The cheapest F150 Lightning (available today not in 2025) is $50k (vs $60k for Cybertruck), same 250 mile range but AWD standard, and is a regular pickup truck compatible with standard accessories and parts for doing actual pickup truck work.
Of course, most of the buyers of either the Cybertruck or the F150 Lightning probably aren't getting much dirt under their fingernails. Everyone I know doing construction/trade work tends to drive much smaller pickups.
We need a lot more Chevy Bolts and electric buses, and a smaller electric pickup truck with 2 doors, but instead this is what we will get due to the cultural moment we are at, and because of who has the money to spend on new vehicles today.
From what I’ve heard, trucks are huge now due to various fuel efficiency regulations. A big truck is easier to make with fewer regulations. It seems like all the electric trucks want to prove they are bigger and tougher than the ICE trucks, but it seems like the perfect platform for small trucks, as the the efficiency standards would become a moot point. I’m looking for trucks like the old Ford Ranger from the late 90s to come back. The Maverick was a start, but they need to take it a step further.
Maybe it’s like with the Model S. First they have to prove it’s cool and remove all the excuses (too slow, too weak, not enough range), then they can scale down to the smaller more mass market options at lower price points.
> trucks are huge now due to various fuel efficiency regulations
Correct.
It's because of "...the fine print of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards adopted in 1975, Gerald Ford’s reluctant response to a crippling Middle East oil embargo that sent gas prices soaring. To protect American commerce, work trucks and light trucks were subject to less-strict CAFE standards than family sedans. Trucks are also exempt from the 1978 gas guzzler tax, which adds $1,000 to $7,700 to the price of sedans that get 22.5 or fewer miles to the gallon.
Those incentives encouraged American car manufacturers to double down on trucks. But the CAFE standards also had a more subtle and far-reaching effect: They pushed carmakers to broaden the definition of truck.
“'Cars and light trucks had two different standards. It became easier to meet the standard with trucks. So automobile manufacturers thought of ways to basically build trucks that are really cars, and that’s what generated the SUV,' said Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Christopher Knittel, who has spent much of his career tracing the unintended consequences of government fuel regulations."
It's bizarre that this has been allowed, and that lawmakers didn't immediately fix this hole in the regulations as soon as they noticed car manufacturers taking advantage of it.
It's bizarre that in the middle of a oil market crisis it wasn't expected that the consumer market wouldn't have moved to higher MPG vehicles on it's own anyways. To me, this is one of the hallmarks of a highly monopolized market where consumers don't have any actual choices, and where competition for consumer approval is almost entirely absent.
The correct answer would have been to increase the number of companies manufacturing vehicles, not passing laws that constrained a market and possibly lead to an overall decrease. Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim and mostly disconnected from consumer demand.
>Now we have a market that's almost entirely bound to congressional whim
Agree 100%
>mostly disconnected from consumer demand
Disagree. Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers. Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models, and to be honest, I'm surprised Chevy still makes the Malibu. The Company Formerly Known As Chrysler doesn't even make a car anymore.
> Ford killed the Focus and Fusion because they simply couldn't be sold for a profit since most people didn't get the high end models
They stopped providing it as a model to the American market. It's based off a Ford platform, though, and other automakers are continuing to use that platform. The Focus also continues to be a model in European markets.
During the beginning of the pandemic there were also parts shortages. Many manufacturers stopped making their lower end vehicles and only produced the higher end ones with the limited parts they could get, because, they can convert those parts into higher profits.
I think these decisions are best viewed as the awful intersection of short term wall street thinking combined with latent and intentionally imperfect measures of consumer demand.
> Sedans are still around (Camry, Corolla, Civic, Accord), but consumers are voting with their wallets for crossovers
This is objectively true but it’s happening against three decades of marketing pushing SUVs hard and especially the messaging that if you drive a small car you’re putting your safety at risk. I think there’s an arm’s race here which is going to be hard to stop absent something causing gas prices to spike or a shift in insurance requirements.
Given that the damage to roads is linked to miles, and then the square of the vehicle's weight, it'd not be difficult for a state to stop putting the road maintenance related taxes on gas itself, and instead just measure those two things. Odometer change, times the square of the weight. Suddenly the really large truck that carries a single person is far more expensive to run than a sedan.
Something kind of like this is already done with stickers for electric cars in many states: Doing that for every car is just extending the program. It won't happen though, because a lot of people would be angry to internalize the cost of their choices
Yeah, I’d love that - or things like charging for parking by the square foot - but your last point is what I had in mind for the pessimistic ending: people REALLY don’t like losing subsidies, so I think a lot of governments are hoping buying preferences change or the insurance companies will do something because then they don’t take the political heat.
But you're right that there's far too little choice in smartphones. They're all fragile thin big touch screens. In the early days, you had smartphones made out of steel with sliding keyboards. What happened to that?
The problem is that you get unfair competition if one type of car is held to different standards than another type. Pickups and SUVs should be held to the same standards of regular cars. And maybe also require a stricter driving license, because from everything I hear, they're a lot more dangerous.
