REO Trucks I4 4WD Pickup Truck Starts at $21,500
reotrucks.com
reotrucks.com
I don't think 25$ reservation slots are going to pay for a full assembly line.
https://rebuildmanufacturing.com/work/slate/
The fact these guys are still trying to find manufacturing partners and suppliers is killing me when Slate's got Tier-1s (Vitro) already lined up cranking out windshields in Mexico for them (among the rest of the f*cking owl that is the truck coming together here in the US ;) )
"In 1986, Packard Bell was the name of a defunct manufacturer of TVs and radios. Founded in 1926 or 1933 depending on how you count it, it survived until 1968 when it sold out to Teledyne.
In the 1980s the brand still had some name recognition on its own. But look at the other names it resembled: Pacific Bell, the telephone company. Hewlett Packard, the computer company. Packard, the defunct maker of luxury cars.
It sounded like an old-line company making quality products, which was what Beny Alagem counted on. He even put the slogan “America grew up listening to us. It still does,” on its early marketing literature.
People always confused them for something they weren’t, and for a time, it helped. “I don’t know about other brands,” one customer said to me when I was selling computers in 1994, pointing at Compaq and Dell. “But Packard Bell, that’s an old company.” Even my coworkers routinely thought Packard Bell was related to HP or to Packard, the car maker."
Or my preferred expression: "Bullshit."
Slate at least is far enough along that someone got to drive the prototype.[1]
(Amusingly, Google pairs that video with an ad, "Freedom is Loud", for a Stellantis truck product.)
> Right to Repair Every panel off in under five minutes with common tools. Plain-English diagnostics on a $30 scanner. A 20-year public parts catalog at fair prices. No parts-pairing — in writing.
I'm very excited about this and pray it is successful.
The economics of the industry are built around the preferences of consumers. The lower end doesn’t look like this, which isn’t encouraging, but maybe there’s room for it.
- the Slate's range is now 205 miles across the board, not 150/240
- both the REO and Slate start as 2-door 2-seaters with pricier models adding capacity, but the chart boasts the REO seats "up to 6" while the Slate seats "2 (5 costs extra)"
- for repair costs, the REO just says "mechanical - affordable" (?) while labeling the Slate as "battery pack - $$$$". But an electric powertrain is far simpler and requires virtually no maintenance for 100,000+ miles, while an ICE engine requires regular oil changes, brake pads, timing belts, transmission work, etc.
- completely skips the cost of fuel over electric charging; between that and maintenance, the TCO of the REO is significantly higher
I have a 300k Ford F250 gas that also hasnt had anything done basically.
And while for trucks the electric vs gas is huge, my Chevy Volt costs per mile about the same to operate on gas vs electric, because electricity is $0.46 a kwh in my California region.
https://www.energy.gov/cmei/vehicles/articles/fotw-1190-june...
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/electric-...
On electricity costs, California is an outlier---most people in the US pay less than half that $0.46/kwh, more like $0.15-0.20/kwh.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
So for most people in the US, an EV will cost half what an ICE vehicle costs to operate.
For you.
Here in Canada gas is 4.90 USD /gal. (Diesel is 5.45)
Electricity is 0.093 USD / kWh. And it’s all from hydro.
Literally every tradesman in town has an F150 lightning because for fuel alone it’s about 1/4 the cost of any gas or diesel pickup. No oil changes just increase the savings.
I’m in a very snowy mountain town and EVs are booming. It will go insane when BYD etc are here any day.
I thought ford killed the lightning because it didn't sell?
It sold like hot cakes.
Their new smaller EV pickup is designed and built by a bunch of ex-Tesla folks to try and build it inexpensively so they can turn a profit. It’s the model Y of 5 years ago.
Well as a Maverick person, I'll say the following as far as 'hmm' about the chart.
For starters, You get it either in a Turbo 2.0 or Hybrid 2.5. The Hybrid 2.5 is an old but very proven design, no direct injection [0]. Also the Hybrid transmission is far simpler than most modern automatics/DCTs.
