My question is: why select a name that for most people, if they recognize the name at all, is a band from the 70s-80s? How many people other than old farts like me even know how to properly pronounce the name? (Because they'll think it's pronounced like the band name.)
It's one thing to ride on nostalgia, but how much nostalgia is there for a company whos heyday was 100 years ago, and went out of business (well, merged) 60 years ago? The only nostalgia this old guy has is remembering my grandfather talking about the Speedwagon he had back in the day.
skippyfish 1 hours ago [-]
My first reaction after seeing a website with vibecoded aesthetics was to wonder if this is even real, but apparently, it is - at least to the extent of getting some press coverage:
Am I the only one around here who’s sick and tired of the bitching and moaning on every post about how something was vibe coded or written by AI? Without fail, someone complains and it shoots up to the top of the comments. It’s gotten ridiculous and it’s off topic.
The easiest thing for you to do is just not engage with the post if you don’t like it. You people don’t need to pollute the comment section for anyone else who’s actually interested.
Just about everything is vibe coded or written with AI these days. Assume that’s the default. Comments pointing it out or complaining about it is just noise.
martinky24 9 minutes ago [-]
You could have simply just not engaged…? It’s no different. You’re doing a similar pollution!
The lack of self-awareness is baffling.
Rychard 4 minutes ago [-]
There is something to be said about this particular style of argument, as it's akin to the "paradox of tolerance".
Ultimately I think the most fair thing is to let both sides attempt to build support until a clear victor emerges.
tlack 6 minutes ago [-]
It seems like everyone is more worried about how something was made rather than what it is or whether or not the work is good on its own merit. Ironic from a group that is surely using AI tools in their own work.
IshKebab 2 minutes ago [-]
How it is made is often a strong indicator of whether or not the work is good.
You don't find many literary masterpieces scrawled in permanent market on a toilet wall.
greggsy 1 hours ago [-]
That cookies notice is awful
1 hours ago [-]
temporallobe 47 minutes ago [-]
Would be nice to see actual pics instead of silly silhouettes. I am in the market for exactly this kind of truck (especially a manual) but this doesn’t inspire me to want to buy it.
convolvatron 40 minutes ago [-]
also no real mention of body construction or bed dimensions. nice to see a 2 door though I guess
nicce 37 minutes ago [-]
Lots of fuzz but no precise details
thatcherc 1 hours ago [-]
It's weird to see a new vehicle announced like this that's not an EV. I wonder what it's like launching a gas truck when new battery-powered trucks are looming in the distance (or already here).
herbst 1 hours ago [-]
There are many great EV cars. But when you have a trailer or caravan we still talk about a heavily reduced range (and often they aren't allowed to pull at all, or weight limits get a problem, at least in Europe)
analog31 53 minutes ago [-]
The interesting thing in the US is that a lot of pickups, possibly most of them, are purchased for regular daily driving. None of the people I know with pickups have trailers.
csto12 51 minutes ago [-]
I love seeing Ram 6000 Max Diesel Rampage Pros who’s sole job is going to work and Walmart.
wlesieutre 45 minutes ago [-]
And when they pick up groceries they load everything onto the floor of the back seat because the bed is so high up you’d need a step ladder to use it
bloomingeek 11 minutes ago [-]
So true! My Ram 1500 was purchased to pull our travel trailer. It has the tow package and is factory raised up some. I'm kind of old, so I keep a three-step ladder in the bed so I can easily climb into it.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
Eueudhsbsj32 21 minutes ago [-]
I think the more important reasons are to prevent the groceries from sliding around in the bed and to protect them from the sun and precipitation.
phoghed 19 minutes ago [-]
Isn’t the Ram Rampage a more compact non US market 4cyl variant? Like a maverick competitor?
stackghost 21 minutes ago [-]
The suburban people buying Ram 9001 Warlord Editions are not the target market for this truck.
thegrim33 43 minutes ago [-]
That some people buy them and don't really need them has zero relevance on whether any people have need for them.
skippyfish 48 minutes ago [-]
I find it somewhat amusing that this attracts a lot of ire, but most of us would prefer a 2,000+ sq ft suburban home with a lawn when we could live comfortably in a 500-700 sq ft apartment, like people do in most European cities.