CAFE standards have been around since 1975. Yes, they helped incentivize manufacturers to aggressively market trucks and SUVs, but they don't explain the recent increase in the size of those trucks. That part's new.
Despite some misleading pictures shared on social media, if you do an apples-to-apples comparison (e.g., a 1972 F-150 and a 2023 model with the same bed size), they are about the same length. The differences are vastly better driver safety and fuel economy.
The main difference is that nowadays, there are more factory and aftermarket configuration options available, and people have more money, so you see more people driving heavy-duty trucks with 35,000 lbs towing capacity, which have big engines and thus are rather beefy. But conversely, you also see more people buying small trucks with "stub-length" (4-5 ft) beds.
It's interesting that you don't really have a market of mini-pickups that are seen in Japan, but that's probably partly a matter of weird fuel efficiency regulations, of import restrictions, and cultural factors (few people in the US want to be seen riding anything golf-cart-sized, and it's not exactly a guy-only thing.)
Driving a kei truck is basically the most fun you can have with your pants on and they get a smile from everyone. AIUI, it's primarily the safety regulations that make them unsellable new in the USA. The crumple zone is the drivers knees, just like a VW microbus.
Old ones can't be registered in all 50 states. New Hampshire will let you register one; Vermont is not as accommodating. They're also pretty pricey for a 25 year-old car.
Oh, and they top out at something like 50 mph. Which would be terrifying if you managed to keep your foot planted long enough to get up to that speed.
I've driven one that was a summer camp vehicle, and I'd love to have one, but I live on the wrong side of the Connecticut River :-(
I know what it's like to be in the presence of a typical old truck, compared to a typical modern truck. The modern truck is wider and taller, accelerates faster, and has worse visibility. I'll trust my own eyes and experience over some conveniently angled photos and irrelevant "apples-to-apples". (To extend the analogy: you're doing your comparison using a cultivar hardly anyone buys anymore).
As I understand it, CAFE standards require small footprint trucks to meet an unreasonably high MPG rating or else pay taxes/fines. Large footprint trucks have a more realistic MPG requirement. Therefore all trucks are large trucks.
But is there really no downside to "driving a truck" in US? Out here northern europe, if a car is classified as a truck, then you have lower speed limits, and possibly need to drive a separate truck-driving-license.
Sure, for very heavy trucks. But the Cybertruck is not even close to being heavy enough to qualify.
I live in an area where the Cybertruck is heavy enough that the annual registration fees will be 2-3x higher than a regular car. But then again, if you are a "farmer" then all the truck stuff becomes cheaper. You know that all the largest cities in the US are located in states (New York, California, Illinois, Texas) with huge agricultural areas. And they all have lots of laws to protect and help farmers.
An obvious, easy solution would be to allow car makers to classify a vehicle as either a "car" or a "truck" (once classified, it cannot be reclassified without the car maker being subject to the worst of both worlds).
Cars can be driven with a car driving license.
Trucks can be driven with a truck driving license, or CDL, or have to be registered by a company, or _whatever licensing requirement makes it perfectly feasible for people who need one for work but enough of a PITA that private individuals don't bother getting it_.
And yet trucks are huge without a material increase in bed space. If the auto makers can skirt around the law to make everything a truck, surely In this hypothetical, they would make smaller trucks and make them "cars"
You'd pretty much have to repeal a ton of safety laws. Today's Tacoma is the size of an f-150 of 20 years ago, but still can't tow or haul as much. Gotta deliver practicality!
> Qualifying businesses can claim a deduction of up to $28,900 when purchasing a new Tesla vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of at least 6,000 pounds. To qualify for the tax deduction, vehicles must be operated for legitimate business use >50% the time.
We’re incentivizing business capital investments. Certainly, it’s not always efficient (Hummers that used this tax treatment), but that is the intent. It would be more optimal if trucks didn’t keep getting bigger, but trucks are still needed for work purposes.
The reason was to avoid tax advantaging sports cars or luxury sedans for executives. At the time SUVs were utilitarian and unfashionable so dividing by weight seemed an easy way to distinguish between "real" work vehicles and "fake" work vehicles.
Of course it backfired so now 6500 pound SUVs (and even luxury sedans!) are easily acquired.
Standard tax deduction for businesses as a work truck. Technically you need to be using it only for business reasons but we all know how fuzzy small business owners get with that kind of stuff sometimes.
A guy at work has a Ford Ranger EV (I think it's the '97?); he's upgraded the battery & the charger. It'd be my ideal vehicle if they were produced, again.
Yep. And according to Wikipedia, it delivered 75 miles of range at 60mph on 26kWh NiMH battery. With 52kWh of today's batteries a vehicle in that format could easily do 150 miles (plenty for a work truck). You wouldn't be able sell it for $50k+ though.
150mi of range assumes nothing in it, no towing, etc. Not nearly enough. Also, that would assume the 52kWh of battery weighs the same. Maybe it does, but if it doesn’t then that may increase weight and decrease range.
Nobody wants 150mj range cars anymore because they suck for day to day use. 20-80% means you’re realistically getting 60% of that range usable. You better plug them in every single day otherwise you might have trouble.
