{"id":8500,"date":"2026-10-10T18:13:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=8500"},"modified":"2026-10-10T18:13:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T18:13:48","slug":"telo-mt1-review-ev-tiny-truck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=8500","title":{"rendered":"The Telo MT1 is a big truck trapped in a tiny truck\u2019s body"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I\u2019m bouncing down the road in San Carlos, California, zipping past behemoth tech companies like EA and Oracle, in America\u2019s smallest electric truck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Telo MT1<\/a> (which stands for \u201cmini truck\u201d) unquestionably turns heads because it looks so remarkably different<\/a> from everything else on the market right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It has a nearly cab-over design, meaning that front-seat passengers sit almost directly over the front axle. It looks a lot like a Japanese kei truck, with a super-short nose and four doors. People stop to stare as we sit at stoplights or roll silently past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The interior is surprisingly spacious, and while the seats are firm, they\u2019re not uncomfortable, at least for short jaunts on the bumpy roads around Telo\u2019s HQ. Telo Trucks cofounder and CEO Jason Marks drove us to the company\u2019s offices ahead of my short one-block test drive, and from the passenger seat, the ride was firm but stable, thanks to a low center of gravity provided by the battery pack beneath the floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Behind the wheel, the MT1 feels like a lighter, more nimble pickup truck with a stiff, slightly bouncy ride without any payload in the bed, combined with all the low-end power, torque, and acceleration of an EV. Once we circle back around to the road in front of Telo\u2019s offices, Marks has me come to a full stop and stomp on the accelerator to get a feel for just how much power the little truck puts down, remarking that this was the same road where Tesla used to do its customer test drives of the Roadster many years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People stop to stare as we sit at stoplights<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks says that the production version of the Telo<\/a> will accelerate 0\u201360mph in an estimated four seconds. The truck easily rockets from a standstill, just like any other electric vehicle on the market today, a feat for a small startup with just 30 employees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite its diminutive appearance, the tiny Telo truck can go toe-to-toe with the giant SUVs and Teslas that populate this area. The Telo is, as Marks likes to point out, actually the same size as a two-door Mini Cooper, but far more practical with a tow rating of 8,000lbs, a full-size bed (96 inches), and a bevy of neat hidden features that Telo hopes will offer a viable, if somewhat pricey, alternative to the giant pickup trucks that dominate the American market.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI hope that our truck shows how amazing and fun and useful \u2014 especially useful \u2014 a small pickup truck can be, because the current big trucks are literally killing us,\u201d Forrest North, Telo\u2019s cofounder and CTO, said during our interview at Telo\u2019s headquarters. \u201cI mean, they\u2019re fun to be up super high and look out and feel like you\u2019re dominating the world, but they\u2019re killing an extra, roughly, 5,000 people per year, so do we want to just give them a pass for that?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks and North both live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area with their families, and both own pickup trucks: Marks because he has a 150lb three-legged dog he shuttles back and forth to the office every day, and North because he has a passion for the outdoors. Large pickup trucks can be useful, but they\u2019re far from suitable for city life. That disconnect, as well as the founders\u2019 passion for urban transportation, is what brought the two, along with Yves Behar, together to start Telo in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks previously worked on automotive safety and validation at National Instruments, while North is a former battery engineer at Tesla, founder of Mission Motors (one of the first electric motorcycle companies to break the land speed record for an electric motorcycle), and cofounder of Recargo, which developed 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\u2019d gone to the same high school in Washington, where they both pole-vaulted. It was a \u201ckindred spirit moment,\u201d according to Marks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI hope that our truck shows how amazing and fun and useful \u2014 especially useful \u2014 a small pickup truck can be, because the current big trucks are literally killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Telo cofounder Forrest North<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Originally, their idea wasn\u2019t about trucks at all \u2014 it was about electric motorcycles. Their initial pitch to an unnamed Silicon Valley VC 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. Sensing the enthusiasm, North pushed Marks to consider pivoting to building a truck, even though the motorcycle they\u2019d planned was nearly complete. They even went so far as to poll about 200 people on the street and found that nearly 90 percent would rather have the truck. The next week, they pivoted from motorcycle to truck.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s clear to me that the trucks have just kind of jumped the shark,\u201d North said. \u201cThe only thing they can do now is be big.\u201d Telo aims to change the conversation about what electric transportation in urban centers can look like.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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1\/5<\/strong>

Forrest North, left, and Jason Marks were initially going to build an electric motorcycle \u2014 until a number of investors expressed interest in a different concept: a tiny electric truck. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Battery, range, and layout<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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For a small truck, the Telo MT1 packs a lot of range. At launch, the truck will come with a 77kWh battery pack, or a larger 106kWh pack that the company estimates will deliver up to 350 miles of range. The MT1 has a unique battery layout: a split pack with both 800V and 400V architecture. The 400V setup makes the Telo chargeable on Tesla\u2019s V3 Supercharger infrastructure, while the 800V will let customers take advantage of new, higher-powered stations coming to market in areas like San Francisco.