $61k and the tag hanging from the rear view mirror said the no haggle price was $54,608. Still a lot of money and it is a huge truck for the passenger and cargo payload.
https://www.smarttoyota.com/new-Madison-2026-Toyota-Tacoma-T...
Slate already has that covered.
I say this as someone who will be buying an EV as his next vehicle:
EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:
- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?
- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.
- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. When I was a teen we used to take week-long canoe trips into Algonquin Park. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, you're an hour's drive away from the nearest city but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.
- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.
EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.
You said it yourself, they're fundamentally suitable for most use cases. Yes, for the near future, there will be many use cases where gas is superior.
Sure. But I think the "near future" to which you're referring is going to be a longer tail than many EV maximalists expect.
I would be shocked if IC-engined vehicles were no longer being produced in 2050.
My pickup truck burned 9 miles per gallon when I towed a 35 foot RV. Consider the energy flux and you'll quickly see how hopeless it would be to tow with a battery powered truck.
Not everyone who owns a pickup tows with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a minority of owners who do. Some just need them for hauling plywood, others because they like the aesthetics.
The Ford F-150 Lightning should be selling well, but it isn't
I await real details, currently this is just a promise with nothing to back it up. Would love competition in this space for light trucks, pressuring companies to build better vehicles that last, but this is atleast 3 years away
Do I want to own one of these? No. I want my mechanic to be bored when I show up and need service…I guess that makes me a market laggard.
But I do love the pressure this (and Slate) puts on Toyota to restore some sanity to truck prices. There is a market of people who want reliable transportation without spending $40k++.
I don't want a mechanic. I want something basic enough I can fix it.
REO marketing clearly reflects this. We'll have to wait and see if the actual product hits the mark.
No dealer sales is such an enormous perk. We need this everywhere but of course there's too much incumbent vested interest to keep the status quo.
I’ll save my money for the 2030 Speedwagon.
Impressive that HN has already found 80 ways to complain about this, even though it's exactly what everyone claims to want: physical buttons, analogue controls, and no-nonsense CarPlay support.
The same CarPlay everyone says is a must-have deal-breaker, yet every major manufacturer is slowly eliminating or putting behind a paywall.
Very true. This truck, if it ever exists in the promised form, ticks almost everyone's boxes. The one thing I would change would be the CarPlay offering. All I want in a vehicle is a DIN or double-DIN slot. I'll fill it with whatever I end up wanting. I don't need a radio or other entertainment device when I'm driving since that is the only time I really get to practice singing all the songs I thought I had learned over the years. I'm comfortable driving for hours singing to myself, inventing lyrics as I go or warbling my way through tunes I've mostly forgotten.
And an ICE. Snooze.
EV pickups are a novelty.
Good luck replacing 800 proprietary battery cells yourself or attempting any kind of repair on contemporary iPads-with-wheels without mandatory specialized equipment and documentation.
I hate CarPlay; yet another dumbed down interface that's inextricably linked to a phone.
I agree. The last thing I want in a dumbed down vehicle is a function that is tied to a smart phone. I know that many people use CarPlay but I think the best way to deal with music, etc in a new vehicle would be for the manufacturer to include suitable slots, like DIN slots, where the buyer can add their own preferred system any time in the future when it becomes useful to them. Just keep a list of popular options on hand that are available in pre-order so that those who want it can have it on day one instead of making everyone have it.
At some point, the leadership team had a conversation that went something like this:
CEO: “We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars designing, developing, and tooling up to bring a new truck to market at a competitive price. We’ve worked out the entire manufacturing supply chain and have contracts in place with numerous vendors. We’ve placed orders for the thousands of parts, and hired highly skilled labor, and have extensively planned to have the man, machines, and materials all in the same place at the same time to actually pull this off. We have the working capital loans in place to let us run these operations. All that remains is the marketing outreach.”
CMO: “Okay, got it boss. Let’s start with one of the most highly visible parts of the marketing plan that literally every customer will interact with because of our sales model. Our contract marketing agency says they can develop a fantastic site for $200k - they have a great portfolio that shows they can make exactly what we need.”
CFO: “Fuck that, I just asked Claude to vibe code a marketing landing page. Looks great. Ship it.”
the site almost sells you on a ford maverick
"Wow, the same style engine, a reputable dealership network, a hybrid system with battery, and a turbo charger for only another 7 grand?"
The website is black on black, not easy for me to see at all.
The truck photos are too.
At this point the killer feature would be: privacy, control of your own vehicle, and repair ability.
Does it offer this? Wish someone would make that product.
Pretty sure Slate offer exactly this.
That's what they claim. Right to repair and direct parts sales.
Makes sense to me... the Toyota mini trucks of the 80s/90s were super useful and Tacomas are basically full-sized and not as efficient.
can they pull this off - maybe - IDK the team - but this is possible.
cause of concern?
- i4 gas engine instead of using 4 electric motors - then using smaller engine to act as generator. plenty of Chinese have done this - quickest way to start a car company. otherwise they're gonna find out real soon - why other auto manufacturers went out of business or why reliability is a cause of concern even for big manufacturers. engines and powertrains can be complex.
electric motors are simpler.