At the time those were referred to internally as the Ranger Glider, which was a name I always kind of liked. I recall many of them going to Mexico at the time, I think as part of a government program.
Toyota is rumored to make a truck smaller than the Tacoma, which is pretty exciting to me, in part because the Tacoma has become ridiculously expensive. But it will undoubtedly be a hybrid at best.
Yep. And that's also why SUVs are the way they are - they fit the regulatory definition of "truck" and get different emissions and fuel efficiency rules as a result.
> The cheapest F150 Lightning (available today not in 2025) is $50k (vs $60k for Cybertruck), same 250 mile range but AWD standard, and is a regular pickup truck compatible with standard accessories and parts for doing actual pickup truck work.
I'd like to nitpick "doing actual pickup truck work". The Lightning gets terrible mileage, to the tune of roughly 100 miles on a charge, while hauling which ICE trucks do not unless under immense load [1]. It comes standard at 7,700 lbs towing or if you pay extra 10,000 lbs. At a $50k+ price an F-150 Lightning is not even barely resembling a truck doing truck things.
For context, my Tacoma cost me $32k, has 6-7k lbs towing, and is much more compact. My point is neither the Cybertruck nor the Lightning are capable of doing truck things; they are rich peoples toys - which is fine until it's conflated with why people who use trucks buy them.
I would love to buy an all electric version of my Tacoma or maybe even a Tundra that for ICE price + $10k can do the same hauling and mileage. There is absolutely a market here, but the technology to do so has not showed up yet.
You can't compare an EV pick up and an ICE truck like that, unless you specify what you call 'doing actual pickup truck work'. Plenty of companies don't put more than 100 miles on a truck every day and that means that their workload is a good match for an F150 Lightning even if it is hauling. Landscapers, city fleets and so on tend to move to a spot, stay there all day and then drive back and it's probably possible to charge them on either end of that trip. And they're never going to be further away than 100 miles from their home base.
Nerds need to stop assuming what's best for tradespeople and offering unsolicited advice.
Ultimately the market will decide.
This usually comes up in the context of telling landscapers they should give up their gasoline powered tools and switch to battery; or, my personal favorite, "use rakes".
The tradesmen will decide what is best for themselves, given the proper incentives, and we will adapt.
My friend who’s in landscaping drives a basic F150 with an 8-ft bed. The payload capacity on his truck is less than the base Lightning. Usually he’s bringing a bunch of tools back there, and depending on the job might be carrying plants, mulch etc.
In cases where he has to haul more (eg. clearing out a huge amount of overgrown plants) he might rent a utility trailer to tow. Which the Lightning is also perfectly capable of handling.
For the truly heavy-duty job requiring several yards of rock, he’s going to pay someone with a dump truck to deliver it.
Since all of his clients, suppliers, and the dump are local, he’ll never need to tow anything 100 miles. This is the only edge case where he’d need to wait around at a charger during a job.
If there are used Lightnings for sale at a competitive price when we needs to replace his truck, he might buy one.
It's actually quite hard to exceed the payload capacity of an F150 unless you're hauling bricks, and even then you could probably mostly fill it up.
How easy is it to supercharge a F150 electric while towing a 20 foot trailer? The way I see most Tesla superchargers oriented, it seems like it would be a pain in the ass.
But also, depending on where landscaping jobs take you, you might be well out of range of a supercharger when you need it most. You might need to finish 5 jobs in an afternoon, and make 3 hauls to the dump and two stops at a supply store and then get to the other side of town as quickly as possible or lose a job. A gas car can be refilled in 3 minutes. You can get another 100 miles of range from 5 gallons, which you can even carry with you for emergencies.
Price is also a disqualifier, imo. A battery replacement on a Lightning is $30k and the battery is warrantied for 8 years or 100K miles. How long the batteries last after the warranty expires I think will have a big impact on an already more expensive truck.
The reason I bought a Tacoma was because I have six feet of bed area, ~7k lbs towing, and 4x4. The general utility of the truck meant it could tackle most things I needed to do.
> The way I see most Tesla superchargers oriented, it seems like it would be a pain in the ass.
Most superchargers have one stall oriented so that you can pull in to it (with the charger on the left side of the stall), with the rest of the stalls designed to be backed into.
I disagree. I have a Tacoma that definitely gets treated as a truck. The bed gets filled with stuff, I use the 4x4 every time I go through the Cascades, mountain passes, or washed out roads, and I've hauled closed to the limit with it several times. Would a van do some of those things? Maybe, but certainly not all, nor for the same price point.
The article I linked shows the Lightning gets close to 100 miles per charge when hauling near the limit. My MPG certainly takes a hit, but not that big and my truck is about half the price and size of the Lightning.
None of the CTs are available today, they're all at some unspecified point in 2024.
The cheapest CT is ostensibly available in 2025, but estimates from this company that far out are hilariously worthless.
Prospective customers of the cheapest CT might remember the cheapest Model 3, which the CEO promised to deliver in July, 2017, but actually began delivery in February, 2019.