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Telo currently builds its battery packs in-house. Each cell is individually fused so that a single failure won\u2019t trigger a cascade across the pack. According to Marks, in-house manufacturing allows them to maximize energy density and longevity \u2014 a feat that hinges on thermal management. The passive thermal management system operates while the vehicle is parked, maintaining cooler temperatures even in direct sunlight, while active liquid cooling engages only when the vehicle is running. Additionally, North noted that Telo\u2019s latest cells deliver roughly 20 percent more energy than those they sourced just a year ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For a small truck, the Telo MT1 packs a lot of range<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I drove one of two prototypes that Telo has been using for road testing. From the outside, the Telo looks smaller than its 152 inches of length suggest. With the lower rear section of the passenger seats (called the midgate) laid flat, you get a full-size, 96-inch truck bed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To make up for the lack of a frunk, which most EVs have, Telo also developed a \u201cmonster\u201d tunnel (named because, like in a kids\u2019 story, it\u2019s a \u201cmonster under the bed\u201d), which passes door to door beneath the front of the truck bed. It\u2019s accessible from either side and is large enough for a pair of roll-aboard carry-on suitcases to slide in endwise. Marks said that while they knew the front of the MT1 would be difficult to engineer, adding the monster tunnel created a tough engineering challenge because it sits exactly where the battery pack connects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The interior is still being finalized, but Marks said that it will get two 13-inch digital displays that will support both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. The steering wheel also has small scroll wheels, but most features will be controlled through the screen interface.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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How the Telo stacks up against the big trucks<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Japanese kei vehicles became a White House talking point late last year when President Donald Trump invited the tiny trucks to be built in the US<\/a>. But making that actually happen is far more complicated because kei vehicles don\u2019t meet US crash safety regulations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks claimed that Telo has solved this problem with a completely new front end and an innovative front hinge pillar that took nearly four years to develop and hundreds of thousands of hours of simulated crashes to verify. In the Telo, the redesigned hinge pillar does the structural job of a conventional one while also carrying the strut mount, the cross-car beam, and the dash \u2014 consolidating several separate parts into one. This allowed the company to cut the front-end part count roughly in half, Marks said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe pretty much threw all [the conventional crash architecture] away and had to start from scratch,\u201d Marks said. The company\u2019s team includes Tesla\u2019s former head of crash safety, brought on to help tackle the new front end and completely reengineer it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe have effectively six crash [paths], two bumper beams and two shock structures, a completely different architecture of a hinge pillar, a completely different architecture of a torque box to distribute the energy appropriately to the various parts of the car and save that occupant compartment as much as possible,\u201d he said, comparing the crash innovations to those in a Smartcar. \u201cWould any other automaker say we\u2019re going to bet the world on being able to rethink crash?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company\u2019s team includes Tesla\u2019s former head of crash safety<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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AI tools have made the virtual crash-testing process much more affordable for startups, and Telo recently locked in its body in white, the sheet metal shell made up of the major structural pieces of the truck (think of it like a skeleton of a vehicle). It\u2019s currently being built by US supplier Schwab Industries in Michigan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks said Telo uses AI to run virtual crash tests around the clock, averaging roughly one test per hour. The next phase of crash testing will include cutting the body in white apart for what Marks called a \u201cquasi-static validation,\u201d and full crash testing (slamming the vehicle and its various parts into a wall to validate the virtual testing the company has done) will start next year before Telo starts customer deliveries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI think it\u2019s one of the most exciting times to start a hardware company,\u201d North said. \u201cIt\u2019s always been like, hardware is hard. That\u2019s always been the clich\u00e9, and I wouldn\u2019t say hardware is easy, but I would say it\u2019s gotten so much easier because of software and AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pricing, delivery, and other features<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The Telo MT1 will come in single-motor (rear-wheel drive) and dual-motor (all-wheel drive) layouts and offer add-ons like a solar-capable tonneau cover or camping shell. Reservations are open now for a refundable $152, and the base vehicle starts at $41,520. Marks said the company isn\u2019t really worried about larger competitors like Ford\u2019s upcoming midsized electric truck or Slate\u2019s bare-bones EV because he sees their market entry as proof that a viable market exists for small electric pickup trucks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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North argued that Telo is also in a better position than either Slate or Ford right now because the company has fewer parts moving in and out of the country; it\u2019s assembling its own battery packs and building the body in white stateside, making it largely exempt from the Trump administration\u2019s tariffs. \u201cThe pack is the most expensive part of the vehicle build and the heart and soul of the vehicle,\u201d Marks said, \u201cso we had<\/em> to keep it in-house.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks said he\u2019s been surprised by the volume of reservations: just over 14,000, with 70 percent of reservation-holders configuring AWD versions with the longer-range battery pack. He also noted that around 20 percent are first-time car buyers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Telo is aiming for profitability at around 5,000 vehicles within roughly 24 months of deliveries. The company plans to get vehicles into customers\u2019 hands sometime in 2027, depending on the validation timelines, but the MT1 still has to go through EPA and California air quality certification. Most reservations have come from places like LA, New York, the Bay Area, Seattle, Dallas, Washington, DC, Miami, and Denver, with almost everyone opting for the larger battery pack, regardless of drive configuration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Marks pointed to Tesla as the trailblazer of EVs\u2019 first real wave, proving electric cars could be fast, fun, and sporty. However, he believes the industry ultimately missed the chance to fully exploit their potential. Telo is tackling the problem by rethinking vehicle architecture from the ground up, returning to a \u201cone-box\u201d design made possible by eliminating wasted space.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ultimately, Telo\u2019s focus comes down to purpose, according to Marks: \u201cWhat does electric enable for the experience of the user, and what value does that bring?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While history has shown that the market isn\u2019t kind to EV startups, in a world where giant American trucks increasingly barely fit in an average parking spot, the Telo MT1 and its creators are aiming to offer a capable electric pickup built for today\u2019s cramped cities in the hope that Americans can get behind smaller and more capable electric vehicles.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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