Pretty sure Slate offer exactly this.

That's what they claim. Right to repair and direct parts sales.

I don't see the big deal. If it was 100 years ago, then the name, perhaps, is effectively new.

Slate already has that covered.

I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t an ev. Very aggressive price point for a new IC vehicle.

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.

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. When I was a teen we used to take week-long canoe trips into Algonquin Park. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, you're an hour's drive away from the nearest city 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.

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)

That cookies notice is awful

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.

I don't want a mechanic. I want something basic enough I can fix it.

REO marketing clearly reflects this. We'll have to wait and see if the actual product hits the mark.

The truck photos are too.

Why are people designing such thoughtless websites?

also no real mention of body construction or bed dimensions. nice to see a 2 door though I guess

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.

The company was started no earlier than December, according to the articles linked in another comment. Very real possibility that no pics or semi-finalized CAD design even exist yet at this point.

Gas vehicles suffer from that range reduction, too, as my brother-in-law learned the hard way last weekend during a road trip we took to Idaho and back (wherein he was towing a camper-trailer).

I was at the Toyota dealership today. A TRD off-road with TRD Off-Road Upgrade Package and other goodies has a MSRP of $61k and the tag hanging from the rear view mirror said the no haggle price was $54,608. Still a lot of money and it is a huge truck for the passenger and cargo payload.

https://www.smarttoyota.com/new-Madison-2026-Toyota-Tacoma-T...

I agree though I kinda wish it was a hybrid. Maybe down the line that will happen. The price point is a valid point and it ticks all our boxes - 4WD, manual transmission, not huge. I've priced out components for one of my trucks and $21500 is not gonna buy all of the running gear. I expect that none of this truck's drivetrain will use custom parts and that all of the critical drivetrain parts will come from existing supply lines for simplicity and ease of hitting their "repair in your driveway" messaging.

The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.

I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.

You said it yourself, they're fundamentally suitable for most use cases. Yes, for the near future, there will be many use cases where gas is superior.

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.

What's the best cookies notice?

A hybrid drive train would have increased the price though, which seems to be a major selling point if this.

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.

Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.

Similar competition (Nissan Frontier, Ford Ranger, etc.) would start at around $35k these days.

I love seeing Ram 6000 Max Diesel Rampage Pros who’s sole job is going to work and Walmart.

Sure. But I think the "near future" to which you're referring is going to be a longer tail than many EV maximalists expect.

I would be shocked if IC-engined vehicles were no longer being produced in 2050.

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.

> In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.

that's quite the optimistic end! There's absolutely zero chance this ends with a pickup powered by the venerable Toyota 22R-E I4 or an equivalent.

"I4, proven" proven to be genai slop and nothing more.

Today it only exists in the imagination of the company CEO and a few trusted others, none of whom have figured out how to hire someone with automobile CAD experience to produce a mock-up that might increase interest for their proposed product.

There are golf carts/lsv's that cost 15k-20k these days and a fiat 500 is 25k iirc, for perspective

> In the end, it's basically a Toyota Hilux.

A Toyota Hilux, sold in america would be nice. The small truck market is slim pickings... other than the slate (which is still vaporous), nothing small with a regular cab has been built in a while. Old trucks won't last forever.

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.

I'm confused by your response. I was trying to understand if the product and the company are real. An AI-generated website is not a positive signal. Neither is the lack of any product photos. And if you go to Wikipedia, you'll learn that the REO Motor Car Company went defunct in 1967, with no mention of any revival.

So my first thought was that it might be a subtle troll or a hoax. I did a bit more research and found the links to trade articles. It's not a dig at AI. And TBH, I'm sure that LLM's feelings weren't hurt.

It's basically an idea without enough funding to exist.

I don't think 25$ reservation slots are going to pay for a full assembly line.

Sure, a Tacoma with 100k miles on it already...

Except it’s supposed to launch in 2029 at the earliest?

I’ll reserve one when I can test drive it first.

I love how they list refueling only taking 5 minutes from anywhere, but they leave out that you can't refuel at home. The EV side should be updated to say refueling time is zero because every time I leave my home I'm already completely fueled up.

On the other hand, perhaps it is just that the company here has presented in its totality all existing information about the vehicle in question.

the hat claims that it was started in 1905?

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.

Kind of like the Local Motors Rally Fighter, which was a kit car that kept costs down by using parts from existing cars instead of designing their own from scratch.

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.

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.

You could have simply just not engaged…? It’s no different. You’re doing a similar pollution!

The lack of self-awareness is baffling.

Vibecoding your whole website is an indication of how seriously you’re taking a project. With how new this company is and how clearly this whole website was made with AI, how can you trust a single thing this website says about a product that barely exists? The AI probably just invented half of it

Well best would be websites not using cookies so there is no need for a notice.

Not everyone who owns a pickup tows with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a minority of owners who do. Some just need them for hauling plywood, others because they like the aesthetics.

I think you should try and make the case that its not special. Considering a $21k new gas truck doesn’t exist currently.

That some people buy them and don't really need them has zero relevance on whether any people have need for them.

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.

They show a 28k Ford in the comparison.

4 trips a year picking up a heavy excavator or tractor so you dont have to pay a tradesman a gazillion dollars and it pays for itself. "But just pay someone to haul it or rent a truck" lmao good fucking luck down my dirt roads

“Compensation” and extreme loneliness (cannot find my tribe without spreading its dumb peacock wings so they know I fit in)

The suburban people buying Ram 9001 Warlord Editions are not the target market for this truck.

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

It's honestly not that many. That's a very expensive truck for a daily driver. Most likely they have a large Airstream camper, horse trailer, or 5th wheel trailer or similar that they pull with it.