Is there anything special in making a $21k gas truck in 2026? I’m guessing you could get a second hand gas truck for this price?
Similar competition (Nissan Frontier, Ford Ranger, etc.) would start at around $35k these days.
They show a 28k Ford in the comparison.
Ah, I didn't realize (nor that it was possible) they made a shittier version of the Ranger.
I think you should try and make the case that its not special. Considering a $21k new gas truck doesn’t exist currently.
> How it stacks up.
Pretty much says it all. I'll take two.
Not to mention, a real body-on-frame SUV. Can you even get one of those new for < 35k?
Ford Maverick starts at $28k, and they're running about $3k in incentives at the moment. So it's a competitive price but nothing too wild versus what we have already.
The Maverick is a different class of vehicle: it has a unibody with no mechanical 4x4.
There are golf carts/lsv's that cost 15k-20k these days and a fiat 500 is 25k iirc, for perspective
The main reason is scale and support, here in ukraine we bought all 21k pickups in europe, it is very hard to sustain tham at same time, so if you have any enterprise you'd want a park of SAME vehicle, so for single buy - yes, it will your beloved hilux for rest of your long life. but if you want 100 pickups, 1000? and parts are scarse now. and than you can even customize them. but even in retail you will have extra support and guarantee for new pickup. Steering rack is just unabtainium here, so there will be every other part for 20 year SUV/Pickup soon.
> here in ukraine we bought all 21k pickups in europe
I wasn’t aware of this - this article mentions 100k purchases in the first 2 years of the war.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-war-rely-pickup-truc...
This is an appealing price point for the US market for what it is. I suspect outside of the US you'd need to be a little cheaper still, I hear there are various kinds of trucks under $10k in India for example, though I really have no idea about their size or specs.
Depends on the truck. Pickups in the US can get very expensive very quickly, they’re basically luxury vehicles and they retain their value better for some reason I haven’t really looked in to. Budget trucks are not as plentiful, $21,500 is a pretty competitive price.
They retain their value because they _are_ useful for real work and are mostly built for longer lives. Even if new purchases are for luxury reasons used purchases have prices pushed up for working people.
My current daily is dual-fuel (petrol and LPG) and cost £250, but I got quite a good deal on it.
I tow quite heavy things with it, taking 3500kg trailers a long way off road.
Except it’s supposed to launch in 2029 at the earliest?
Sure, a Tacoma with 100k miles on it already...
It'd be great if they could come up with a photo of the truck. But an alternative to the oversized absurdities we have on the roads these days can't come soon enough.
I need to know if Ransom Olds is involved or not.
The comparison table is laughable.
"Best value": Over how many miles? A hybrid often has a lower TCO.
"Gas I4, proven": Maybe it's a skill issue, but I can't figure out which I4 they're using or if they DIY. Meanwhile, the "unproven" Ford hybrid system is pushing trucks to 200k miles on a regular basis. (of course, your mileage may vary but it seems like they did a great job with this)
There's other issues as well.
I love how they list refueling only taking 5 minutes from anywhere, but they leave out that you can't refuel at home. The EV side should be updated to say refueling time is zero because every time I leave my home I'm already completely fueled up.
What have the Dodo, a Fisker and that in common?
Well, you all know the answer.
Do that not have any pictures of it?
Today it only exists in the imagination of the company CEO and a few trusted others, none of whom have figured out how to hire someone with automobile CAD experience to produce a mock-up that might increase interest for their proposed product.
Incredibly disappointed to see it will be using a gasoline combustion engine.
The website is all hype with very little substance, as well as the taint of AI slop. If they aren't willing to share details, I'm not interested.
As a benchmark, I would use Slate, who have so far done an excellent job providing information and updates on their truck.
Looks like a Lada
Yes, let me throw money at this vibe-coded vaporware.
I’ll reserve one when I can test drive it first.
Um, if you're going to market a vehicle, you really, really, really, need to have pictures or at least detailed renderings.
Atm, this is a DoA product.
>Why Gas?
Because we hate you, and need to make some money off it
fiction
It's another kickstarter/"pre-order"/vaporware car. Like Slate. "If all runs smoothly, first customer deliveries will take place in late 2028 or 2029." Expect price creep and delivery date slippage.
In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
> In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
A Toyota Hilux, sold in america would be nice. The small truck market is slim pickings... other than the slate (which is still vaporous), nothing small with a regular cab has been built in a while. Old trucks won't last forever.
> In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
that's quite the optimistic end! There's absolutely zero chance this ends with a pickup powered by the venerable Toyota 22R-E I4 or an equivalent.
"I4, proven" proven to be genai slop and nothing more.
My question is: why select a name that for most people, if they recognize the name at all, is a band from the 70s-80s? How many people other than old farts like me even know how to properly pronounce the name? (Because they'll think it's pronounced like the band name.)
It's one thing to ride on nostalgia, but how much nostalgia is there for a company whos heyday was 100 years ago, and went out of business (well, merged) 60 years ago? The only nostalgia this old guy has is remembering my grandfather talking about the Speedwagon he had back in the day.
I don't see the big deal. If it was 100 years ago, then the name, perhaps, is effectively new.