Telo MT1 Puts Big-Truck Capability in a Mini Cooper-Sized Electric Pickup

The Verge drove the truck in San Carlos, California, past offices of companies including EA and Oracle. The MT1, which stands for “mini truck,” has a nearly cab-over design, meaning front-seat passengers sit almost directly over the front axle. It resembles a Japanese kei truck, with a very short nose and four doors. The Verge reported that people stopped to stare at stoplights and while the truck rolled silently past.

Inside, the vehicle was surprisingly spacious, according to the report. The seats were firm but not uncomfortable for short trips on the bumpy roads around Telo’s headquarters. Telo Trucks cofounder and CEO Jason Marks drove the reporter to the company’s offices before a one-block test drive. From the passenger seat, the ride was firm but stable, helped by the low center of gravity from the battery pack beneath the floor.

Behind the wheel, the MT1 felt like a lighter, more nimble pickup truck, with a stiff, slightly bouncy ride when the bed was empty, the report said. It also had the low-end power, torque and acceleration of an electric vehicle. Marks asked the reporter to stop and stomp on the accelerator to feel how much power the small truck delivers. He noted that the same road was where Tesla used to conduct customer test drives of the Roadster years earlier. Marks said the production version of the Telo is estimated to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in four seconds, and the truck easily rockets from a standstill. The company has just 30 employees.

Despite its small appearance, the Telo can go toe-to-toe with the large SUVs and Teslas common in the area, according to The Verge. Marks said the truck is actually the same size as a two-door Mini Cooper, but far more practical, with an 8,000-pound tow rating, a full-size 96-inch bed and several hidden features. Telo hopes it will be a viable, if somewhat pricey, alternative to the giant pickup trucks that dominate the American market.

“I hope that our truck shows how amazing and fun and useful — especially useful — a small pickup truck can be, because the current big trucks are literally killing us,” Forrest North, Telo’s cofounder and CTO, said during an interview at Telo’s headquarters. “I mean, they’re fun to be up super high and look out and feel like you’re dominating the world, but they’re killing an extra, roughly, 5,000 people per year, so do we want to just give them a pass for that?”

Telo was founded in 2022 by Marks, North and Yves Behar. Marks and North both live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area with their families, and both own pickup trucks. Marks has a 150-pound, three-legged dog he shuttles to the office every day, while North has a passion for the outdoors. Large pickup trucks can be useful, but they are far from suitable for city life, and that disconnect, along with the founders’ interest in urban transportation, brought the three together to start Telo.

Marks previously worked on automotive safety and validation at National Instruments. North is a former battery engineer at Tesla, founder of Mission Motors, which the report describes as one of the first electric motorcycle companies to break the land speed record for an electric motorcycle, and cofounder of Recargo, which developed the EV charging app PlugShare. Behar is the founder of fuseproject, an industrial design and brand development firm. Marks and North met through a mutual friend in the startup space and discovered they had gone to the same high school in Washington, where both pole-vaulted. Marks called it a “kindred spirit moment.”

Their original idea was not a truck at all, but an electric motorcycle. Their initial pitch to an unnamed Silicon Valley venture capital firm included a slide deck comparing three concepts: an electric motorcycle, a small car and a tiny truck. Everyone they talked to kept gravitating toward the tiny pickup, according to the report. North pushed Marks to consider pivoting to building a truck, even though the motorcycle they had planned was nearly complete.