A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

I like it. My wife runs a riding academy and we use a Honda Fit the way some people would use a pickup truck: we can fit 10 bales of wood shavings in the back. [1] We’re dreading when it fails because they don’t make the fit anymore and compact hatchbacks seem to be on the way out. Recent experiences have made me a bit of a Buick enthusiast and I can see driving a 2005-ish sedan except that I won’t get those sawdust bales into the trunk. We are also thinking of fitting in EV into the fleet, so far the used Nissan Leaf has been the main contender but this is a pickup truck I could get into.

[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.

Would a used Metris cargo work? We have the passenger version and it’s excellent. True 1000kg load rating, and the cargo version can be had extremely cheaply.

We also have our eye on this truck, but with less urgency since our van does everything we could want.

The Telo MT1 also has us eyeing it…

The Honda Fit is great. You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission (used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable), and if you're using it heavily then you have the advantage that most cara on the market take less abuse, so you can maybe grab a decade beyond that by picking up somebody else's used Fit when you're done repairing yours.

I also love this design and I'm happy that someone is doing it. I think it's unlike anything else on the market.

But, they won't necessarily be competing against other new things on the market. My wife also rides horses and we got a $5000 20 year old F250 which is very basic but has been bulletproof, and it can tow. I imagine old, basic trucks, either cheap domestic ones or kei trucks will be what this thing competes against.

I hope it does well. This is the kind of design thinking that the auto industry needs.

Also I'm increasingly convinced that the Honda fit is what peak performance looks like. But when it dies you do have options - maybe a Ford Transit Connect or a Metris.

how do you haul hoss though? i would imagine you then outsource to professional hauling services? what do you do for vet visits, when it's not a farm call?

To be fair, a lot of farms need a big-ass pickup truck because they are always towing horses to go to shows or trailheads. We have 70 beautiful acres and a network of trails my wife built that were inspired by Het Vondelpark in Amsterdam. [1] If everything goes right we trailer in a horse once and never have to trailer it out although some horses don't fit in or have to go to the vet.

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

The Fit, however, is really genius. It's got the utility of an SUV in the body of a compact. I can't believe Honda's excuse that it wasn't selling -- in my area it is a running gag that if you have a blue Fit somebody will park another blue Fit next to you at the supermarket or that it makes a great getaway car, if somebody catches you doing donuts in their lawn you can say it musta been somebody elese.

Just pay somebody. In a rural area there are a lot of farmers with a big truck and a trailer and it costs less than the monthly payment on a big truck.

The Chevy Bolt is very similar shape and size to the fit. Supposedly there is going to be a 2026 model. People have thrown after market tow hitches and towed (small) trailers pretty far even. Check out the BoltEV subreddit.

Most small SUVs should be fine though. You switched between wood shavings and hay bales, but I reliably fit 7 hay bales in a 2005 Saturn Vue (wife always managed to get 9 in there), which means that 10 bales of shavings should not be a problem since they're much smaller.

TBH, I think a minivan would make it even easier.

All micro cargo van providers have stopped building them. The Transit Connect, Metris, Promaster City and NV200 are all now discontinued. The VW Caddy isn't sent to the states.

There are rumors that they will make a cargo van based on the Maverick but they make them in Mexico, and with the tariff situation I'm not sure if they will be going through with that anymore.

All of the perfect compacts and hatchbacks are slowly disappearing, and solid work trucks have been replaced with $60k+ fake trucks that will melt their gaskets with crappy turbos and can't even fit a piece of 2x4 in the back. There is an enormous category of consumers that just want an auto that's simple, affordable, safe, fuel efficient and reasonably sized. Almost nobody is serving them right now.

