Image via Cameron Scholtz/Facebook Marketplace
There’s been rumbling for at least two or three years now that Toyota is going to release a new compact truck in the US. Those rumors have flared up big time in the last week with stories about the possibility featured in many news outlets. But all of them miss the boat entirely that this move has more to do with Slate than anyone else.
Ford has doubled the size of its Bronco overlanding program.
In every one of these articles, the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz are the focus. That’s understandable because at the moment those two are the only compact trucks for sale in the US. But they’ve been around for several years, yet Toyota hasn’t done much to fight them.
While it’s possible Toyota has something already in development and is getting closer to a reveal, the timing of this surge in talk is curious. After all, Toyota is the master of timing, like when it allowed Honda to expend tons of resources to bring the hybrid Insight to the US, then blew right past it with the Prius.
Likely, it’s been developing a plan to do something similar to Ford and Hyundai with their compact trucks. But this new surge in talk coincides with the Slate reveal. That generated surprising excitement as a highly customizable, cheap, and modular electric compact truck.
Toyota likely sees Slate as the most viable threat at this point. Whatever it’s been cooking up, the Japanese automaker probably feels the Maverick and Santa Cruz are jokes in comparison, which isn’t too hard to imagine.
But Slate, a company with no reputation or customer base, has already racked up over 100,000 reservations. That’s going to make Toyota stand up and notice.
Exactly why Toyota finds Slate threatening isn’t clear, but we have a funny feeling once we see its new compact truck, it might make more sense. This very well could be a pitched battle between an industry giant and a new kid on the block.
Image via Cameron Scholtz/Facebook Marketplace
