There may be no guarantee the tiny Telo MT1 will ever go on sale, but I’m also not going to pretend I don’t desperately want to see it succeed. I mean, it’s so tiny and weird. How could you not want this company to sell a million of them? Heck, it’ll even drift if you want it to. It’s basically the coolest thing I’ve seen this decade, and if that makes me weird, so be it. I’d rather drive an adorable little electric truck and be weird than be a normal loser like everyone else.
But while the Telo truck is about the size of a two-door Mini Cooper, as the company points out in its latest promotional video, it isn’t nearly as small as you might think. According to Telo, it designed the cabin “to slightly beat the dimensions of the Toyota Tacoma in every way,” and I don’t hear too many people complaining the Tacoma is too small. Maybe they exist, but I sure haven’t met them. The people I meet mostly love the Tacoma. Plus, the Telo can fit a 4×8 sheet of plywood in its bed with the rear divider down.
In fact, if the video is to be believed, there’s even enough space inside the MT1 to comfortably fit multiple 6’5″ people, and the 6’8″ guy they found still had plenty of headroom, even with tall hair. Heck, they even found a 6’10” guy (who sure looks a lot like MotorTrend‘s Alex Leanse) who said he “definitely fit inside.” Of course, everyone on the internet is super tall, and there’s no good way to fact-check their claims, but as a 6’6″ man with the body of a Greek god, this is great news for me, personally. Wait, why are you laughing? I said stop laughing.
Safety first
From the moment Telo revealed the MT1, the main question everyone had was about safety. After all, the truck isn’t just tiny. It’s so cab-forward that there’s basically no hood. As a motorcycle rider, I’m pretty sure even the most unsafe car you can legally sell will always be safer than a motorcycle, but according to Telo, the MT1’s design includes a 14-inch crumple zone. Plus, in the event of a crash, there’s no engine up front that could get shoved into the passenger compartment.
As Telo points out, small vehicles also make it easier to navigate tight spaces, making it less likely that you’ll get into a low-speed crash in, say, a parking lot. And without a long hood in front of you, you’re less likely to hit something or someone if you have to stop quickly. In a situation where a far-bigger Ford Maverick would have hit a pedestrian, Telo says the driver of an MT1 “might just get flipped off or yelled at instead of sued.”
As we all know, automotive journalists are incredibly wealthy and often the targets of frivolous litigation, so this is also good news for me, personally. Also, killing people with your car is bad, and I believe it would be better if fewer people did that, actually.
Of course, we’ll still need to see the actual crash test results before we can declare the Telo MT1 safe enough to drive, but you have to admit, the video makes a strong case for itself. It’s also entirely possible Telo still won’t make it to production and even more likely that if it does, its tiny truck won’t sell in massive numbers, but come on. Don’t pretend you don’t want to see these things on the road, going about their adorable little truck business.