i'll be honest, if the rest of your profile wasn't at least somewhat corraborative, i'd say you're larping, but what you're saying is at least irresponsible. most farmers in rural area have livestock trailers, not horse trailers, hauling for hire (including if you're hauling for students at your barn or whatever) requires CDL and a bunch of other documentation, which you're not typically going to have as a farmer, and more documentation if you're hauling interstate (my vet is across a border), but would i even trust random joe dirt to haul for me? i've hired professionals to transport horses, and i have a handful of people who could haul in a bind and unlicensed but i wouldn't rely on them to be available in an emergency. last year i had to haul an old mare, she was colic, she laid down in the field, covered in sweet, and had to be put down at the vet, but overall it was less than an hour from load to vet. if i had to rely on "farmers", that would prolong her agony. now i just train, so i don't usually have freak accidents, but at riding barns, with students, on trail, something happens from time to time. riding barns i work with tell me horror stories all the time. i'll give you a benefit of the doubt, maybe your wife knows the details, and ithaca being horse country, maybe she's got a friendly neighbor on speed dial, but then you're at best outsourcing your responsibilities to someone else. what other things you can save on to make your operation profitable, at the expense of safety and well being of hoss?

> used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable

Where are you finding a 100k mile Honda Fit for $3k? Before I bought my current daily driver, Honda Fits were on my list to look out for and in the central NJ area I never saw one in decent condition around that mileage for less than $5k. Even looking now I see people trying to part out theirs for $2k or looking for $4k for a 200k mile one. I messaged someone on FB Marketplace that had a 2013 with 65k miles on it to try and bring down their $11k asking to $8k and just got ignored.

NJ is probably on the higher end of the market but the deviation can't be that big.

Japanese cars, particularly cars that have been orphaned, keep their value at high mileage.

If I had to get a high mileage car in a hurry in upstate NY with some expectation that my acquisition + repair costs would be reason I'd go looking for a 2005 Buick. Maybe half of that is getting older, the other half is that my son drives a '96 Buick which has needed some creative maintenance but has been rock solid reliable after a flurry of work where we replaced aging parts.

Often these "farmers" are horse traders or people I know with a CDL who have the right equipment and also do other work for me like cut my hay. One of them is "retired" but he waved to me driving a dump truck when I was photographing a sign for my Uni that had a field of daffodils in front of it this morning.

The farmers I associate with care a lot about their animals and I expect them to take the same care with mine. As a rural person I judge people based on relationships and reputation and not on how much insurance they have. I'd trust any of these people to haul a horse in a big-ass trailer than I would trust myself or my wife.

Wat. Horses are easy to haul. This happens all the time.

I use a 2018 Subaru Forester to move stuff like this, with the seats folded flat the cargo space is decent. You can add some cargo boxes on the back trailer hitch as well.

The dream is a Pacifica minivan - they make a hybrid version.

I'm also a Honda Fit fan. Technically, it is still made, just not sold in the North American market. It's had a new generation come out since they stopped selling it here, matching the new Civics' style.

The closest Honda offerings are probably the Civic Hatchback (lower roof, but the seats still fold down) and the HR-V, which is basically a Fit on stilts with more weight and slightly less room.

I went with a hatchback Civic Sport Touring to replace my Fit (which has 210K miles on it and is still reliable, though I'm passing it on to someone else) and my girlfriend is about to try the HR-V to replace her (newer) Fit that was just lost in an accident, since she needs more roof height for dog crates.

I am going to drive my Honda Fit until the wheels fall off, then I'm going to put new wheels on and drive it some more. Best car in the world IMO.

To give credit where credit is due, the ~$25k Ford Maverick was a decent step towards "enough" vehicle for many people, while minimizing cost.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a64351746/2025-ford-mav...

And definitely went the other way from the industry.

Something I also only really appreciated after spending more time out plains-west in the US, it's dangerous to drive small vehicles because of the average distances and abundance of larger wildlife.

When you're regularly driving 2+ hours one way to a town and a random pronghorn appears in the middle of the road, at night, when you're doing 85 mph... you want to be in something that can take the impact.

Sorry I wasn't clear. You can get a motor with 100k miles from a totaled car for $3k, including the labor to replace it.