Sure, some people just like a big diesel truck for ego reasons. But the cost of them limits most people's ability to endulge that.

Isn’t the Ram Rampage a more compact non US market 4cyl variant? Like a maverick competitor?

The founding date for the original REO. I don't think they have an unbroken line back to the original

That's the scary thought. Maybe the site is all they've got.

Slate at least is far enough along that someone got to drive the prototype.[1]

(Amusingly, Google pairs that video with an ad, "Freedom is Loud", for a Stellantis truck product.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0t7wpkFc6U

The original reo went bankrupt in 1967 and after series of mergers ended up as part of the truck company diamond reo. Diamond reo then had difficulties and stopped production in 1995. This reo is wholly unrelated, except the guy who started it bought the trademark.

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.

How people use the vehicles that they buy is pretty well understood from the market research done by the car industry. In the US, the widespread use of pickup trucks a passenger vehicles is a known fact.

An odd thing is that my family visited a rural part of England last year, and we saw very few pickup trucks on the roads and in the towns. On a walking tour, you see a lot of farms up close because the paths go through farms and along fence lines. The farms had utility vehicles including light trucks, but they also had regular passenger cars.

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.

> here in ukraine we bought all 21k pickups in europe

I wasn’t aware of this - this article mentions 100k purchases in the first 2 years of the war.

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-war-rely-pickup-truc...

> How it stacks up.

Pretty much says it all. I'll take two.

Not to mention, a real body-on-frame SUV. Can you even get one of those new for < 35k?

Yes but what's the next best?

The Ford F-150 Lightning should be selling well, but it isn't

A bit like that. I don't see a new vehicle manufacturer spending the time or capital to develop drivetrain components when there are already trusted manufacturers with decades of experience and products on the shelf that already function perfectly together.

I expect this guy will be looking at reliability data for various components, popular aftermarket upgrades, etc and designing a drivetrain that already uses popular components known by the automotive community to be reliable. Otherwise he will have a hard time hitting the 500k mile target I think I saw on the site.

He needs a dependable I4 engine mated to a dependable 6-spd manual transmission, mated to a dependable transfer case that sends power to the wheels through dependable differentials. I bet one could pull data from off-roader forums and configure something in a couple of days for their marketers to build interest.

Damn you, company who isn't making websites for a living, where are your priorities!?

The Maverick is a different class of vehicle: it has a unibody with no mechanical 4x4.

Worse than vibe coding is vibe copywriting—and it appears to have that in spades. I have a really hard time taking something seriously that reads like it came straight out of Claude Code without even a minimal editing pass.

I hope it's legit, though, and that they succeed! I'd love to buy a product like they're planning to build.

Ah, I didn't realize (nor that it was possible) they made a shittier version of the Ranger.

And a lot of people have occasional need for a truck but don't want to or can't afford to own more than one car, so they use the truck for all their driving.

They retain their value because they _are_ useful for real work and are mostly built for longer lives. Even if new purchases are for luxury reasons used purchases have prices pushed up for working people.

I just made up a name. I know Rebel is a model that’s hilariously large. Don’t know about others.

That’s what one would expect, but in some parts of the US it’s not uncommon to see dilapidated houses with a shiny tricked out F-150 that’s never worked a day in its life sitting out in the parking lot…

I think for some it’s an identity thing more than anything else.

I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and when I went back to visit the family home a few years ago, every street was parked up on both sides with giant vehicles. It was a sight to behold.

They weren't all the most expensive trucks, and many were noticeably older. Things in our town went up and down with the cycle of the car industry.

Another reason is to avoid letting the inside of the bed get scratched. I lived in Texas for a while, and people were that fussy about their trucks.

Yes, the RAM Rampage is comparable to a Ford Maverick which is a unibody vehicle with a truck bed.

The massive truck they likely meant would be a RAM 3500 HD super crew cab full size bed Cummins diesel dually rear axle with a vertical dual stainless steel smokestack exhaust kit for good measure. Which is essentially the largest truck you can get with a pickup bed from RAM, GM, or Ford; and they go for over $100,000 with options.

There are even larger monstrosities with pickup beds built on top of 550/5500/Class 5 truck chassis which are basically a Canyonero from He Simpsons in real life: https://www.elevationoffgrid.com/

My favorite derogatory term for a vehicle type is ‘hausfrauenpanzer’ which means ‘housewife tank’ in German, which is used for a large SUV in Germany, lol.

These new guys don't. The descendant of the original REO is Nucor Steel. REO owned a steel roofing company, and through a strange chain of events, that unit became the biggest steel company in the US.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucor

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.)

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.

They are not in the website business though.

"...on the subway wall." - Paul Simon

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REO_Speed_Wagon

But you do find plenty of dubious traits in the authors (both the toilet scrawlers and the literary gods).

some guy left a few hundred pounds of steel in the loading area of my workshop for stupid reasons. maybe about $80 worth in scrap. he kept coming by and claiming someone was going to pick up it up, and getting really threatening about us stealing the value from him. the scrap yard is 200 ft away. he drives a big jacked up truck. after a couple weeks of this I'm like 'look, I'll cut it down, and we can throw it in that truck of yours and you can roll 200ft down the road and we'll be done with it'. he was incensed, his bed liner would get all scratched up.

after that I dragged it out onto the curb for the meth addicts to sell.

Dang, if only someone made an everyday car with a soft weather proof enclosed cargo area, possibly you could have the tailgate open up and away as well so it's not in the way. I would think Americans would love to have something more practical than a work vehicle

The safety aspect is intersting. The driver might be safer, but they are vastly more likely to kill anything they hit.

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2025/being-hit-suv-i...