> same 250 mile range but AWD standard
That "(EST.)" next to the range is doing a lot of work!
Range expectations should be informed by the company's sordid history of rigging the in-car display to inflate range projections, then creating a special "Diversion Team" to cancel customer service appointments related to range issues, regulatory action and fines for misleading advertising about vehicle range, Edmunds finding that Tesla models often fail to meet their advertised ranges, etc.
We have a pipeline being built through our city right now. It's absolutely hilarious for me to see the temporary company parking lot for about 100 vehicles full of mostly pick up trucks because they're actually being shuttled between the construction site and the parking lot in ... buses. This is what I think of when people talk about how they need trucks :)
Well this is sticking your head in the sand about it.
People own trucks because while trucks might not be particularly good at some things, they're also not particularly bad at them. If you need to move large or heavy items occasionally, it's really handy having a truck...and the thing is, it won't be bad at doing car things either.
To the specific example here, you also have the obvious missing part: people are having to drive from home to the parking lot, to catch the bus to the site. The failure is pretty obvious.
Pile onto that that most construction workers generally have to assume that they might need to use the truck for work sometime, and it's an obvious purchase: you can't afford two cars, but you can afford one slightly more expensive one that will be as good at everything you need as a smaller one.
People complain about trucks without even trying to understand where the motivation to own them comes from.
Most Pickup Truck Owners Don’t Actually Do Any Truck Stuff.
> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.
> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.
These types of stats aren't much good without some measure of criticality. Even if you only rarely use the full functionality of a truck, if it's critical those times you do, it's probably worth owning. It's the same logic used to justify car ownership in areas with good public transportation; you're paying for a capability on demand, even if you're not always using it.
Also, not all trucks are good for towing. Pick-ups/utes are notorious for yielding where the cab meets the chassis, right in front of the bed, because they're designed to take a load in the bed, not at the rear of the vehicle. We don't tow with our truck for that very reason.
One thing that happens when you own a truck, you get called on to help friends and family move, or pick up an oversized item. I do this a few times a year. Multiple people benefit from my truck ownership.
U-haul rents pickup trucks for $20 a day plus mileage, and if you want something bigger, they've got it. Your friends and family would get along just fine without your truck ownership.
For sure. Just having one when you own a home is very handy. Being able to just toss long boards or pipes or large pieces of furniture in the back is great. I really only use my truck for truck related stuff (things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to use a sedan or suv for) perhaps 2-3x a month. But that’s enough to justify owning one. I think even if it was only once every 3 months it would still be justified, since it doesn’t get radically worse mileage than a sedan and I don’t otherwise drive much.
Oh, sure, but that’s a hefty premium to pay if you don’t need it frequently - the $20+k extra people pay for commuter trucks would pay for thousands of truck rental hours, and that’s before you factor in the higher operating costs and insurance.
Both SUVs and trucks are heavily promoted by the manufacturers due to their higher margins - convincing Americans to pay 10-20% more margin is literally what saved Detroit around the turn of the century. The average midsize truck hit $42k and full size is over $60k, but the median buyer doesn’t need anything a sub-$30k sedan could do at more than a couple of times a year, if that - we didn’t add millions of contractors in the last couple of years and the best selling configurations are designed for luxury and image, not utility.
> Only 7.0% of truck buyers frequently use their trucks to tow. About 2% of people use their trucks to tow occasionally, while 63% of owners rarely or never tow.
So that's 72% not 100%.
> But at least 28% of owners frequently use their trucks for personal hauling, while 47% of owners occasionally haul. Nearly 32% of owners rarely or never haul personal items.
That accounts for 107% of truck owners.
The rest of the numbers seem to add up well enough though. Not sure if maybe I'm missing something or the author is.
"People complain about trucks without even trying to understand where the motivation to own them comes from."
Agree 100%. I have a Ford Ranger on order, and I am not a construction worker. I've already fielded some "hurr durr what do you need a truck for / it will never be on a construction site" comments.
The thing is, even if I only need the adjustable roof rack for 5m lengths of timber, or the 3.5-ton towing capacity a few times a year, it's worth it for me. The common argument I hear is "just rent a truck when you need it" - do the people saying this have any idea how much of a PITA it is renting a vehicle vs using one you already own?
A viewpoint I frequently see missing is having a truck is fun, especially when I want to go piss around outdoors. Sure a car is technically more useful/efficient day to day but it's not going to get me over sand, mud, or even slightly rough patches of ground on the weekend. I can throw a bunch of stuff in the back and don't really have to think if it'll all fit.
Construction and hauling aren't the only uses for a truck and without my Ranger my numerous moves would have been significantly more involved and annoying. Plus for road trips having the extra space over a car is more comfortable with the added benefit of the bed, which carries way more than a trunk.
I think the HN folks tend to forget about how spread out the US is and how many people drive for trips. Or maybe they've just forgot how to have fun.
Btw the Ranger is great.
I think this really depends on the mirrors tbh. I run a small fleet of three work trucks. 2010 Ford Ranger, 2020 F-250, 2022 F-150. Out of any of them the F-250 is the easiest to park, all due to the towing mirror/ low convex tear drop mirror. Ridiculously easy to park given its size.