To your actual question, I bought mine (2008, manual) in 2018 for $5k with 100k miles in The Bay, and it took about a month of waiting for a good deal to crop up. I've put another 100k on it without issue and plan to drive it a long time. Inflation and the chip shortage have roughly kept up with depreciation, so I'm currently seeing some good options in the $6k range and similarly expect that $5k is around the bottom of what you can pay for a nice vehicle with 100k miles on it.

Also, deviations can absolutely be that big. It's more prevalent at the top of the market, but there are big differences in Subarus and Civics, for example, in different parts of the country, even in the sub-$5k range. It's often worth a flight and driving back to purchase a car (if you value your time at $0 or have other things to do while you're there).

If the grocery store parking lot is any indication, farming is the number one profession in America. All farmers can have their big trucks and still regulate out the other 99% of the 22-foot monsters used to commute to offices.

Most farmers have a semi and thus a full class A license. Though often haul my horse is done as a labor trade - I'll haul your horse in the off season for me if you help me in my busy season, no money changes hands.

Why a Buick? Which 2005 Buick? You can probably, find a simpler or less expensive doppelgänger if you look at the same car but with a Chevy or an Olds badge. I don’t mean this as a dig, simply curios.

Comments like these are rooted in selection bias (willful or otherwise).

You're never gonna see trucks being used at the grocery store because people who are in the process of using said truck for truck stuff aren't usually stopping at the grocery store as they do it, and this is before you adjust for what kind of grocery stores HN shops at vs the kind that people who use the crap out of their trucks shop at. If you live the median "suburb to office and back" life you'll never see trucks doing anything. You need to be on the road and not in a cube during hours when "things" get done to see that. And the people who do things with their trucks mostly don't live and cross paths with the people who don't.

I could use the exact same faulty logic you're using here with slightly different parameters and come up with the conclusion that cars don't need a second row of seating.

And before anyone projects anything stupid at me, I own a minivan.

Buick is gonna be less ragged out than an Impala or Olds of same age (you see the same with the Grand Marquis vs the Crown Vic). An 05ish one will come with a 3400 or 3800v6 which was pretty solid and cheap to own by then. The rest of the car is nothing special, just keep oil and coolant in it and drive it.

Basically he's picking a very well sorted platform of a vehicle and then choosing the brand that most correlates with buyers who'll keep it in good order.

If you're towing a horse trailer you really want the biggest truck you can get or a GMC Suburban or something like that.

On the other hand in the suburbs of some New England towns that I'm sure are full of white collar workers you see nothing but trucks in the driveway and I laugh when I see a Ford F350 with a lift kit and commercial plates idling and see, a few minutes later, a few pencilneck geeks come out of a frat house and climb into it.

>You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission

In many parts of the country (I'm Canadian, I assume the same for the US) the body and undercarriage are going to rot before the drivetrain goes.

When my son got his first job and needed a car in a hurry to commute I helped him get his first car and in the search we wound up looking at a lot of Buicks that we liked and were at a good price and in good condition, particularly circa 2005 though we wound up with a '96 Park Avenue. It was my first experience owning an American car (title in my name for the cheaper insurance) and my own experience plus what I read indicates I probably would have done well with one of the 2005s.

My take is that at that age you don't pay that much more for the upbadged car but you're likely to find it in good condition but you get to enjoy the bling (the '96 is ahead of its time with traction control) and Buicks of that vintage have one of the best engines GM ever made.

> All micro cargo van providers have stopped building them. The Transit Connect, Metris, Promaster City and NV200 are all now discontinued.

This is an entirely american problem, because the small van is largely dead in the US. They're doing fine elsewhere.

The Metris is still manufactured (as the Vito, or V260 in China), and is not the smallest model which is the Citan (based on the Kangoo, with its second gen based on kangoo III in 2021).

The Promaster City (Fiat Doblo) still exists, as a rebadged Berlingo since 2022.

The NV 200 was replaced by the NV 250 (a rebadged Kangoo II) in 2019, which was then replaced by the Townstar (a rebadged Kangoo III) in late 2021. There's also the Docker / Express below that (which descends from the Logan MCV / Van).

And the Transit Connect was replaced by the Caddy (rebadged), but Ford dropped its original plans of a US release.