The Max spec towing Capacity is indeed 4K (with the tow package, which also requires AWD,) however it is uncertain whether an extra 500 pounds would make or break things; Keep in mind that Ford also wants to keep selling 'bigger' trucks like the Ranger [1].
But as far as listing the Hybrid battery as a 'Big Ticket Item' I can't help but chuckle. It's a paltry 1.1Kwh. As far as everyone can tell, as a car part of course it's way more expensive than just buying a home backup battery with that capacity, but at current prices replacement with labor is estimated around 3K and that's still way cheaper than a Transmission or an engine.
-----
All of that said, I think this is definitely trying to hit a certain market, and if it actually launches, and the Engine/Transmission choices are reasonable, that this would be a disruptor, but not necessarily for the consumer market.
This seems to be more targeting the fairly neglected 'low-end' of the commercial truck segment. Specifically the 2 door with "Drop-side flatbed"; IOW the sides drop down.
It's a body on frame; the challenge with the Maverick as a 'Fleet vehicle' is that they are Unibody and total out very easily. Versus with BOF trucks, I once worked at a place where the auto body shop we used was owned by my company's owners... made it cheap to keep things running I guess.
A lot of fleets unfortunately would not find 205 miles a safe enough range for their usages; That's almost certainly why they are doing this 25 gallon tank to get to 600 miles of range.
> transmission work
Eh, If I did get one I'd get the MT. Which I think is the closest to where this is targeting a 'niche consumer'. The "I want a cheap MT truck, I don't want a silly Rotary dial to pick a gear[2]". They are advertising it's 'repairability'; which again seems to be language targeting farmers sick of being locked out, but also the kinds of people who really don't mind doing that stuff.
But again, They are claiming a long powertrain lifetime.
---
Really at the end of it, What they are proposing sounds a lot like a Hilux Champ, Again I'm super curious to see what engine/transmission they plan on sourcing for this.
That's assuming this is a real thing, after all; the last decade has seen lots of cars that end up as vaporware or don't get past this phase.
[0] - Some DI setups result in carbon buildup long term.
[1] - Despite not offering US the Ranger Hybrid that is in EU.
[2] - To be clear I love my Maverick and intend to drive it into the ground. But I also bought in when the first year, the value per dollar is somewhat worse on new models.
this is called "marketing". :)
Having owned both gas and electric cars, I think the reality is probably not what either side thinks.
You have to take electric cars into the shop too. But range problems aren't as much of a problem for adults if you plug in every night and don't forget. If you're the type that forgets to charge your phone, it might be. and if there's no charging in your domicile it might be an issue.
But gas cars are also bad for the people who forget to charge their phone. Or change their oil. or any type of routine maintenance that could turn a trouble-free gas car into an extra trouble gas car.
I think electric cars (and their batteries) last lots longer than people expected. And gas cars are trouble-free up until a certain age when things not only need to be maintained, but replaced and then you need a good relationship with a mechanic.
Plug in your car when you get home, and you never have to think about range, even for “oddball” situations.
All of the things that are likely to break (electronics and sensors, usually) are the same for electric, and failures can happen with either vehicle.
Electric has “less” maintenance and no gas, but let’s not reverse-uno marketing FUD with more FUD.
After more than 1cm of rain, the last 500m of the steep dirt road up to my off-grid house in the mountains is completely impassable without 4wd. And I, or my family-in-law, regularly haul large trees, construction equipment, several 100kg of fertilizer, etc. in the truck bed.
Buying a single vehicle, a pre-owned 4wd Ford Ranger made the most economic sense.
But who knows maybe it’s already full of stuff under there
It's just a style thing, folks, however silly. Why do Texans wear cowboy hats and boots?
FWIW, transporting (even large) bikes in the bed of a truck is doable and normal. The typical way to do this isn't with a hoist. You just ride or walk it up a ramp and tie it down.
ofc a Forester or RAV4 with a trailer is a far superior solution, especially for interstate driving where the trailer is less of an annoyance.
All truck no load?
This is why I'm excited for REO.
I live in a pretty dense city and don't have much storage space in my residence. On the weekends I'm clearing and developing a lot a couple of hours away. My vehicle doubles as storage for all the stuff I need for that and don't want to leave unattended (saws, tools, winch, etc).
