Will an Electric Tesla Pickup Be Built, and How Big Will It Be? (Op/Ed)

tesla pickup truck rendering
Tesla pickup truck rendering

You may remember that Tesla’s Elon Musk showed an image of a possible pickup truck during the debut of the Tesla Semi back in November of this year. The pickup rendering made the truck look absolutely enormous. It appeared to be based on the Class 8 semi truck chassis, but with a big suspension lift and big off-road tires. Musk said that the pickup truck will have a heavy payload capacity, enough capacity to haul a weight equivalent to a modern half-ton pickup truck (or between 5,000 – 6,000 lbs). Notice a silhouette of a Ford F-150 in the bed?

Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla Motors) recently released more information about the Tesla pickup truck plans, and it does not correlate to the big medium-duty truck rendering you see here. Elon Musk tweeted “I promise that we will make a pickup truck right after Model Y. Have had the core design/engineering elements in my mind for almost 5 years. Am dying to build it.” Later on, he answered some questions by saying that the Tesla pickup will be sized similar to a Ford F-150 and perhaps a bit larger “to account for a game-changing (I think) feature I’d like to add.”

The design direction for the electric pickup truck seemed to have changed. If the new pickup truck will be similarly sized to a F-150 (or perhaps a F-250), does it still mean it will be based on a semi truck chassis? Tesla has done well with introducing game-changing designs with the original roadster, Model S, Model X, and the new Model 3. It will be interesting to see what Tesla has in store, but will we ever see a Tesla pickup truck produced?

Tesla has high ambitions and a plan to design, test, and produce the next-generation exotic roadster, the Semi Truck, and the Model Y midsize SUV/crossover. However, the company is also going deeper into debt and has issues maintaining its aggressive roll-out schedule. Thus far, the rollout schedule takes the company into 2020. If built, the pickup truck is likely not to reach the market before 2021, and perhaps much later.

Here is another futuristic truck that is powered by electricity – the Chevy ZH2 hydrogen fuel-cell truck that is being tested for military applications.

Andre Smirnov
Andre Smirnov is an Automotive Enthusiast, Producer, Reviewer, Videographer, Writer, Software Engineer, Husband, Father, and Friend.