> There is an enormous category of consumers that just want an auto that's simple, affordable, safe, fuel efficient and reasonably sized.

Apparently not sufficiently so (or with a consistent enough need) that they can be catered to. Or at least not so that you couldn't make more money selling them pavement princesses.

> Also I'm increasingly convinced that the Honda fit is what peak performance looks like

Close. A bit of work on the rear hatch dimensions so that you could get 4'x8' sheet goods in there, as was possible on the 1980s Honda Civic.

Also, just a teensy-weensy bit more power, please. Ours struggles even on moderate hills here on the edge of the Sangres de Cristo (southern Rockies).

Otherwise, all hail the Fit/Jazz, car of the future past.

> You're never gonna see trucks being used at the grocery store because people who are in the process of using said truck for truck stuff aren't usually stopping at the grocery store as they do it,

I think you missed the point of the GP post. They were noting the presence of (a lot of) trucks at the grocery store parking lot. Whether they are towing/hauling isn't really the point.

The Pacifica and Sienna (and probably Odyssey as well) are absolute garbage for hauling crap. If that is what you are looking for, get a used one from the prior generation.

I've found this to be very regional. There are parts of the country where there are a lot fewer trucks and most appear to actually see a meaningful amount of real-truck use. There are other parts where like 40% of the goddamn cars on the road are pristine, bloated modern trucks that are just used as commuter vehicles.

My family background on one side was poor-rural and yeah, being surprised at this reads like a class difference to me.

you're not a rural person, c'mon, you're a wealthy cornell tech with a vanity farm. ithaca is dollar horse country, everyone knows that, so yeah i totally buy that in your fairly unique circumtances running a horse business off a back of a ford focus works. i read you as suggesting that the rest of the industry is silly for buying trucks, and you've got it figured out, but you simply punted on the hauling problem.

The Fit is a wonderful car. I'd buy one if I could find one for a decent price, but 40k miles 2020 (last year for them in the US) still runs around $20k at dealers and Carvana! For five grand more, I can get a brand new Corolla Hatchback, which is what I'll likely do, but I'd pick up a Fit without thinking if I could find a good price.

And for a horse that's not used to loading, a livestock trailer is often much easier because they're more comfortable getting into it than, e.g., a 2-horse slant.

Judging by the number of horses my wife hauls, most horse owners don't have their own truck/trailer. Which makes sense: for most people, the trailer won't be used very often, and hay is usually delivered by the farmer, so don't need a truck for that.

How did we get so far OT?

A used Chevy Bolt might make a good replacement. You can find them for less than $15K these days.

this whole subthread started with some cornell guy saying that you can run a horse business off a back of a gator, because your neighbors can haul for you, which is pretty much as cloud people as it goes. i'll venture that there's not a single horse farm in u.s. no matter how poor that is not subsidized with tech money that outsources its hauling. we're talking about running a business here, not hauling daisy to county fairgrounds three times a season.

depending on the rurality of that part of new england, they might have a legitimate claim to need the ground clearance and 4wd in the winter.

sometimes backroads aren't plowed well. or they. are plowed well and you need to scale a giant snowbank to get into your driveway.

(although my personal preference would be for the industry to make more rally-inspired high-clearance AWD sedans/wagons to fit this niche)

This is the issue with mine here in Minnesota. Rust is the car killer.

They're both good in different ways. The advantage of the Fit is largely in cargo height (with the magic seats flipped up), but for some other objects the 80s Civic is better.

you're limited to one horse at a time with livestock trailer, and if load is a problem, you can use a straight load and i guess remove center divider in a straight load. because i train rather than haul, i'd opt for taking time with load of course.

personal farms don't need to haul, there's no disagreement about that, but op suggested that you can run a horse business this way. it took me a while to realize that he has a vanity farm that's funded by his tech money, so you know he can gradually grow, he doesn't need to board, or train, or any of those other things people in the business diversify their income sources with.

