Calling an electric truck a ‘truck’ is like calling my Kobalt battery-powered push mower a Gravely Pro-Turn. The subject purportedly wishes to be that thing it claims to be but is neither inclined nor capable of being so.

A truck is a tool intended to pull your boat, shoulder welding equipment, or haul two cubic yards of mulch to one’s front yard for your kids to spread around the roses while you get a beer. Trucks like the Ford F-150, the most popular vehicle in America, are employed by every trade and industry to be the fleet workhorse, paying for themselves through constant (ab)use. Any hour a truck isn’t making the company money is costly. So, if an electric truck is doing more time connected to a charger than getting men and material to a job site, we have a severe problem — especially when light trucks such as the F-150 are slated to be fully electric by government mandate by 2035.

As Heather Wilhelm cuttingly reports in her recent ‘Running on Fumes’ piece for the magazine:

Late in August, America’s favorite loopy wine-swilling communist aunt who dabbles in astrology and mushrooms — I’m speaking, of course, of the government of California — announced a plan that might make your eyes pop: Through a mixture of mandates, quotas, ever-expanding bureaucracies, and fines, the state will essentially ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
Wow! How forward-thinking! What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot will go wrong, or at least, no work will be accomplished — if real-world tests are any indication. Internally-combusting (ICE) trucks are at their best when under load. Electric trucks are at their worst when under load, as Tyler “Hoovie” Hoover of Hoovies Garage discovers:

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I don’t expect electric trucks to be more than a vain novelty for decades. Until their MSRP, miles-per-“tank,” and commercial practicality are par with ICE, EV trucks will be best left in the driveway of one’s upwardly-mobile suburbanite neighbor who likes imagining callouses on his hands. And that’s okay. Just let the real machines keep doing the work only they can do.