TELO Electric Truck: A Compact Pickup Promises Big Utility
TELO gave us an exclusive look at a pre-production version of its tiny electric truck. The company plans to start shipping the first units about a year from now.
We first learned about TELO in 2023 when it announced plans to build an electric truck the size of a Mini Cooper, but with a bed similar in size to a Hummer’s. It sounded impossible, but the truth is that vehicle designs often waste space. Automakers, especially in the pickup truck market, consider a massive front hood an essential design element. TELO has taken a different tack, focusing on a truck with maximum utility and a minimal footprint. The company says the truck will offer utility on par with mid-size pickups like the Toyota Tacoma, but in a package only 152 inches long (for comparison, small Japanese kei cars have a maximum length of 134 inches).
Now, less than two years later, TELO has built its first full, driveable pre-production vehicle. We were invited to see it up close and take it for a ride. Previously, TELO had only produced a design mule and a go-kart-like chassis. However, the new vehicle looks like a real car and incorporates recent design and aerodynamic changes implemented after the truck received its configurator and $41,000 base price.
Design changes are primarily aerodynamic, including a more rounded roofline and a repositioned “pill” design element near the front wheel well. This element now helps direct airflow around the exposed front wheel. This reduces turbulence. TELO says it significantly improved aerodynamics by using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) aerodynamic optimization software, saving on expensive wind tunnel time.
We also got a first peek at some previously unseen features, such as the mid-gate. The bed is typically 62 inches long and 49 inches wide between the wheel arches, allowing for a standard sheet of plywood. Folding down the rear seats extends the bed’s length further. L-tracks run along the bed’s perimeter for easy gear tie-down. The native NACS port is located under the driver’s side taillight.
It’s worth noting that plenty of truck prototypes have promised a mid-gate, only for the feature to disappear in the production version. So, we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
And take this into consideration: the Telo’s bed is six inches longer than a Rivian R1T’s and the same size as a Hummer EV’s, though the Telo has a much smaller overall footprint.
Another neat storage feature is reminiscent of Rivian’s “gear tunnel.” This long, lockable storage space is located under the bed and passenger compartment and is handy for storing dirty gear that you don’t want inside the cab (but don’t want to leave in the bed). TELO has a similar, but smaller, space that it calls the “monster tunnel.” It’s under the bed – get it?
On the interior, space is at a premium, but there is adequate room for average-sized people and even some that are not so average. One journalist in attendance, who was 6’10”, confirmed that he fit fine. Both front and rear seats have plenty of headroom and legroom, thanks to the floating seat design, which allows rear seat passengers to put their feet under the front seats. Knee room might be a limitation, especially when entering the rear seats, as the door aperture is taller and more narrow than most. The driver’s seat could also use a bit more knee room, though we didn’t adjust the seats or steering wheel during our ride, so this may be a solvable issue. And although we didn’t spend a great deal of time inside the truck, the Telo felt no less comfortable than other working vehicles we’ve tried, like step vans and box trucks, despite its smaller overall size.
The cockpit area includes a wide center touchscreen and several gauges in front of the driver. However, none of these features were finalized. For instance, after seeing the vehicle again a couple of days later, a physical knob had been added to the touchscreen, which wasn’t present before. Some screens were static, while others could be remotely controlled, but the touchscreen wasn’t yet functional.
Then, I had the opportunity to be the first journalist to take a ride in the pre-production TELO vehicle. It was just a quick trip around the block in an industrial area, but it proved the truck is more than just a design project.
TELO says the truck will be available with either a 300-horsepower single-motor or a 500-horsepower dual-motor configuration. The truck we rode in had two motors, but they were limited to 40% power at the time. The truck moved around just fine, but the ride was nothing exceptional. The next question is whether a tiny truck needs 500 horsepower in the first place, though we’ll have to wait to find out. It might have to wait until we are able to do payload and towing tests.
TELO claims a payload capacity of 1,600 pounds and a towing capacity of 6,600 pounds. And the first test drive took place in… Los Angeles.
TELO is also considering an off-road package, the truck’s approach angle is nearly 90 degrees, given that the front tires are positioned at the very edge of the vehicle.
And here’s a demonstration of the beautiful quiet of electric mobility before any noisy gimmicks are added:
The truck’s small size meant I didn’t have to step back or zoom out to get the whole thing in frame.
Despite its compact size, the truck weighs in at 4,400 pounds regardless of the battery option. (The larger option uses newer, denser cells to store more energy without increasing weight significantly.) Even so, it is thousands of pounds lighter than other electric trucks (approximately 6,000-7,000 pounds), though it weighs substantially more than the Mini SE (about 3,200 pounds), and close to the weight of the Toyota Tacoma (around 4,500 pounds), which TELO uses for comparison.
Speaking of the comparison, the TELO truck is five feet shorter than the “compact” Toyota Tacoma or four feet shorter than the Ford Maverick, not to mention other enormous vehicles on the road in the US.
TELO also compares the truck to a Mini Cooper SE and a full-size RAM 2500 pickup. This really highlights how much space we’ve given up for something that provides little additional utility (that you likely won’t utilize). And consider how many lives are being affected by the pedestrian-killing front ends of these larger vehicles.
The US desperately needs more small vehicles. Trucks and SUVs keep getting bigger, and automakers are pushing an increasing number of people into them. Meanwhile, emissions and pedestrian deaths continue to rise. The US needs a company that will actually try to sell small vehicles instead of ignoring their existence and steering consumers toward larger ones. We at Electrek are quite enthusiastic about what the TELO truck represents: the advent of a reasonably sized utility vehicle. They are available in Europe and Japan, but this would be the first available in the US, or at least in a very long time.
TELO presents a compelling argument: a vehicle designed for capability that is easy to park, doesn’t require an excessive amount of resources to manufacture, and doesn’t contribute to the ever-increasing number of pedestrian fatalities caused by large vehicles. If you sometimes need a truck for truck-like tasks, but otherwise require an efficient vehicle that fits into tight spots, this seems like a good option.
TELO has multiple modular configurations in mind, including a “mini-SUV,” and potentially a third row in the bed, assuming it can secure homologation. TELO’s $41,000 base price (before incentives) and 260-mile range compare favorably to the Ford E-Transit, the most popular commercial EV. The E-Transit has an 89kWh battery, a 159-mile range, and a base price of $51,000 (which is now the same as the gas version). While that is a much larger vehicle, this could be a great option for a company that does not need much space but still wants to perform intra-city deliveries or trade work, for instance.
Overall, despite TELO being relatively young as a company (with only 11 employees to date), it has produced a well-built vehicle, at least based on the few minutes we had to ride in it. It represents an important milestone, given that TELO aims to begin shipping its first vehicles by the end of this year (although that date might be slipping, with the company recently saying “2026” – the beginning or the end of the year). That is a tight timeline, though it only expects a small initial batch and will use contract manufacturing to keep startup costs low.
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