I used a Forester for the first two years, which was cramped but doable. The bigger issue was messes. Oil has a way of getting everywhere. I also had one gas spill from a faulty saw gas cap which was both dangerous and a huge PITA to clean up. I also got to a phase where the difference between awd and 4x4 matters, and where I was yanking milled planks around which didn't feel safe doing with the forester.
I switched to a truck after a couple of years and went small. The box is completely full between tools, saws, gas, winch, ropes, etc. When I do groceries I can usually fit some of the "hard" bags back there (cans, bottles) but the rest has to go up front.
A REO would be great for my use-case. The price is low enough that for the price of a new Tacoma or F-150 I could (get close enough to) buying both a REO and a used beater 3/4 ton at the property, which is a better fit for the things I need a big truck for anyways. And I wouldn't be driving a dumb big truck around a very cramped city.
For now I'm stuck with a big truck in the city because owning more than one personal vehicle in this town is insanity.
Maybe in the past, but the size thing isn't really true of the modern line-up. Relative to eg a base Tacoma or especially a Maverick, The Ford Transit has about the same wheel base, is slightly heavier, has worse visibility (for me at least), has a larger displacement engine, and is on a pragmatic level more difficult to maneuver and park. They also have far fewer creature comforts, which wouldn't be a huge deal if they didn't MSRP at $10K MORE than a base midsized truck!
Vans also don't have 4x4, have much lower ground clearance, no good mechanism for transporting longer stuff, and you can't hose them out nearly as easily as a truck bed. The main thing that those vans are built for is just lots of weight in the van. Great fits for some use-cases, but not mine.
And, again, they're just seriously expensive for what they are because of all the commercial applications.
I did also consider an old minivan or a used van from previous generations when they made the smaller transits. Again, 4x4/awd isn't really super optional in these parts, so pickins were slim.
Unfortunately I'm 5'7 and even the low roof transit is 6.8. So it's paying >$10K more for a pretty non-ergonomic solution.
> seems too small to even be useful for that.
One advantage of a bed when transporting 2x's is that you get the hypotenuse. So the bed goes further than you'd think in terms of load length. The 60/73 beds of the tacoma are certainly better than the mavericks, and those trucks are still smaller/same size as the transit.
But my actual observation is that, in cities, transits just really are strictly more annoying and dangerous to drive than a mid-sized truck. Maybe it's just me, but maintaining situational awareness on an unprotected bike lane to my right in a transit is way way way more difficult than the same in a mid-sized truck.
The shorty transit connects from the 2010s aren't what the modern line-up looks like. Modern transits are heavy long wheel-base vans with surprisingly large displacement engines and unfortunate blind spots.
I do get the animosity about trucks on city streets (...I bike to work and pass 4 ghost bikes every morning and evening and have had my share of close calls...).
But as a bicyclist, I'd rather ride next to a tacoma or ranger than a current gen transit. And it's not even close.
If you bicycle and prefer vans over trucks on your streets, I encourage you to test drive any 2026 transit. It'll change how you ride around vans, even if you're already a careful cyclist.
Wagons (as sold in the US market anyways) are passenger vehicles and therefore have the same problem as the Forester[^1]: your saw leaking some gas or bar&chain is kinda not ok. Or insert any other "thing that makes messes".
The true ideal is a 90's regular cab Tacoma/Ranger or a final gen Transit Connect depending on use-case.
> It's too bad this is america and everyone hates them and buys these dumb trucks instead
Well, at least that hypothesis might get tested.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...
The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.
There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/
My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.
Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.
I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.
They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.
Sounds like you’ve never been to the US. Thanks to cheap credit, every hillbilly and redneck has one of these. Which feels like about 60% of the population sometimes.
> It's honestly not that many.
I can't identify with this. You see these trucks everywhere. There are far more of them than there's any reason for - other than the whole weird only-in-America "light truck" regulations that relax emissions requirements for these trucks. Basically, a big reason we see so many of them is that the US simply refuses to take global warming seriously, instead basically saying "we're going to stick it to the planet as hard as we can, damn the consequences."