And of course, a good chunk of HN wants to be making millions a year doing crypto... sorry, AI... societal or environmental consequences be damned - even though you can live comfortably on $100k in most of the world.
Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants.
nonethewiser 57 minutes ago [-]
I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t an ev. Very aggressive price point for a new IC vehicle.
jmspring 37 minutes ago [-]
There is a market for it. Cheap. Good range on a tank. 4WD. I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD Offroad. It's only got about 115k miles (bought it new). I'm not planning on replacing it - toyota hybrid numbers for their trucks suck and an in kind replacement would cost me almost 2x what I originally paid (yes new tech, blahblah). $35k in 2015, $70+k now. Gas isn't going away and rural areas (I've lived in a few) often don't have charging options.
zymhan 26 minutes ago [-]
Slate already has that covered.
greenavocado 53 minutes ago [-]
My pickup truck burned 9 miles per gallon when I towed a 35 foot RV. Consider the energy flux and you'll quickly see how hopeless it would be to tow with a battery powered truck.
stackghost 27 minutes ago [-]
I say this as someone who will be buying an EV as his next vehicle:
EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:
- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?
- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.
- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.
- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.
EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.
agensaequivocum 34 minutes ago [-]
> Physical Controls
Levers, rockers, and real analog gauges. One small screen for diagnostics and CarPlay — nothing more. No subscriptions. No feature locks. Ever.
> Right to Repair
Every panel off in under five minutes with common tools. Plain-English diagnostics on a $30 scanner. A 20-year public parts catalog at fair prices. No parts-pairing — in writing.
I'm very excited about this and pray it is successful.
iambateman 37 minutes ago [-]
Do I want to own one of these? No. I want my mechanic to be bored when I show up and need service…I guess that makes me a market laggard.
But I do love the pressure this (and Slate) puts on Toyota to restore some sanity to truck prices. There is a market of people who want reliable transportation without spending $40k++.
btbuildem 16 minutes ago [-]
It'd be great if they could come up with a photo of the truck. But an alternative to the oversized absurdities we have on the roads these days can't come soon enough.
3327 14 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
bilsbie 28 minutes ago [-]
At this point the killer feature would be: privacy, control of your own vehicle, and repair ability.
Does it offer this? Wish someone would make that product.
pudgywalsh 26 minutes ago [-]
That's what they claim. Right to repair and direct parts sales.
aaronbrethorst 1 hours ago [-]
I’ll save my money for the 2030 Speedwagon.
declan_roberts 36 minutes ago [-]
No dealer sales is such an enormous perk. We need this everywhere but of course there's too much incumbent vested interest to keep the status quo.
raver1975 40 minutes ago [-]
The website is black on black, not easy for me to see at all.
jeffrogers 38 minutes ago [-]
Makes sense to me... the Toyota mini trucks of the 80s/90s were super useful and Tacomas are basically full-sized and not as efficient.
whyenot 6 minutes ago [-]
The website is all hype with very little substance, as well as the taint of AI slop. If they aren't willing to share details, I'm not interested.
As a benchmark, I would use Slate, who have so far done an excellent job providing information and updates on their truck.
abtinf 35 minutes ago [-]
At some point, the leadership team had a conversation that went something like this:
CEO: “We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars designing, developing, and tooling up to bring a new truck to market at a competitive price. We’ve worked out the entire manufacturing supply chain and have contracts in place with numerous vendors. We’ve placed orders for the thousands of parts, and hired highly skilled labor, and have extensively planned to have the man, machines, and materials all in the same place at the same time to actually pull this off. We have the working capital loans in place to let us run these operations. All that remains is the marketing outreach.”