Any of these vehicles is easier to park (parallel especially) than my 2007 Acura TL personal vehicle. Good mirror design goes a long way.
I want to preface this by stating that I am sure your comment wasn't directly directed at me even to it was a reply to mine but I wanted to share:
I drive a unibody suv with full time four wheel drive. It drives like a truck and has many of the same benefits and many of the drawbacks. It's a lexus gx470 if that helps. I have given trucks careful consideration and often observe how people use them when they are driven around loaded and unloaded in the city and on the highway. My brother owns a huge ram truck which I have driven. I am also a homeowner who has made more trips to the hardware store than I would like, including buying/replacing appliances, water heater, flooring, hauling heavy lumber to build a 100 foot fence using large ten foot 6x6 posts, installing sod, and so on. I have moved across country and back and up and down the state. So maybe there are people who complain without trying to understand, but I was not complaining, nor do I lack understanding.
But I think truck culture and ego is a very real thing and when someone jacks up their truck so they now need a step to get in and out, it ruins it. There are other modifications that also ruin its utility and that is some of what I had in mind when I made my comment about ego. Also, one can see in another comment here I compare and contrast truck ownership with van ownership.
Man, this comment got rather lengthy and if anyone actually read up to this point, appreciate it. Not hostile in any way, I just find the discussion around transportation very interesting as I grew up as a car enthusiast and I find myself always looking at optimization problems and trying to come up with improvements.
> Odd for me all my friends who farm or do construction own either the F150 or the equivalent dodge RAM truck.
From what I've seen at local lumber yards, new F150s and Rams are the trucks that the boss usually drives, not the workers who are actually picking up the material. They are buying and driving cheapest truck that gets the job done. It's an F-150, it's an older one. A lot of Toyota Tacomas though.
> Now I’m in Canada, perhaps you’re European?
I'm in the US.
> The other trucks either don’t have cabs big enough to fit multiple workers or fit full sheets of drywall.
Large sheet goods either go on the lumber rack or if it's enough, is delivered on a delivery truck. Usually not in the bed. That's for tools, bags of material, etc.
> Everyone I know doing construction/trade work tends to drive much smaller pickups.
Smaller than an F150? Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area where there's more money being thrown around but trucks of that size and larger seem to be common for trade workers.
And a number of construction jobs in our house were performed by a gentleman who arrived with a Vespa unless he specifically had to transport something sizeable.
I see big RAM trucks show up increasingly more often in Amsterdam. 10 years ago there was just 1, and this week I think I spotted the 4th in my neighbourhood.
Yes, it's a ridiculous development. Those cars have absolutely no business in the inner city, they're bloody dangerous and much too large for compatibility with the roads. And that's before we get into parking issues. PC Hooft tractors...
No, they've got a point. These are simply not compatible with the old town and that's exactly where they go with them. You have to imagine a city that was made for something the size of a small horse drawn carriage where you take these massive vehicles. It's tight enough with normal cars, this is well across what's feasible in practice.
I live in the greater Detroit area and I pretty much only see contractors driving 1) their own HD truck (F250/ Chevy 2500 or bigger) 2) a big panel van with shelving for e.g. plumbing parts or 3) the company provided Ford Transit Connect or similar. Nobody is driving their own relatively recent Colorado/Ranger/Tacoma, and even those are bigger than the 1984 Ranger I drove in high school. A lot of it comes down to what vehicle can legally/safely tow a dump trailer with a mini excavator on it for sewer/electrical running underground or the relatively lower maintenance requirement for a big truck diesel engine.
Yeah what a weird comment from GP. The refrain that no one needs a full-size truck, that they're mall crawlers or compensation for undersized you-know-what is common on this site but I've never seen it taken to the level that "trades workers largely don't drive full sized trucks, actually".
Most trades workers don't need full-sized pickup trucks. They do need an 8 foot bed. An amazing number of full-sized pickups come with 6.5 foot beds by default, and cost extra for the 8 foot. They won't put 2 tons of gravel in there; they will put plywood sheets and lumber and power tools; boxes of nails and air compressors; the toolbox that they always want, the toolbox for this job, and the toolbox with backup tools that you lend to the guy who 'forgot' stuff. (Not the guy who 'loses' stuff.) None of that needs the big V8.
If you've got a 4 seat cab, you'll be asked to take a couple people out to the other site, but if you've got a 2 seater, maybe you don't get asked.
Four wheel drive and big wheels mean bad fuel economy. If you need them, there's something wrong because the mud is supposed to go on your boots, not your wheels. Your pickup is not an earthmover or a wrecker. One exception: if you've got a really big truck, you might get wintertime snow-plow jobs. They really aren't fun.
I think most trades would be better served by a van rather than a pickup truck. Ingress and egress is much easier. It is also easier to load and drive due to lower center of gravity. Expensive tools are out of the elements and generally safer (and so less risk of tools and material making their way onto the highway). Plus, better drag coefficient and so better efficiency. Finally, a roof rack allows for those items you mentioned like sheetrock and plywood, ladders and pipes.
