Hands on and first ride in TELO’s tiny electric truck that’s as big as a Mini
TELO gave us an exclusive opportunity to get up close and personal with a pre-production version of its tiny electric truck, slated to ship its first units later this year.
We first learned about TELO back in 2023, when the company announced it was planning to build an electric truck the size of a Mini but with a bed the size of a Hummer’s.
it sounds impossible, but there’s a lot of wasted space in vehicle designs these days, especially trucks where automakers consider an enormous front hood as an important part of design (despite the inherent deadliness of this design decision).
TELO went another direction, focusing on a truck with maximum utility and minimum footprint – and says it will be able to offer utility on par with today’s mid-size pickup trucks like the Toyota Tacoma, but in a package that’s only 152 inches long (for comparison, tiny Japanese kei cars are 134 inches long maximum).
Now, less than two years later, TELO has completed its first full pre-production driveable vehicle, and we were invited out to have a look and take a ride. Previously, TELO had only made a design mule and a go kart-like chassis, but now it’s got something that actually looks like a real car (and includes the recent design/aero changes from when the truck got its configurator and $41k base price).
The design changes are mainly aerodynamic, including a more rounded roofline and moving the “pill” design element near the front wheel well, where it now helps airflow around the exposed front wheel, reducing turbulence. TELO says it was able to improve aerodynamics significantly through the use of CFD aerodynamic optimization software, saving on expensive wind tunnel time.
But we also got a first look at some features we hadn’t seen before.
For example, the mid-gate. The bed is normally 62 inches long and 49 inches wide (between the wheel arches, so you can fit a sheet of plywood), but when folding down the rear seats, that gets extended even further. The bed is also covered with L-tracks all around, making it easy to tie down gear.
That said, we’ve seen a lot of truck prototypes that promise a mid-gate, and then they don’t end up on the production vehicle. So we’ll put an asterisk on that feature for now.
And note: that bed is half a foot longer than the bed of a Rivian R1T and the same size as a Hummer EV’s bed, despite TELO being nothing close to the size of those trucks.
Another neat storage feature is one that seems to have been cribbed from Rivian’s “gear tunnel,” a long, lockable storage space underneath the bed and the passenger compartment which is useful for dirty gear that you don’t want to bring inside the cab, but don’t want to leave in the bed. TELO has a similar (but smaller) space, which it dubs the “monster tunnel” – because, like a monster, it’s… under the bed (hiyoooooo!).
On the interior, there isn’t exactly a lot of space, but there’s enough for normal-sized people – and even abnormally-sized ones. One of the journalists in attendance was 6’10”, and he said “I fit fine.”
Both front and rear seats had plenty of headroom and good foot room, owing to the floating seat design which allows rear seat passengers to put their feet under the front seat.
The knee room was perhaps a slight limitation, especially on rear seat ingress, as the door aperture is taller and more narrow than most. Same with the driver seat, my knees could have had a little more room, but we didn’t get a chance to fiddle with seat and steering wheel adjustments, so this is probably a solvable problem.
And while we didn’t sit inside the truck for long, it’s certainly no less comfortable than other working vehicles we’ve tried (step vans, box trucks and so on) despite being a fraction of the overall size.
The cockpit area includes a wide center touchscreen and several gauges in the driver instrument cluster, though none of this was anywhere near final. Some were static screens, some could be interacted with via remote, but the touchscreen wasn’t working yet.
Then, I got the chance to be the first journalist to ever take a ride in TELO’s pre-production vehicle.
It was just a quick ride around the block in the industrial part of town, but it proved that this isn’t just a design project.
TELO says the truck will have options for either a 300hp single motor or 500hp dual motor configuration. While the truck we rode in had two motors, they were limited to 40% of power for the time being. So the truck got around fine, but nothing exceptional.
The next question is whether a tiny truck even needs 500hp to begin with, but that can wait for another day – perhaps until we’re able to put it to payload/towing tests. TELO says it has a payload capacity of 1,600lbs and towing capacity of 6,600lbs.