And when I said hillbillies and rednecks, I'm not talking about the actual people using their trucks for what they're supposed to be used for. I'm talking about the pavement princesses which wouldn't actually haul anything in their trucks because it would scratch the beds. They have the hillbilly redneck mindset without doing the work that justifies it. The truck is an emotional support vehicle for them, or a gender affirming vehicle. And there's no world in which you can honestly say "there aren't that many" of those in the US.
Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.
For many people, their emotions are more important than being rational.
after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.
Ehh, 3 row minivans are typically more practical. Alas, market forces are a fickle beast.
An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.
They are ridiculous in the lanes round here, and invariably are in the disabled parking spaces at the shop as they are too large to fit in normal spaces
People are also extremely sensitive to fuel costs and an enormous car that guzzles gas and can’t be parked on a tiny village road is a downside. Bear in mind gas in Europe is like $8/gal and salaries are much lower.
The statement car of choice for people who don’t need the functionality is the modern luxury Land/Range rover (ie the Chelsea tractor).
Our culture ties our cars to our identities.
But it's still funny to me. Because in my mind one of the main perks of an open bed is that you can do so much before having to deal with a trailer (which are super annoying, especially in cities, especially without off-street parking).
Which I guess is just to say: maybe there's a market for a truck that can't tow much, because maybe there's a portion of the market that wants an open bed but doesn't need to tow a massive camper or whatever.
The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.
I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.
I expect this guy will be looking at reliability data for various components, popular aftermarket upgrades, etc and designing a drivetrain that already uses popular components known by the automotive community to be reliable. Otherwise he will have a hard time hitting the 500k mile target I think I saw on the site.
He needs a dependable I4 engine mated to a dependable 6-spd manual transmission, mated to a dependable transfer case that sends power to the wheels through dependable differentials. I bet one could pull data from off-roader forums and configure something in a couple of days for their marketers to build interest.
I don't think any reasonable person expects the price of the 2-door truck to be $21500 when it finally is produced. That price is guaranteed to rise between now and the delivery of the first vehicle in 2028, it it ever happens. For potential customers it is a signal that they are committed to delivering a quality vehicle at a low price point. If you read the privacy policy, the reservation agreement, and payment terms it is all laid out in plain english.
Once they get vehicles on the road and a dedicated owner base they can determine whether there is interest in a hybrid drivetrain model. I understand why they aren't offering it right out of the gate. I do expect that they would be willing to consider it in the future should they ever make the leap from marketing vaporware to manufacturing.
(I realize you're probably being responsive to the word "need" - it's more what they claim they need than actually need. They could use a Japanese kei truck.)
I was hearing elsenet from someone who was planning to buy a Japanese kei truck until he borrowed one. Apparently with more than about 300 lb in the bed they feel dangerous to drive- combination of instability and poor braking performance.
If I needed to move more stuff, then the best answer still isn't a pickup truck. It is instead a full-size van (Transit/Express/Sprinter/ProMaster).
Kei trucks seem cool, but they're still trucks. Whatever's in the back is open to the elements, looky-loos, and thieves. Those concerns are greatly diminished with vans.
(A pickup truck with a cap on it that never comes off is a lot like a minivan is, but with more steps.)
The recycling is in inexpensive stacking totes that have lids; the same kind of totes I sometimes pack in tight for cross-country jaunts. They stay stacked and they don't leak.
Food waste gets composted outside ("it's old, get rid of it"), or goes down the garbage disposal ("i'm just trying to prep dinner here, not save the world"), or frozen in a grocery bag for later trash runs (meat and grease that doesn't want to go down the drain or be composted).
The bagged trash that accumulates here is essentially just non-recyclable plastics that are dry, and an occasional small bag of frozen food waste. This stuff does not leak between home and the dumpster at the shop.
And, I mean: Why not? It's just a car, and before being in the car these things were inside of my house (which is a far more valuable and permanent thing to me).
Source: Minivan owner
I wouldn't expect it to work with 8 full-sized American adults over that kind of distance: The adults would kill eachother, removing load as it happens. But it seems fine for quick trips in town.