The biggest problem I see is most of these men have an ego that would never allow them to buy and drive a van.
All but one of the contractors I’ve had working on my house over the last few years used vans: holds more and your stuff doesn’t get rained on or stolen.
The one exception was the HVAC guy who had an old 90s-size pickup, which he liked due to the better mileage. He needed to fit bulky stuff, not massively heavy things.
The independent plumber I use when something goes wrong with the pipes drives a GMC Savana van. He's really good; close to retirement age and very methodical and thorough and his prices are reasonable. The electrician I use also drives some sort of van. I've had a few other contractors out for different projects around the house and I'm starting to notice a correlation: the ones in the giant lifted pickup trucks are unreliable and overpriced; the ones who drive vans are the best.
My electrical contractor relative just bought a Metris over a Maverick because of storage space and interior shelving. This is extremely common. People who work outdoors usually prefer pickups because they have larger equipment and materials, and more varied terrain
Yup, my dad worked as an electrician with an ISP for some years, and he had a van. Think it was a Ford Transit that was fitted with drawers and cabinets for tools and parts. It was literally a workshop on wheels. All the tools and parts you could imaginable need.
Something like a Ram ProMaster van is rated for 6-7000 lbs towing capacity, which may not sound like much compared to pickups that primarily compete on the basis of that particular specification, but it's still definitely enough to be useful.
There are three specs that matter. (4wd matters in the hills, since it is surprisingly easy to get stuck on pavement/gravel when going uphill under load, but that is orthogonal).
The three things are bed capacity, max bed weight load, and towing capacity.
Weight in bed can matter, but once you’re above a few thousand pounds, you need to consider getting a dump trailer. Max carrying load matters more for conversions (e.g. to ambulances, adding toolboxes, etc). Towing matters for moving lots of weight.
In the cheap 150/1500 ICE class, Ford wins these days on bed capacity (3000lbs), due to having aluminum frames. Ram wins at towing capacity (10,000lbs).
As much as I like dunking the cybertruck for its impractical bed and Musk’s shenanigans, it can tow 14,000lbs, making it best in class for quarter ton trucks (assuming you count it in the same class as the ford F150 lightning).
So, I’d like one for driving to and from our local rockery, except that using it for that will beat it to hell, and a used truck + nice EV sedan will cost less, be more fun to drive, and win on total CO2 emissions. The sedan uses much less electricity than the cybertruck, and would be driven many more miles than the truck. I’d only put a few tanks of diesel into the truck per year.
Eventually, the grid will be more decarbonized, and batteries won’t be scarce. At that point, the cybertruck would probably be a better choice for me.
Source: We bought a 1500 truck that is slightly too small for our use cases.
Most full-sized trucks come with beds smaller than 6.5ft, that doesn't change the fact that most trades people drive full-sized trucks.
Four wheel drive is more necessary in specific climates (before the snow tire scolds come in, I run snow tires in the winter) and because an unloaded truck has a light rear end. Many trucks with 4wd can switch between 4wd and RWD. My truck has RWD, 4A (4 auto, aka AWD-ish), 4 high and 4 low as an option. I drive mostly in RWD unless I need power to all wheels for traction in snow and ice or when I am accelerating quickly off an incline (think uphill a dirt road onto blacktop where you have a blind corner) and then I drive in in 4A. I have needed 4 high and 4 low a handful of times. I have a "big v8" and get 21-22 MPG on the highway in RWD and and 18 or so around town. I drive heavy all-terain tires or my MPG would be better.
I've lived up North in Canada and very much liked the F150, even if it was not exactly quality material it did the job and never got stuck no matter how bad the weather got. We built a house with it and it did double duty as farm truck. I don't think there was another vehicle even close in price to that one that would have done the same job. I'd have been just as happy with a smaller engine though, a V6 would have been plenty. Except that one time when I pulled a full size semi out of ditch (that did require some extra weight in the bed). They are pretty versatile workhorses and for that area they're a good match. The only people that should drive them around cities are contractors and landscapers, guys in suits driving big pickups have other issues.
If you're running a profitable business, a few extra hundred dollars a month won't make much of a dent in your profits. OTOH, a larger, more comfortable vehicle is important when it's basically your "office."
M1 MacBook Airs are solid and it's my daily driver as a programmer. But I also drive an F350 King Ranch Super Duty (I tow a 20k pound fifth wheel with it that I live in full time) so go figure.
I'd bet good money the average Ford Ranger/Maverick hauls more than the average F-150 today
> How many programmers do you see with MacBook Airs
The people working on some of the most complex projects of our times rely on compute that isn't available in a laptop, so they're perfectly fine taking an Air. I personally used an M1 Air for a couple of years.
I'd take that bet. The Ranger isn't manufactured anymore (edit: yes it is; can't recall having seen one though) and I've never seen a Maverick used commercially. I don't think I've even seen one that didn't look freshly washed.
I mean, this isn't even hard to figure out: the F-150 is the best selling vehicle (not truck, but vehicle) in the U.S. for what, a decade or more?
