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by freehunter 2685 days ago
You're conflating need with desire... and you're also wrong.

Not everyone who drives a pickup needs a pickup. That's pretty apparent by the fact that the F-150 is the highest selling vehicle in the US while less than 20% of Americans live in rural areas. Plenty of people buy pickup trucks and also live in the city. Even living in the countryside, most people in rural areas don't need (or even own) pickup trucks.

And pickup trucks aren't just useful for farm work. I'd wager that most of the pickup trucks sold in the US are for commercial use. Plumbers, construction workers, contractors, lawn care/snowplows. These people tend to live and work in cities, and they buy pickup trucks. And what's important for a truck? Torque. What do electric motors have? Lots of torque. For businesses buying pickup trucks for work, they don't need range or lots of chargers. They just need to get to the job site, park, then go back to the office at the end of the day to charge it.

That's also ignoring the millions of people who buy pickup trucks as daily commuter vehicles, who have the normal daily commute of 20 miles. Well within the range of even the worst electric car in the US. Pickup trucks are a status symbol for these people, not a work vehicle. An electric pickup is an even greater status symbol.

1 comments

> Plumbers, construction workers, contractors, lawn care/snowplows.

You say an electric pickup truck is a great status symbol, but I doubt it is to the majority of people in those professions you just mentioned. The people who view pickup trucks as a status symbol want massive and loud ones. Electric cars are very light, and very quiet.

>The people who view pickup trucks as a status symbol want massive and loud ones.

Sometimes, but not always. The F-150 Platinum is neither massive nor loud but it costs $60,000. The base price of an F-150 is around $28,000, so the Platinum is status symbol of wealth and comfort.

If the F-150 can be used both by construction workers looking for something basic and cheap as well as rich people looking for a luxury car, I don't see that changing just because you swapped the V6 for an electric motor.