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dave@dthompson@toot.cat (2026-07-05 02:51:11)
Been going down a bit of a kei truck rabbit hole and wishing you could buy something in that form factor but electric in the US. I don't know why the only 2 (as far as I know) electric mini trucks in development in the US are not fully embracing the kei truck design and capitalizing on the trend with is part aesthetics and part practicality.

The Slate has a classic US truck shape which wastes space in the front and thus it only has a 5' bed despite only having a 2 seater cab. Worse, the bed width is only 42" so you cannot easily fit a standard 8x4 sheet of plywood which seems like an obvious use case to support if the truck is intended to actually be used as a truck.

Then there's the Telo MT1 which has more of a kei truck shape. Their marketing materials explicitly say it can fit a sheet of plywood, however that requires some removable partition to increase the bed length because they chose a 5 seat cab. Feels more like truck cosplay than a practical vehicle.

---Replies---

ocdtrekkie@ocdtrekkie@mastodon.social (2026-07-05 03:11:32)
@dthompson Either would probably be satisfactory for my needs, the Telo sounds nice because I *normally* do not need to move a full sheet of plywood, but... you know, stuff happens. (In my case, it's a sheet of drywall, usually.)

The biggest thing for me is that I have had my car for well over a decade now because it's reliable and easily serviceable by almost anyone. I'm really hoping by the time I have to replace my RAV4 that either of these companies has a reputation built up.