i don't think we're OT at all. in horse business and generally farming you have two types of vehicles relevant to this conversation, trucks and gators. you absolutely need both. your truck can act as a gator, but your gator can't act a truck. you can use pretty much anything as a gator, i've got an old cherokee, an atv with a hitch and an actual gator doing the gator business. op uses a ford focus. the electric pickup from original post is probably a solid gator. kei trucks can be used as gators. but none of this stuff replaces a truck, which you still have to pay shit ton of money for.

usually in conversations like this it's horse people who come in and say "nah we need a truck to haul", but this time op suggested that you can in fact run a horse business with a gator, which prompted some questions from me

I run a Honda Pilot for this reason. With the seats folded I can haul 8’ lumber or 10’ PVC pipe inside the vehicle, no tie down needed. If I need to tow, I have a 5,000LB tow rating so most anything around the property is possible with a good trailer for a couple thousand extra.

I bought reasonably used, spent about 30k instead of 50k+ for a comparable pickup truck which lacks the ability to haul 7-8 passengers when needed.

Also has the benefit of being one of the most “Made in America” vehicles out there, #3 IIRC.

Damn, that's a great deal. And yea, $5k seems to be about the bottom of the barrel in terms of getting a decent car.

For my "daily" driver (I drive a few times a week and it's rarely more than 20 miles), I ended up buying an imported WRX on an auction site. Cost more than a used Honda Fit but it's a ton of fun to drive.

If you stay on top of fluid filming or wool waxing you can largely avoid this. I've got 7 winters of WI slush and salt on my truck and just a few nickel sized spots of surface rust on the frame so far.

There are trucks and then there are trucks. The Ford Maverick gets 42mpg in the city, 35mpg on the highway and is reasonably priced. If you value economy, ecology, efficiency and such that's right up there with a compact car. The F150 is a L size electric truck, an S size truck will appeal to people.

In my experience, most people who live in rural areas already have access to a suitable vehicle - because a 30-year-old pickup is the cheapest vehicle to own in those circumstances, long-term.

Ford have an even smaller van than the Transit Connect, the Transit Courier, I am considering an electric one for my next car.

Maybe Slate could offer a van version as well as the SUV.

We don't even have a gator. My wife does the material handling herself. Our bill for horse moving is probably less than $400 a year in a bad year, a payment on a big-ass truck is upwards of $800 a month. For that matter, in bad years my wife's business subsidized my tech activities and not the other way around.

Too bad the "ecoboost" engines in them are total garbage.

A Mazda 5 might be a good option in the future. I used to run esports events and could get 20(!) 6’ tables in the back, with some rope to keep the back door down.

The 2.0 doesn't have the problems that the 2.3 Ecoboost has. The '25 model has port injection added to deal with carbonization.

Yeah, except dealers ruined it. I wanted to buy one but every single dealership had them at $10k over MSRP.

Don't forget, 2008 was before the "cash for clunkers" program that hit the used car market and drove prices up across the board.

The rear seat legroom is absurdly good for a car that size. It's been our only car for the past 10 years for a family of 2 adults and 2 kids. Zero issues outside of regular maintenance. Bought for $18k new in 2014 (2015 model). Good times.

Love my Honda fit - had to replace the transmission at 160k km (in-warranty!) only thing I wish is it had AWD and just a little more clearance for the snow

If you’re not knowledgeable about cars, getting a 20 year-old truck is probably just not an option. Sometimes it’s totally fine, sometimes it craps out and needs a whole engine replaced!

My sister got a 2003 subaru last year for about $3,000. The oil leaked out while she was driving, and the whole engine sorta melted together and just totally died.

So I’d say for non car people, this Slate truck isn’t competing with old cars, if only on the basis of potential hidden catastrophes.

That's a supply:demand problem that will normalize in the long run though. Ford hedges their bets by not producing something risky at full-tilt; dealers maximize their profitability with an in demand model. (Especially since they're not making the absolute markup by selling full-loaded F150s at higher price points)

Ford’s pretty heavily discouraging that, and the supply/demand on the Maverick has pretty much equalized now. I put down a deposit for one recently under MSRP.