TELO also could branch out into offering some sort of off-road package, and pointed out its nearly 90º approach angle, given that the front tires go all the way up to the very front of the vehicle.
And here you can hear the wonderful quiet of electric mobility… before any sort of dumb noisemakers get added and spoil the fun:
Despite being small, the truck is still rather hefty with a 4,400lb curb weight, regardless of battery option (the larger option uses newer, denser cells to pack more energy in a similar weight). This is still thousands of pounds less than other electric trucks (~6-7k lbs), but (understandably) quite a bit more than the Mini SE (~3,200lbs), and even not far off from the Toyota Tacoma (~4,500lb) to which TELO compares itself.
Speaking of that comparison – the TELO truck is a full five feet shorter than the “compact” Toyota Tacoma or four feet shorter than the Maverick, to say nothing of other enormous vehicles in the US. TELO gave us a live demo of what the truck looks like next to both a Mini Cooper SE and a full size RAM 2500 pickup.
This really underlines how much of our space we’ve given up for something that doesn’t really offer a whole lot more utility (that you probably won’t use anyway). And how many of our lives we’re giving up for those pedestrian-murdering truck front ends.
Because, as trucks and SUVs keep getting larger, and automakers keep pushing more and more people into them, and emissions and pedestrian deaths keep rising, the US desperately needs more small vehicles – and needs a company that will actually try to sell them, instead of ignoring they exist and pushing people towards bigger.
So we here at Electrek are quite excited for what this TELO truck represents – finally, the advent of a reasonably sized utility vehicle. They’re available in Europe, they’re available in Japan… but this would be the first available here, at least in a very long time.
TELO offers a really compelling argument here: a vehicle that’s capable but isn’t impossible to park, isn’t excessive in terms of material inputs, and doesn’t contribute to the ever-rising plague of pedestrian deaths from oversized vehicles. If you occasionally want a truck for truck things, but otherwise want an efficient vehicle that actually fits places, this seems like a good option.
And TELO’s $41k base price and 260 miles of range compare favorably to the most popular commercial EV: Ford’s E-Transit, with an 89kWh battery, 159 mile range and $51k base price (which is now the same as the gas version). That’s a much larger vehicle, but for a company that doesn’t need that much space but still wants to do intra-city deliveries, tradesman work, etc., this could be a great option
All in all, despite TELO not being all that old of a company (or that large – it only has 11 employees to date, with one cofounder being Forrest North, an early Tesla employee, and the board including Marc Tarpenning, a Tesla founder), it has produced a pretty neat vehicle which seemed pretty well put together – at least for the few minutes we got to ride in it.
It’s an important milestone given that TELO says it will ship its first vehicles by the end of this year. That’s a very close timeline – though it’s only expecting to ship maybe 100 cars this year, and will do so through contract manufacturing, which keeps startup costs low.
You may remember another EV startup that used contract manufacturing – Fisker. That didn’t go so well, but one thing Fisker did do was come out almost on time (it was unveiled in 2020 with a 2022 release date, and the first Ocean was delivered in May 2023 – a pretty tight timeline, as far as car manufacturing goes). So, hopefully TELO doesn’t let its timeline slip too much here.
I still think it’s optimistic that this truck will ship this year, because there is still a lot to be done before this truck is production ready. But TELO is at least not overstating its volume ambitions. It only expects to ship in very limited numbers at first, and will scale manufactuirng later through its contract manufacturing process. Though it hasn’t yet announced a volume production partner, it says it’s in discussions with several different well-known manufacturers, and we’ll learn more about which one they’re working with once ink hits paper.
You can view the TELO configurator here, where you can also make a $152 refundable reservation (the same as the length of the vehicle in inches). TELO says it has 5,000 reservations already – up 1,300 from the last time we checked in December.
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At least 5 Waymo self-driving I-Pace electric cars were set on fire amid protests that turned violent in Los Angeles this weekend.
It could represent as much as 5% of Waymo’s fleet in Los Angeles being destroyed.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched several raids in the Los Angeles area last week that triggered large-scale protests across the city over the weekend.
