#trucks

The hottest vehicle segment that doesn’t yet exist — full-size electric pickups — continues to arouse interest online, though the nature of that buzz can’t be directly translated into future sales.

Lofty promises of future product may send investors and tech geeks into mouth-frothing displays of overreaction, but established automakers, regardless of what Silicon Valley disciples claim, stand a better chance of having their wares on the market before the upstarts. Ford’s upcoming F-150 EV is one of those products. Scheduled to arrive in the middle of 2022, the automaker is preparing a plant overhaul designed to slot the new variant into its next-generation truck’s assembly operation.

Ford’s build-and-price tool can now be wielded against the next-generation F-150 pickup, revealing that going hybrid will vary wildly in price, depending on where you start.

While a report last month detailed expected pricing, now it’s official. The cost of adding hybrid power to your 2021 F-150 sinks as your truck’s standard power output rises.

The all-new 2019 GMC Sierra 1500 arrived with many new items in tow, but one of the most notable was the brand’s MultiPro tailgate — a hinge-heavy piece of hardware capable of assisting box entry, acting as a workshop, serving up drinks, or blasting tunes.

For an automaker that criticized Ford so-called “Man Step,” MultiPro was akin to one of those staircase escalators for geriatric homeowners. Still, it possessed strong marketing potential, and it might soon appear on bowtie-badged trucks.

There’s no more secrets when it comes to the Ram 1500 TRX. The brand’s brawniest light-duty pickup appeared Monday with a Hellcat V8 nestled between its bulging fenders, ready to tackle high-speed runs across the desert (or Nebraska) for anyone with $71,790 burning a hole in their wallet.

Bragging rights sometimes fetch a steep price, and the TRX’s after-destination sticker only rises from there. Sure, it’s potent and contains all the goodies a sophisticated moonshine runner could want, but what about the truck it’s meant to challenge — and beat?

Fiat Chrysler pulled the wraps off its latest supercharged creation on Monday, revealing a full-size pickup the automaker dubs the “apex predator of the truck world.”

Fear FCA’s baby.

As Ram’s answer to the Ford F-150 Raptor, the TRX dons a wider track, extra suspension travel, and tosses the model’s naturally aspirated engines for a mill that’s more familiar to the Dodge crowd.

With the Ram 1500 TRX assumed to arrive with a V8 making oodles of power, Ford’s F-150 Raptor may round out the year with egg on its face. In 2017, the Blue Oval ditched the model’s 6.2-liter V8 for a 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 and added a quartet of gears — pissing some die-hard fans of the model right off. Baja boys bemoaned the decision to put a more complicated motor into a vehicle that’s designed to be abused largely off-road, while others were just mad they were missing out on that V8 sound. However, most of those who weren’t obsessed with SVT badging agreed the changes hadn’t ruined the truck and that the second-gen suspension upgrades ultimately made for a better off-road vehicle.

That said, Ram dumping a model onto the market that targets the same audience, and with a V8 on board, is bad news for Ford. But it doesn’t have to be, especially if the noises we hear coming from the tailpipes of the latest test mule are what some listeners claim.

General Motors has conquest on the mind. As the Labor Day long weekend and all of its associated new car deals looms, the automaker wants to woo owners of Fiat Chrysler products (or their family members) into top-selling Chevrolet and GMC models.

It’s not a huge incentive, but it does call attention to the General’s renewed rivalry with Ram. Chevrolet in particular wants to widen the pickup sales lead it only just recaptured from its resurgent rival.

The saga of the Nissan Titan will come to an end in Canada next year, with the recently refreshed full-size pickup and its tweener XD sibling leaving that market after 2021 as the automaker changes course on a global scale.

Nissan Canada confirmed the discontinuation to TTAC on Thursday, claiming the automaker, as part of its new four-year plan, will focus more closely on its core strengths. Refreshed for 2020, the Titan line has recently seen a decline in the number of build configurations offered, as well as vehicles sold, making the model’s vanishing act a seeming inevitability.

Ram has issued a succinct press release on the status of its answer to the Ford Raptor. The 2021 Ram 1500 TRX is now officially set to debut next Monday, ready to dazzle you with the volume of dirt it can kick up when asked.

Sadly, that’s about all we can tell you. Despite the concept (pictured) coming equipped with a healthy 6.2-liter V8 belching out nearly 600 horsepower way back in 2016, everyone and their mother now claims the production TRX will come with a Hellcat motor to ensure Ford is shamed into submission. While that’s hardly the only metric one could use to measure the total value of an off-road pickup, most seem to think it’s a good place to start.

The Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon gain arguably overdue refreshes for 2021, ensuring continued consumer traction amid boosted competition from rivals. The midsize pickup segment has grown, and not just in volume.

Joining the GM duo and perennially popular Toyota Tacoma last year was the Ford Ranger; meanwhile, Nissan’s long-awaited Frontier revamp lands for ’21.

Word is that the Canyon, which sees a new AT4 trim for the new model year, will don extra goodies by year’s end. Good news for a truck that’s increasingly playing second fiddle to its bowtie-wearing sibling.

A strange phenomenon (one of many) cropped up in recent years among the more ardent of very-online quasi-activists, one where people seem to think that jumping to the most hyperbolic potential outcome of their “enemy’s” actions somehow lends weight to their argument — to their opposition to something, anything.

It also manifests as a person attributing the maximum amount of malice to the actions of a person or entity they dislike, as if they hold a special key to the innermost thoughts of their most despised foes.

Which brings us to large pickup trucks and the nation’s children.

The question of how fledgling EV maker Lordstown Motors plans to fund production of the Endurance pickup has been answered. On Monday, the owner of GM’s former Lordstown Assembly plant announced a merger with a blank-check company, with a cash-raising NASDAQ listing as its goal.

Lordstown Motors plans to finalize the merger with DiamondPeak Holdings Corp., which is already listed on the NASDAQ, by the fourth quarter of this year — after which the combined entity will carry the symbol “RIDE.”

Quite suddenly, large electric pickups have become the hottest thing you can’t yet buy. But they’re out there, looming, just waiting to see whether demand for this embyonic segment materializes.

Ford, General Motors, Rivian, Tesla, and Lordstown Motors all have a stake in the game, with the next two years promising to reveal exactly how much pent-up thirst exists for these battery-bound behemoths. Watching from the sidelines is Fiat Chrysler, an automaker whose historical aversion to EVs is a matter of record.

Not surprisingly, FCA plans to take a wait-and-see approach.

Jeep sent me a desert-running rig, and I took it to the grocery store.

Let’s back up a bit. Jeep introduced the Gladiator Mojave at the 2020 Chicago Auto Show, with the intent of this trim being meant for blasts across the desert, while still being as capable as any Gladiator, if not more so, on a rocky trail.

I was all set to join others in the automotive media on a junket to drive the Mojave, almost certainly in the actual desert, in Southern California this spring. Then the world shut down.

A vehicle guaranteed to cause the least possible amount of harm to the planet and its finite resources, hands down, offered up something of a sneak peak on Wednesday.

Make that “vehicles,” plural. The GMC Hummer EV, a beast of an electric pickup due to roll out of General Motors’ repurposed Detroit-Hamtramck plant late next year, will have a sibling: An SUV, as it’s a body style worthy of the reborn Hummer name’s heritage and also the thing Americans WANT.

And check out that spa-sized frunk.