Americans love pickup trucks—each year they account for more than 20 percent of total new vehicle sales. It makes sense therefore that if you want to build electric vehicles 9EVs) that will appeal to a large number of buyers, that you should include an electric pickup truck in your product mix. Although Tesla showed its first version of its outrageous Cybertruck electric pickup in 2019, and several startups, as well as legacy carmakers, have announced their intent to produce battery-powered pickups, it wasn’t until September of this year that the first EV pickup (from startup Rivian) has finally gone into production.
Because they have the potential to be quite popular, electric pickups have also become an attractive starting point to companies that might have an idea, but little in the way of the resources or expertise to actually build a workable EV. Several companies have come and gone, while others to this point are little more than a nameplate, a prototype that might only exist as an artist’s rendering, and a dream that they will one day rule the automotive world.
As fun as it is to consider pie-in-the-sky EV offerings, we thought it might be useful to look at the electric pickup trucks that will reach production before the end of 2022—in other words, EV pickups that you might be able to buy within the next year. These are actual vehicles produced by legacy manufacturers, or at least by start-up EV companies that have enough funding and engineering expertise to give us confidence that they will be able to build what they have promised they will produce.
BONUS: Check out Slide 6 to see what's coming in 2023 and beyond!
Kevin Clemens is a Senior Editor with Battery Technology.
