The Telo MT1 is a big truck trapped in a tiny truck’s body

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The Telo MT1 is a big truck trapped in a tiny truck’s body.

Telo MT1 是一辆被困在微型卡车躯壳里的大型卡车。

Tiny pickup trucks might just become a thing in the US if the California-based startup Telo has its way.

如果总部位于加州的初创公司 Telo 的计划能够实现，微型皮卡车或许会成为美国的一种潮流。

I’m bouncing down the road in San Carlos, California, zipping past behemoth tech companies like EA and Oracle, in America’s smallest electric truck.

我正坐在美国最小的电动卡车里，在加利福尼亚州圣卡洛斯的道路上颠簸前行，飞速掠过 EA 和甲骨文等科技巨头公司。

The Telo MT1 (which stands for “mini truck”) unquestionably turns heads because it looks so remarkably different from everything else on the market right now.

Telo MT1（意为“迷你卡车”）无疑非常引人注目，因为它看起来与目前市场上的其他车型截然不同。

It has a nearly cab-over design, meaning that front-seat passengers sit almost directly over the front axle. It looks a lot like a Japanese kei truck, with a super-short nose and four doors. People stop to stare as we sit at stoplights or roll silently past.

它采用了近乎平头的设计，这意味着前排乘客几乎直接坐在前轴上方。它看起来很像日本的轻型自动车（kei truck），有着超短的车头和四个车门。当我们停在红绿灯前或静静驶过时，人们都会驻足凝视。

The interior is surprisingly spacious, and while the seats are firm, they’re not uncomfortable, at least for short jaunts on the bumpy roads around Telo’s HQ. Telo Trucks cofounder and CEO Jason Marks drove us to the company’s offices ahead of my short one-block test drive, and from the passenger seat, the ride was firm but stable, thanks to a low center of gravity provided by the battery pack beneath the floor.

车内空间出奇地宽敞，虽然座椅偏硬，但并不让人感到不适，至少在 Telo 总部周围颠簸的道路上进行短途行驶时是这样。在我的短距离试驾之前，Telo Trucks 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Jason Marks 开车带我们前往公司办公室。坐在副驾驶座上，由于地板下的电池组提供了较低的重心，乘坐体验虽然硬朗但很平稳。

Behind the wheel, the MT1 feels like a lighter, more nimble pickup truck with a stiff, slightly bouncy ride without any payload in the bed, combined with all the low-end power, torque, and acceleration of an EV. Once we circle back around to the road in front of Telo’s offices, Marks has me come to a full stop and stomp on the accelerator to get a feel for just how much power the little truck puts down, remarking that this was the same road where Tesla used to do its customer test drives of the Roadster many years ago.

坐在驾驶座上，MT1 给人的感觉像是一辆更轻、更灵活的皮卡车。在货斗没有负载的情况下，行驶质感偏硬且略有颠簸，同时具备了电动汽车特有的低速动力、扭矩和加速性能。当我们绕回 Telo 办公室前的道路时，Marks 让我完全停下车，然后猛踩油门，以感受这辆小卡车的动力输出。他提到，多年前特斯拉也曾在这条路上进行 Roadster 的客户试驾。

Marks says that the production version of the Telo will accelerate 0–60mph in an estimated four seconds. The truck easily rockets from a standstill, just like any other electric vehicle on the market today, a feat for a small startup with just 30 employees.

Marks 表示，Telo 的量产版车型预计可在 4 秒内完成 0 到 60 英里/小时的加速。这辆卡车能像当今市场上的任何其他电动汽车一样，轻松地从静止状态弹射起步，对于一家仅有 30 名员工的小型初创公司来说，这确实是一项壮举。

Despite its diminutive appearance, the tiny Telo truck can go toe-to-toe with the giant SUVs and Teslas that populate this area. The Telo is, as Marks likes to point out, actually the same size as a two-door Mini Cooper, but far more practical with a tow rating of 8,000lbs, a full-size bed (96 inches), and a bevy of neat hidden features that Telo hopes will offer a viable, if somewhat pricey, alternative to the giant pickup trucks that dominate the American market.

尽管外观娇小，但这辆微型 Telo 卡车完全可以与该地区随处可见的大型 SUV 和特斯拉一较高下。正如 Marks 喜欢指出的那样，Telo 的尺寸实际上与双门 Mini Cooper 相当，但实用性要强得多，它拥有 8000 磅的牵引能力、一个全尺寸货斗（96 英寸）以及一系列巧妙的隐藏功能。Telo 希望能为统治美国市场的大型皮卡提供一种可行（尽管价格可能稍高）的替代方案。

“I hope that our truck shows how amazing and fun and useful — especially useful — a small pickup truck can be, because the current big trucks are literally killing us,” Forrest North, Telo’s cofounder and CTO, said during our interview at Telo’s headquarters. “I mean, they’re fun to be up super high and look out and feel like you’re dominating the world, but they’re killing an extra, roughly, 5,000 people per year, so do we want to just give them a pass for that?”

“我希望我们的卡车能展示出小型皮卡是多么令人惊叹、有趣且实用——尤其是实用，因为目前的大型卡车简直是在要我们的命，”Telo 的联合创始人兼首席技术官 Forrest North 在 Telo 总部接受采访时说道。“我的意思是，坐在高处俯瞰并感觉自己主宰世界确实很有趣，但它们每年额外导致大约 5000 人死亡，难道我们要对此视而不见吗？”