Being enclosed, as it is, does suck for moving things like sofas, but: On the rare occasion that I have needed to move a sofa, truck owners have always lined up to demonstrate the superiority of their road-going machines.
(And that's all fine. I didn't want to move the sofa by myself, anyway.)
https://www.smarttoyota.com/new-Madison-2026-Toyota-Tacoma-T...
EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:
- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?
- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.
- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. When I was a teen we used to take week-long canoe trips into Algonquin Park. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, you're an hour's drive away from the nearest city but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.
- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.
EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.
I would be shocked if IC-engined vehicles were no longer being produced in 2050.
A 5KW generator costs less than 2% of the price of the average new vehicle and is a useful thing to have in a place that doesn't otherwise have any electricity regardless.
Meanwhile you then don't have to buy gas the 99% of the time you're not camping.
A couple other companies tried EREVs but AFAIR one was suboptimal (Mazda had one but the motor was so small it was dangerous to use for uphill) and the other was in an expensive German thing.
Where it is challenging is that, AFAIK, a direct driveline (i.e. Honda's system) or close to (THS used by Toyota/Ford/Subaru/others), it is easier to hit a higher Gas-only MPG rating than with an EREV due to the conversion losses on each end.
And, If you compare a BYD Seal 5 DM-i to the Current Prius Prime, AFAIK if you compare euro WLTP numbers the Prime gets better MPG when it switches to gas, and has a competitive electric only range. The Seal 5 DM-I is a little bigger but close enough. The BYD certainly wins on 'price' however it is unclear how much of that is due to a truly simpler design versus labor/material input cost.
Yeah it’s interesting to see how they do. The big and award winning electric truck from Ford is already discontinued. If we’re talking about US pickups how many other ones are battery powered? If anything, I would be more worried about Slate given what happened to Ford Lightning.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/startup-wants-build-sma...
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a71667299/reo-industries-r...
The easiest thing for you to do is just not engage with the post if you don’t like it. You people don’t need to pollute the comment section for anyone else who’s actually interested.
Just about everything is vibe coded or written with AI these days. Assume that’s the default. Comments pointing it out or complaining about it is just noise.
The lack of self-awareness is baffling.
Ultimately I think the most fair thing is to let both sides attempt to build support until a clear victor emerges.
You don't find many literary masterpieces scrawled in permanent market on a toilet wall.
I hope it's legit, though, and that they succeed! I'd love to buy a product like they're planning to build.
So my first thought was that it might be a subtle troll or a hoax. I did a bit more research and found the links to trade articles. It's not a dig at AI. And TBH, I'm sure that LLM's feelings weren't hurt.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
And I’m supposed to just accept this? The fact that this is the case sucks. Don’t tell me to stop complaining about it. Just because you don’t have standards or have given up on trying to make things better doesn’t mean the rest of us have.
Plus, it takes up a slot on the front page that could be taken up by something worth reading.
But I do love the pressure this (and Slate) puts on Toyota to restore some sanity to truck prices. There is a market of people who want reliable transportation without spending $40k++.
REO marketing clearly reflects this. We'll have to wait and see if the actual product hits the mark.
My dad bought one years ago and tow it with his corolla minivan whenever he needs it. Chance is that if you only need the bed a couple of times a year or are space constrained you are better of renting it.
I never understood those US mountainbikers who awkwardly wrestle their bike on a truck bed when they could more comfortably mount them on an hitch rack of a regular car or inside a van. VW Multivan must be the most popular van amoung mountainbikers here in europe.
Or a minivan. Or an actual van.
Truck's sole advantage is open bed. That is needed even rarer than "enough space for some plywood at the back"
Well, you all know the answer.
CEO: “We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars designing, developing, and tooling up to bring a new truck to market at a competitive price. We’ve worked out the entire manufacturing supply chain and have contracts in place with numerous vendors. We’ve placed orders for the thousands of parts, and hired highly skilled labor, and have extensively planned to have the man, machines, and materials all in the same place at the same time to actually pull this off. We have the working capital loans in place to let us run these operations. All that remains is the marketing outreach.”