For people who want some towing, some cargo, and good mileage. I've seen a couple landscapers using them. If you're towing a single mower and some trimmers/blowers, it's a good deal, and you can still take it into town and not look like an idiot.
> I'd bet good money the average Ford Ranger/Maverick hauls more than the average F-150 today
The Maverick can tow 4,000 lbs - which is pretty prohibitive with a small bed and the weight of a trailer. You're better off getting a modern Tacoma, of which there is an entire subreddit of people who will gleefully show you they too can haul.
Yeah, I live in Iowa and F150/Dodge Ram is the baseline for anybody working construction or farm jobs. My brother-in-law and my uncle both separately run their own construction companies; one drives an F250, the other drives a some kind of diesel Ram. They both use them to haul their trailers full of materials/tools and machines around to job sites. My father’s a farmer/mechanic and drives an older Silverado.
I have a 20 year old Ranger that has been through 20 northeast winters. It's showing its age but no unibody vehicle can match it for long term durability.
FWIW you live on an island with a fraction of the population, and industry of the U.S and a very different geography and urban landscape. Could you haul anything 1000 miles if you even wanted to? Would there be any practical point to point travel where that was necessary without needing to transfer to a boat first? Because in the U.S. there's hundreds, maybe even thousands of trade routes that long.
We don't actually know what the Cyberjoke's range will be. Given Tesla's history with range claims, there's no reason to trust the numbers on that website.
oh common, that is clearly another social media vs Twitter fight. It's not Tesla place the range. It's EPA range.
Just read the article:
>Tesla vehicles failed to accurately account for external factors impacting battery performance and vehicle range, leading to a gross overestimate of the vehicle's range.
So, Karens want tesla to account for a/c temperature preferences, rain, wind, snow on the road, and other factors. No other manufacturers do so.
You have an EPA range, and if you decide to speed 85 m/h while having a 10% charge, you will dramatically lose your range. It's the same with any car.
>Testing is done at EPA's NVFEL facility and by vehicle manufacturers at their own facilities. EPA audits the data provided by vehicle manufacturers and performs its own testing on some of the vehicles to confirm the results.
The only reason it is "estimated", they didn't finish EPA testing yet.
> that is clearly another social media vs Twitter fight.
What?
> So, Karens want tesla to account for...
Tesla customers. People who paid $50,000+ for the privilege of owning a Tesla. Being dissatisfied with the performance of the car makes them "Karens"? Gee, I hope you guys remembered to formally excommunicate them from the Church of Musk.
Edit: Ah, I think I see the problem. Have you considered that the range is really important for a vehicle that can only be "refueled" either at home or at a handful of proprietary charging stations? Having a bad range estimate could really fuck up a road trip, especially before the charging network was built out to a reasonable density.
Nobody who's paid 50k for a car wants to limp to the next charger at 45 MPH with the windows rolled down (or worse, run out of power) because the manufacturer couldn't (or didn't want to) make a realistic range estimate.
How do I mute/block trolls on this website? The FAQ didn't provide any info. These pro oil trolls, which show up on every EV thread, don't provide any value.
AWD is much less important on a truck than most people think. I spent my youth driving my family’s farm trucks around in the mud and driving large cattle trailers to auctions. No one in my family could afford a 4WD, but there was maybe one or two times ever that I felt like I needed it. Mostly it’s just huge cost and a large amount of weight and fuel economy lost for rural people to signal their high status.
I won't deny it can be useful, but it's still not needed. I grew up in Wisconsin (which certainly qualifies as real winters) and you can get by just fine in the winter without 4x4. The biggest problem by far in the winter isn't traction, it's being able to stop when you need to stop. AWD doesn't help with that at all.
The traction control is also significantly better on EVs because you have much quicker response times. I've made it up to ski fields in a RWD Tesla Model 3 with summer tires easily.
You are crazy. Most pickups absolutely need AWD. A little bit of rain and a RWD pick up is sliding all over the place unless you put a ton of shit in the bed.
When you say "we need" do you mean... "you want to see" ? The highest selling vehicles are trucks and so the company that makes the best selling car wants in. Seems logical and good for the industry
The initial Cybertruck announcement had the three trim levels priced at $39,990, $49,990, and $69,990. This is a price increase of between $21k and $30k, across the board. The original top-level $69,990 trim also advertised a 500-mile range, which is now down to 320 miles. Were they just making shit up? If I had put a deposit down back in 2019 I'd be pretty upset.
Edit: I just looked and Musk himself has stated that there have been over 1 million preorders/deposits for this vehicle. So they collected at least $100MM of customer money based on completely made up pricing/specs. WTF.
> So they collected at least $100MM of customer money based on completely made up pricing/specs. WTF.
Correct and correct. And not every manufacturer does this, by the way. The price/specs of the EV I pre-ordered (Volkswagen) did not change much by the time I purchased it.
I'll elaborate more: yes, because with a million plus deposits at such a low absolute dollar amount, certainly a significant portion of those are going to cancel. The ~15-25% of cumulative interest, while probably not that meaningful to each individual reservation holder, will add up in aggregate, and will hopefully act to disincentivize Tesla from making false claims about its future products again.