The protests were mostly peaceful and aimed to bring attention to federal agents indiscriminately arresting and detaining people, but in some cases, they were violent clashes with the police.
Things took a turn for the worse with President Trump calling the National Guard.
There have been several instances of rioting, looting, and general property damage.
In a unique case, it appears that one or more rioters purposely called multiple Waymo vehicles to Arcadia and Alameda streets, where they slashed the vehicles’ tires, broke the windows, and wrote anti-ICE messages on them.
At around 5 PM on Sunday, the Waymo vehicles were set on fire:
With the ongoing protests, the fire department couldn’t get access to the vehicles and they eventually completely burned down:
Waymo is believed to be operating a fleet of about 100 self-driving cars in the Los Angeles area. Therefore, a significant percentage of the fleet was burned down today.
The company completes over 120,000 rides per week in California, but it operates a bigger fleet in the Bay Area and covers a big service area than in LA.
Waymo shouldn’t have too many issues replenishing its fleet, considering it recently acquired over 2,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles to more than double its entire fleet over the next year.
The company currently operates over 1,500 vehicles across San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.
With a high utilization rate, the relatively small fleet has already taken significant market shares of those ride-hailing markets. It is estimated that Waymo accounts for approximately 20% of the ride-hailing market in San Francisco.
The new vehicles are going to enable Waymo to expand into new markets.
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Environment
‘Bitcoin Family’ hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
The Taihuttus on a ski trip to Sierra Nevada in southern Spain. They sold everything they owned in 2017 to bet on bitcoin — and now travel full-time as a family of five.
Didi Taihuttu
A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists.
Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called “Bitcoin Family,” said he overhauled the family’s entire security setup after a string of threats.
The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.
Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
“We have changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet on my phone. And that’s not a lot.”
CNBC first reported on the family’s unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America.
The Taihuttu family dressed up for Halloween in Phuket, Thailand, where they recently moved homes after receiving disturbing messages pinpointing their location from YouTube videos.
Didi Taihuttu
As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure.
This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives.
One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal.
In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive.
Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements.
The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets.
“It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen,” said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions.
Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.
That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders.
But Taihuttu isn’t waiting for corporate solutions. He’s opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile.
As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation.
“We’ve been talking about it a lot as a family,” Taihuttu said. “My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street.”
Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What’s the plan?
One of the steel plates the Taihuttu family uses to store part of their bitcoin seed phrase. Didi etched it by hand using a hammer and letter punch — part of a decentralized storage system spread across four continents.
Didi Taihuttu
Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely.
“We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now,” Taihuttu said. “And I think we’ll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we’re definitely going to skip France.”
Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs.
“We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved. And now we don’t film anything at all.”
“It’s a strange world at the moment,” he said. “So we’re taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we’re now completely hardware wallet-less. We don’t use any hardware wallets anymore.”
To throw off would-be attackers, Didi Taihuttu encrypts select words from each 24-word seed phrase — then splits the phrases into four sets of six and hides them around the world.
Didi Taihuttu
The family’s new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents.
“Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can’t do anything,” Taihuttu explained.
On top of that, he’s added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective.
“You only need to remember which ones you changed,” he said.
Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups.
While the family still holds some crypto in “hot” wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed.
The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit.
Didi Taihuttu during a recent visit to Sierra Nevada, Spain. The family’s lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic, and all-in on bitcoin — makes them outliers even in the crypto world.
Didi Taihuttu
About 65% of the family’s crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust.
“What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?” he said. “You’re putting your capital back in someone else’s hands.”
Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he’s targeting for 2033.
The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model.
Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live largely off-grid, managing crypto through decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold storage system.
Didi Taihuttu
Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a “single point of compromise” — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access.
Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share.
The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers.
Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto’s original ethos.
While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids.
Lately, he’s also considering stepping back from the spotlight.
“It’s really my passion to create content. It’s really what I love to do every day,” he said. “But if it’s not safe anymore for my daughters … I really need to think about them.”
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