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China’s $9,000 Electric Pickup Truck is Coming to the U.S.

Pickup trucks are big business in the U.S. Never mind annual statistics, which can be mind-numbing; consider that 6,500 brand-new pickup trucks are sold in America every day. The math shows that Ford sells a pickup truck about every 30 seconds, while GM and Dodge each average roughly one pickup truck sale per minute. (Toyota and Nissan lag behind but are still significant players, together moving about 500 trucks per day.)

Is there room for another competitor in this space? China-based Kaiyun Motors think so–and without the history and branding to bolster their product, they’re betting they can compete on price. The Ford F-150, the bestselling vehicle in the U.S., has a broad pricepoint of roughly $30,000 to $70,000 dollars, depending on options and trim. Kaiyun’s Pickman, in contrast, rings in at $8,950.

The Pickman isn’t a full-size pickup, of course, and certainly can’t replace one. The diminutive vehicles are electric, requiring some 10 hours of charge time, and top out at 28 miles per hour with a 75-mile range. They don’t exude the “truck lifestyle” look that many buyers presumably purchase trucks to attain. But the Pickman can reportedly haul the 1,000 pounds required to earn the colloquial “half-ton pickup” designation, and Kaiyun reckons they’ll be attractive to farmers for on-property use.

According to Bloomberg, Kaiyun has gained U.S. regulatory approval and will begin selling the trucks in America this year. And Pickmans, unbeknownst to many, have already been operating on U.S. soil:

[Kaiyun founder Wang Chao] said his company shipped a small volume of Pickmans to the U.S. over the past year to test them out and get consumer feedback, and has continued to tailor the vehicle to the market.

“We can make our Pickman as successful as the F-150,” Wang told the publication. That’s obviously a bit of wishful boasting; the F-150 sells nearly a million units a year, whereas Wang’s 2019 sales target is 10,000 units. The question will be whether it has any long-term impact on the market or on vehicle design in America. To answer this we can look to history, although the following analogy isn’t perfect:

In the 1970s Japanese cars, which were then considered tiny pieces of junk by many Americans, surprisingly began making inroads in the U.S. auto market, fueled in part by the oil crisis. By the 1980s Japanese cars featured top-notch design and reliability, and their surging sales dominance left the Big Three scrambling to catch up. Detroit never really regained the sedan mantle, and has now largely yielded the category to focus on their truck dominance.

The question is, can another foreign peddler of what appears to be junk, once again alter the market? The Pickman’s utilitarian and affordable philosophy appeals to me–particularly as someone who lives on a farm–but my first thought is, The vehicle must be garbage. Folks said the same thing about the first Honda CVCC’s when they arrived in America–and years later, that car practically kickstarted the Fast & Furious franchise.

I say the analogy isn’t perfect because right now there’s no oil crisis, gas is cheap, and Detroit makes an average profit of $17,000 per pickup truck, which is almost twice the U.S. retail price of a Pickman. It seems unlikely that the Big Three would lower their healthy profit margins to make a lower-cost vehicle. Time will tell whether that proves to be a mistake or not.