I'd be extra pleased if the FTC issued a fine in conjunction with the above, for false advertising.
Yeah I agree. But there are a large number of people (I think 100k+) who put down a deposit between 2019 and today. I realize it's refundable but it's still a slimy thing to do.
Inflation adjusted that $35k would be over $43k nowadays so it's actually quite a lot cheaper than promised. And it comes with many features included like Autopilot, which I think was a $3k option back then.
Everyone made fun of me for having one, but it was the perfect city car. Great turning radius & it fit basically anywhere. And the plastic body meant that if someone opened their door into you, it just bounced off instead of leaving a dent.
It's a shame they never made any significant improvements on the range. After degradation, the range on the i3 ends up pretty abysmal. The REx was a fun idea too and even let me take the car on multi-hundred mile road trips, without recharging, after coding the REx to one of the buttons in the car.
yeah, I wonder where it would be if they'd continue to put development money on the drivetrain and battery tech. It just seemed they left the concept behind despite growing sales numbers, and moved towards 6000 lb SUV EVs...
>Of course, most of the buyers of either the Cybertruck or the F150 Lightning probably aren't getting much dirt under their fingernails
anecdotally, the lighting seems to be a pretty popular work truck. maybe not with independent tradespeople, but i've seen quite a few recently across BC and alberta in municipal government fleets. Parks Canada has a bunch, and BC ferries is using them to drive around their terminals. I'm assuming it's part of some government madate to electrify their fleets.
> The cheapest F150 Lightning (available today not in 2025) is $50k
FWIW, I just checked, and I can't find any Lightning base models for sale in my metro area. Are these actually available or is it just marketing? That kind of thing is routine in the auto industry, where dealers never seem to have the base model in stock ("But for just a little bit more, see what you get!").
Whether or not the weird-looking space truck succeeds or fails is yet to be seen, but I really don't think it will be on price. These numbers look very competitive to me. Tesla is slightly more expensive at the low end, but likely makes up for it with the supercharger network. Probably the make/break item is going to be the body styling, which we all suspected.
What you see listed and what the dealer will actually give it to you for are not necessarily the same thing, infamously so in the case of in-demand models like this.
I think probably it's a disjoint group, or at least a disjoint set of circumstances. What the dealers are complaining about are the rules phasing in about what % of your sales need to be EVs. There are some successes, like the F-150, but there are also a ton of terrible legacy manufacturer EVs that nobody wants to buy that are kinda just sitting around. If Ford and the other carmakers could make vehicles as popular as the F-150 in quantity, I don't think the dealers would care.
I heard similar grumbles from Hyundai dealers around San Jose, CA, re: the Ioniq 5, and that model got a lot of accolades and is frequently recommended as an alternative to the Tesla Model Y for its category. I'm not sure what's going on is strictly a legacy model desirability issue.
It might be a "legacy dealers can't sell even good EVs because they don't know enough about them" issue though. Really hard to say, but that definitely would match my personal experience talking to a number of them.
> If Ford and the other carmakers could make vehicles as popular as the F-150 in quantity, I don't think the dealers would care.
They can make smaller EVs that are more popular than the larger and more luxurious vehicles, but they can't sell them as profitably as the larger vehicles.
I dont understand, there are millions of 5 door hatchback evs being sold at the moment, from all different manufacturers, its the most popular form factor for evs by far.
This really excites me. I had 2 Cybertruck reservations, I cancelled them and ordered an Aptera. I think this is what we really need: smaller car with efficiency in mind.
Those things are the Duke Nukem Forever of electric cars. I remember them taking reservations back in the 00s. I love the idea but I have no idea how the company still exists as they haven't delivered anything in almost two decades.
It was tough to find (it's odd that Ford is so subtle about this) but it is listed here: https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/models/f150-... ("dual electric motors, one for each axle"). They were so busy 'materializing' their specs pages they forgot to mention this feature anywhere afaict - I had to search on their site to find the above page.
Thank you. 4x4 is also a "preference" checkbox on the quote tool, which makes me think it is not standard, and it calls out RWD drive all on the models on the main page (but in a vague way where it's not even clear that 4x4 is available).
I've got an R1T and am considering an S as well - feeling really good about the purchase after these numbers dropped. Wonderful truck, with the exception of occasionally unreliable infrastructure :shrug:
I don’t think the perspective of selling product X should be judged in a vacuum because it can do things like subsidize battery costs.
For video cards they got to the point where average consumers could buy them and then that started the road to accelerator cards. Saying that people shouldn’t buy something is naive and disingenuous. People will buy things regardless of anything else.
Of course, most of the buyers of either the Cybertruck or the F150 Lightning probably aren't getting much dirt under their fingernails. Everyone I know doing construction/trade work tends to drive much smaller pickups.
We need a lot more Chevy Bolts and electric buses, and a smaller electric pickup truck with 2 doors, but instead this is what we will get due to the cultural moment we are at, and because of who has the money to spend on new vehicles today.