Electric pickup trucks have become all the rage lately, but most of them require a football field-sized driveway. Enter the Telo MT1, a new look from a California startup betting on something smaller and sharper. Telo was founded in 2022 and has just raised $20 million in Series A funding to put this little electric truck on the road.
The round was co-led by designer Yves Béhar (who also co-founded the company) and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning and included heavy hitters like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, as well as funds TO VC, E12 Ventures and Neo. That’s not moonshot money; that’s for production tooling, prototypes that look like the final product and the grind of crash tests and regulatory approvals. Deliveries could start by the end of 2026 with plans to build around 5,000 units a year through a contract manufacturer. Pre-orders have already surpassed 12,000 so there’s clearly demand for a truck that doesn’t bulldoze its way through traffic.
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Telo’s CEO Jason Marks described the focus in a recent video chat from the company’s 10,000 square foot San Carlos workshop (right next to where Tesla started). The MT1 is 152 inches long, about the length of a Mini Cooper but hauls like a vehicle twice its size. There are five seats inside, four doors for quick access and a bed that expands from 5 to 8 feet when the tailgate is dropped. A full 4×8 sheet of plywood can be slid in flat without issue. All-wheel drive grips the pavement and can tow up to 6,600 pounds – enough to haul a trailer load of cargo without breaking a sweat. This configuration turns tiny roadways into playgrounds for heavier vehicles like the Ford F-150 Lightning or Rivian R1T would just sit idling, frustrated.
Power comes from up to 500 horsepower but Telo has dialed back the acceleration to prioritize what’s most important. A 106 kWh battery pack provides 350 miles on a single charge, a figure that holds true even in stop-and-go city driving. Fitting so much energy into such a small package required some compromises. The front end is short, raising concerns about collision safety – a valid point since trucks typically absorb impacts with an extra crumple zone. Telo will evaluate it and try for full US homologation.
Pricing starts at $41,520, down from the original $49,995. Pre-order for $152 (the truck’s length) and watch the deposit count grow. That seems about right in a world where electric vehicles often debut above target.
