Behold the Toyota Hilux [1], a truck so reliable that it is the truck of choice in many developed nations and even less developed ones. It's so cheap and reliable it became the platform for a war [2]. It also has a truck bed equivalent to a Ford F150, a vehicle significantly larger. But you can't buy a new Hilux or equivalent in the US because cars younger than 25 years cannot legally be imported [3] (to stop grey imports on Mercedes in the 1980s, originally) and because of CAFE standards [4].

Electric vehicles obviously don't have the hurdle of meeting emissions standards so Tesla, or any other company really, had (and has) the opportunity to create a small, cheap, mass market utility truck that no gas-powered vehicle can compete with. This is what the Cybertruck should've been.

There have been breakdowns of the Cybertruck and it is such an incredibly bad design. Things like the weight of stainless steel panels but with an aluminum frame. Why is that a problem? Because aluminum is prone to catastrophic failure with the up and down motion of towing a heavy load than stainless steel simply isn't [5].

The rumor has been that the only thing propping up Cybertruck demand is Elon forcing his own companies like SpaceX to buy them [6]. Other than that, the Cybertruck became a weird political statement [7]. Those people are getting crucified on resale. It's even a trend on Tiktok and elsewhere to watch these trade in videos. People who paid $150k+ are getting <$70k less than 2 years later.

Anyway, I'm shocked no US manufacturer is tackling the EV small utility truck market. Yes there was the F150 Lightning but it's still too big (and thus expensive).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

[3]: https://www.octane-magazine.com/articles/features/usa-25-yea...

[4]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-how-regulations-accident...

[5]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nZcb9TTyneFbxiDav/the-giga-p...

[6]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-16/tesla-lea...

[7]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/12/tesla-...