CMO: “Okay, got it boss. Let’s start with one of the most highly visible parts of the marketing plan that literally every customer will interact with because of our sales model. Our contract marketing agency says they can develop a fantastic site for $200k - they have a great portfolio that shows they can make exactly what we need.”
CFO: “Fuck that, I just asked Claude to vibe code a marketing landing page. Looks great. Ship it.”
Animats 9 minutes ago [-]
It's another kickstarter/"pre-order"/vaporware car. Like Slate.
"If all runs smoothly, first customer deliveries will take place in late 2028 or 2029."
Expect price creep and delivery date slippage.
In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
parl_match 38 minutes ago [-]
The comparison table is laughable.
"Best value": Over how many miles? A hybrid often has a lower TCO.
"Gas I4, proven": Maybe it's a skill issue, but I can't figure out which I4 they're using or if they DIY. Meanwhile, the "unproven" Ford hybrid system is pushing trucks to 200k miles on a regular basis. (of course, your mileage may vary but it seems like they did a great job with this)
There's other issues as well.
aejm 14 minutes ago [-]
Incredibly disappointed to see it will be using a gasoline combustion engine.
nico_h 1 hours ago [-]
Is there anything special in making a $21k gas truck in 2026? I’m guessing you could get a second hand gas truck for this price?
tailscaler2026 57 minutes ago [-]
Ford Maverick starts at $28k, and they're running about $3k in incentives at the moment. So it's a competitive price but nothing too wild versus what we have already.
scrapcode 57 minutes ago [-]
Similar competition (Nissan Frontier, Ford Ranger, etc.) would start at around $35k these days.
cenamus 43 minutes ago [-]
They show a 28k Ford in the comparison.
nonethewiser 55 minutes ago [-]
I think you should try and make the case that its not special. Considering a $21k new gas truck doesn’t exist currently.
maroziza 1 hours ago [-]
The main reason is scale and support, here in ukraine we bought all 21k pickups in europe, it is very hard to sustain tham at same time, so if you have any enterprise you'd want a park of SAME vehicle, so for single buy - yes, it will your beloved hilux for rest of your long life. but if you want 100 pickups, 1000? and parts are scarse now. and than you can even customize them. but even in retail you will have extra support and guarantee for new pickup. Steering rack is just unabtainium here, so there will be every other part for 20 year SUV/Pickup soon.
lostnfound8778 1 hours ago [-]
There are golf carts/lsv's that cost 15k-20k these days and a fiat 500 is 25k iirc, for perspective
Forgeties79 1 hours ago [-]
Depends on the truck. Pickups in the US can get very expensive very quickly, they’re basically luxury vehicles and they retain their value better for some reason I haven’t really looked in to. Budget trucks are not as plentiful, $21,500 is a pretty competitive price.
cpursley 1 hours ago [-]
Sure, a Tacoma with 100k miles on it already...
ErroneousBosh 50 minutes ago [-]
My current daily is dual-fuel (petrol and LPG) and cost £250, but I got quite a good deal on it.
I tow quite heavy things with it, taking 3500kg trailers a long way off road.
markn951 1 hours ago [-]
Except it’s supposed to launch in 2029 at the earliest?
Glyptodon 58 minutes ago [-]
This is an appealing price point for the US market for what it is. I suspect outside of the US you'd need to be a little cheaper still, I hear there are various kinds of trucks under $10k in India for example, though I really have no idea about their size or specs.
GuestFAUniverse 51 minutes ago [-]
What have the Dodo, a Fisker and that in common?
Well, you all know the answer.
par 44 minutes ago [-]
Do that not have any pictures of it?
calmbonsai 24 minutes ago [-]
Um, if you're going to market a vehicle, you really, really, really, need to have pictures or at least detailed renderings.
