Whats with all the electric trucks?

Car companies love making cars that sell. Somehow, large pickup trucks are firmly at the top of the best sellers list these days. Perhaps driven by our desire for an all around car that can do it all, from hailing sports gear to commuting. But as we will discuss, there are flaws in that reasoning, and you are arguably better off thinking about the few things that you do and ensuring whatever car you wind up with can do these things very well. Don’t worry about the once in a lifetime cross country trek, its more fun in an EV as you get many more stops to enjoy, and thus see more things and make more friends. Focus instead on the much more frequent daily chores.

What sells? Well that’s easy enough to explore, the table below shows the 10 best selling vehicles in Canada. Pickup trucks do notably well, with the F150 alone ranking up very impressive sales figures. Canada’s best selling EV in 2022 ranked up 14k sales (Tesla model 3 source). So for every model 3, roughly 10 F150s were sold. I’m no car company executive, but I’m starting to see why Ford decided on the Lightning instead of say refining the electric version of the Focus which is no longer available in Canada, having sold only 1500 units in 2019 (source).

#	Vehicle	Rough classification	Sales
1	F150 series	Pickup truck	115k
2	RAM pickup	Pickup truck	76k
3	Toyota Rav 4	Crossover	56k
4	Chevy Silverado	Pickup truck	53k
5	GMC Sierra	Pickup truck	52k
6	Toyota Corolla	Car	34k
7	Honda CRV	SUV	32k
8	Honda Civic	Car	30k
9	Hyundai Kona	Crossover	25k
10	Hyundai Elantra	Car	25k

Why do people buy Pickup trucks? Some say ride height, off road capability, or handling. Some say its the flexibility of being able to haul lots of stuff, and commute to work in the same car (source). Whatever the reason, there are some flaws in the logic here. Handling for example is tricky with a rear wheel drive vehicle that has most of its weight towards the front. While a pickup truck may be able to do lots of things, it arguably does none of it well. You can commute in one, but it’s fuel efficiency will be a far cry from my 2018 Leaf. Yes you can put skis in a pickup truck bed, but a 5 foot bed does not easily carry 6 foot skis. A roof rack is far more sensible.

An therein lies the curse of the “Wollmilchsau”, a mythical German animal that attempts to do it all (source). Its really hard to do more than a few things well. My 2018 Nissan Leaf for example is a fantastic commuter, a wonderful errand runner, but struggles on long cross province treks. The F150 is a terribly inefficient commuter, and good luck finding a big enough parking space downtown, but has loads of space for a cross province trek.

That efficiency matters, and may explain why we only have a handful of electric pickups, compared to the torrent of electric SUVs. Consider my 2018 Leaf, it gets roughly 6 km/kWh (source), compared to the F150 Lightnings 2.3 km/kWh (source). Hence on a 50 kW charging station (the majority of the non-Tesla ones out there), my 2018 has a charging rate of 300 km/hr, while the Lightning makes do with 115 km/hr. Thus the electric SUV. The Nissan Aryia for example, gets about 5.5 km/kWh, not too far off from my Leaf (source). Charging stops would be reasonably short even at a 50 kW station, where the Aryia would charge at 275 km/hr, enough to get 2 hours of driving in a 30 minute stop, which is how long it takes to use the bathroom, find some snacks, and stretch your legs.

Shopping sensibly for a car comes down to a deep understanding of what you are going to use it for. Pick the 1-5 things you do on at least once a month and make sure whatever car you wind up with, it can do those frequent things well. For us that’s errands, commuting, day trips and weekend trips in that order. All things our 2018 Nissan Leaf can do very efficiently. Yes I may gripe about my twice a year Tremblant run (source), but really, you wind up doing far more commutes to work than Tremblant ski trips, make sure to weigh your preferences accordingly.