How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks • Hacker News Board

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#151

Post by ramgine » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #49

gyulai wrote: post #40

I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks. It’s protectionism all the way down I guess. Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.

I’ve wanted a kei truck for a while. Then when you park it next to suburban mom’s expedition/escalade/luxury bus it’s so tiny it looks unsafe. Unfortunately I live in a city where small town trips are difficult without getting on a 70+ mph freeway and competing with those vehicles

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#152

Post by decafninja » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #147

Markoff wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

demohgraphics with less and less chidlren being born and more and more single occupant households would beg to disagree with you, there surely is pretty big market for 3 doors cars obviously 5 doors cars will suit bigger number of users, but many people just don't care I mean my mother has some small Yaris which has 5 doors, but the back seat (height/head space) is so small I can't sit there anyway, so what's the poi…

All of this is valid reasoning, and honestly, so many 2-door vehicles have left the market that it almost seems like there must be some level of unfulfilled demand. Just like how full size sedans have been discontinued all over the place but the Camry still sells big numbers: all the buyers have had to move by necessity to Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. However, if you are bringing up about the Jimny I assume you are…

Some of those makes you list only sold convertibles that were extremely niche, short lived, and/or incredibly ancient history. I wouldn’t use them as practical examples.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#153

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

collabs wrote: post #142

WorldMaker wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't, I said that $40k is closer to $30k than many would give it credit and that I believe that at least $10k-$20k more expensive than necessary for "luxury trim reasons" seems to be the current F-150 brand.

What stops Ford or General Motors from creating a "startup" that is not bound by its existing agreements with its dealership network to sell a new vehicle direct to consumers "in select states" where the law allows this? I mean any state where the Tesla is sold should allow this, right?

"Activist" Shareholders, primarily. Ford several years ago floated the idea of building its EV division as an almost entirely separate direct-to-consumer sub-company (specifically designed to directly compete with Tesla) and it got shutdown hard by shareholders.

Many of the biggest shareholders of both GM and Ford are their respective dealers. Shamefully this conflict of interest and reversal of some key controls is deeply entrenched in the US all the way back to the original lawsuit Dodge Brothers v Ford, which is also the dark origin of phrases like "fiduciary duty to shareholders", where then dealer network and automotive supply chain moguls the Dodge Brothers sued Ford for wanting to take record profits and reinvest them in R&D and asked that Ford give a record dividend instead (as its "fiduciary duty to shareholders"). They used that dividend to help finance their rival Dodge car manufacturer. In hindsight it is such a bizarre sequence of conflicts of interest that we're still dealing with the consequences of today (in how it created such quarterly earnings-focused myopia in US corporations), including specifically in the various ways that GM and Ford can't easily create a "startup" with no dealer network to stay competitive in EVs, why both are generally starved of R&D money compared to "startup" competitors, and also it all relates to why they are "too big to fail" given how much of the US economy is built on top of conflicts of interest and overlaps between them, their dealers, their supply chain, and their shareholders.