CMO: “Okay, got it boss. Let’s start with one of the most highly visible parts of the marketing plan that literally every customer will interact with because of our sales model. Our contract marketing agency says they can develop a fantastic site for $200k - they have a great portfolio that shows they can make exactly what we need.”
CFO: “Fuck that, I just asked Claude to vibe code a marketing landing page. Looks great. Ship it.”
I found this forum post because our team keeps an hourly tracker via UTM tags on new reservations. I noticed that 30 have recently come from news.ycombinator.com (this site) and so I was pleasantly surprised to see the comments here.
My reason for posting is to see if anyone had questions for me directly. I'd be happy to answer them here directly in the forum.
ICE vehicles will hopefully be banned for sale everywhere by 2030 because they're more expensive and toxic to run than EVs.
"Wow, the same style engine, a reputable dealership network, a hybrid system with battery, and a turbo charger for only another 7 grand?"
Not me, but if it was real I could see it filling a lot of fleet type orders.
Does it offer this? Wish someone would make that product.
These brave souls, touting the advantages of gasoline. The website is almost satirical in places.
like a compact pickup version of what Edison Motors is doing to the fullsize pickup. i'd take an Edison conversion of an early 90s F250 over any new truck on the market.
cause of concern?
- i4 gas engine instead of using 4 electric motors - then using smaller engine to act as generator. plenty of Chinese have done this - quickest way to start a car company. otherwise they're gonna find out real soon - why other auto manufacturers went out of business or why reliability is a cause of concern even for big manufacturers. engines and powertrains can be complex.
electric motors are simpler.
(all the erm dashes and AI copy make me wonder how far along things really are though)
It feels great and sad at the same time that automakers have lost touch with their customers and no longer produce vehicles that the average consumer would buy and use.
Ford, with the Bronco, took years to commit to resurrecting the nameplate. In the process, they gathered so much critical information from Bronco drivers and other 4WD enthusiasts that they were able to condense their configurations to match the options that buyers were requesting and to offer factory installs of and warranties for components that buyers usually had to buy from aftermarket sources. They did everything right and even though there are hiccups with the vehicles, some due to pandemic parts shortages, others due to similar quality issues, they have a bonafide hit. It is hard to go anywhere around me in NTexas without seeing multiple Broncos and Bronco Sports.
If this guy at REO is smart and committed to the process he will scour forums for configuration information for his vehicles so that he can select components that buyers prefer. He can work on styling once he hires someone with CAD experience.
"Best value": Over how many miles? A hybrid often has a lower TCO.
"Gas I4, proven": Maybe it's a skill issue, but I can't figure out which I4 they're using or if they DIY. Meanwhile, the "unproven" Ford hybrid system is pushing trucks to 200k miles on a regular basis. (of course, your mileage may vary but it seems like they did a great job with this)
There's other issues as well.
Because we hate you, and need to make some money off it
I wasn’t aware of this - this article mentions 100k purchases in the first 2 years of the war.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-war-rely-pickup-truc...
People mistake 4x4 for safety but really the most important part is the tires. A 2wd car with winter tires will be much safer and have more traction in the snow/ice than a 4x4 with all-seasons tires.
Pretty much says it all. I'll take two.
Not to mention, a real body-on-frame SUV. Can you even get one of those new for < 35k?
I tow quite heavy things with it, taking 3500kg trailers a long way off road.
As a benchmark, I would use Slate, who have so far done an excellent job providing information and updates on their truck.
Atm, this is a DoA product.
In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
A Toyota Hilux, sold in america would be nice. The small truck market is slim pickings... other than the slate (which is still vaporous), nothing small with a regular cab has been built in a while. Old trucks won't last forever.
that's quite the optimistic end! There's absolutely zero chance this ends with a pickup powered by the venerable Toyota 22R-E I4 or an equivalent.
"I4, proven" proven to be genai slop and nothing more.
It's one thing to ride on nostalgia, but how much nostalgia is there for a company whos heyday was 100 years ago, and went out of business (well, merged) 60 years ago? The only nostalgia this old guy has is remembering my grandfather talking about the Speedwagon he had back in the day.