I’m sure most people have heard Elon Musk’s name by now. The founder and CEO of Tesla is known for his pie-in-the-sky ideas and forward thinking (the hyperloop, SpaceX, and Mars colonization, are just a few examples). Now he’s pitching the idea of an electric pickup truck that could compete in power with diesel trucks (or so he claims).
After the company unveiled an electric semi truck in November, Musk was asked on Twitter to make an electric pickup truck next. “I promise that we will make a pickup truck right after Model Y,” was his response.
The model Y is an SUV-style crossover that will be based on the same architecture as the company’s current Model 3. Continuing, Musk added, “Have had the core design/engineering elements in my mind for almost 5 years. Am dying to build it.” In follow-up questions, he remarked that the pickup would be similar to an F150, while adding, “Maybe slightly bigger to account for a really gamechanging (I think) feature I'd like to add.”
So what do you think? Can an electric vehicle really compete power-wise with a diesel pickup? Or is this all just a bunch of nonsense? Either way, we won’t find out for a while—the electric semi isn’t due until 2019, so any theoretical pickup would have to wait until after that. By then, we might already be living on Mars.
For a little bit of a deeper dive, check out this video from the Autoline Network. (Relevant bit starts at 1:18.)