Atm, this is a DoA product.
smokeyfish 40 minutes ago [-]
Looks like a Lada
paxys 39 minutes ago [-]
Yes, let me throw money at this vibe-coded vaporware.
nkrisc 24 minutes ago [-]
I’ll reserve one when I can test drive it first.
cyanydeez 43 minutes ago [-]
>Why Gas?
Because we hate you, and need to make some money off it
pengaru 1 hours ago [-]
fiction
pudgywalsh 33 minutes ago [-]
It appears this was born of POTUS' infatuation with Japanese Kei trucks and subsequent relaxation of the emissions laws, which had somehow made it illegal and/or impractical to produce small compact trucks with manual gearboxes but totally okay to flood the roads with giant jacked suspension RAM land crushers.
When your engineering is driven not by solving practical problems, but by armies of lawyers in search of EPA loopholes, maybe the laws are the problem.
Rendered at 19:51:42 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It's one thing to ride on nostalgia, but how much nostalgia is there for a company whos heyday was 100 years ago, and went out of business (well, merged) 60 years ago? The only nostalgia this old guy has is remembering my grandfather talking about the Speedwagon he had back in the day.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/startup-wants-build-sma...
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a71667299/reo-industries-r...
The easiest thing for you to do is just not engage with the post if you don’t like it. You people don’t need to pollute the comment section for anyone else who’s actually interested.
Just about everything is vibe coded or written with AI these days. Assume that’s the default. Comments pointing it out or complaining about it is just noise.
The lack of self-awareness is baffling.
Ultimately I think the most fair thing is to let both sides attempt to build support until a clear victor emerges.
You don't find many literary masterpieces scrawled in permanent market on a toilet wall.
Because of the poor gas mileage, I always wonder at why people drive these gas guzzlers as their main transport. But each to his own. (BTW, some claim safety, but it's probably fashion.)
And of course, a good chunk of HN wants to be making millions a year doing crypto... sorry, AI... societal or environmental consequences be damned - even though you can live comfortably on $100k in most of the world.
Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants.
EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:
- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?
- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.
- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.
- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.
EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.
> Right to Repair Every panel off in under five minutes with common tools. Plain-English diagnostics on a $30 scanner. A 20-year public parts catalog at fair prices. No parts-pairing — in writing.
I'm very excited about this and pray it is successful.
But I do love the pressure this (and Slate) puts on Toyota to restore some sanity to truck prices. There is a market of people who want reliable transportation without spending $40k++.
Does it offer this? Wish someone would make that product.
As a benchmark, I would use Slate, who have so far done an excellent job providing information and updates on their truck.
CEO: “We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars designing, developing, and tooling up to bring a new truck to market at a competitive price. We’ve worked out the entire manufacturing supply chain and have contracts in place with numerous vendors. We’ve placed orders for the thousands of parts, and hired highly skilled labor, and have extensively planned to have the man, machines, and materials all in the same place at the same time to actually pull this off. We have the working capital loans in place to let us run these operations. All that remains is the marketing outreach.”
CMO: “Okay, got it boss. Let’s start with one of the most highly visible parts of the marketing plan that literally every customer will interact with because of our sales model. Our contract marketing agency says they can develop a fantastic site for $200k - they have a great portfolio that shows they can make exactly what we need.”
CFO: “Fuck that, I just asked Claude to vibe code a marketing landing page. Looks great. Ship it.”
In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.
"Best value": Over how many miles? A hybrid often has a lower TCO.
"Gas I4, proven": Maybe it's a skill issue, but I can't figure out which I4 they're using or if they DIY. Meanwhile, the "unproven" Ford hybrid system is pushing trucks to 200k miles on a regular basis. (of course, your mileage may vary but it seems like they did a great job with this)
There's other issues as well.
I tow quite heavy things with it, taking 3500kg trailers a long way off road.
Well, you all know the answer.
Atm, this is a DoA product.
Because we hate you, and need to make some money off it
When your engineering is driven not by solving practical problems, but by armies of lawyers in search of EPA loopholes, maybe the laws are the problem.