The pickup truck segment has been steadily expanding for decades now, with more models, more use cases, and more technology on offer for buyers. Here are the biggest and most recent pickup-related stories, debuts, and reviews from the past month.
Ram announces electric 1500 coming 2024, range-extender model may follow
Ram 1500 Revolution Battery-electric Vehicle (BEV) Concept multifunction tailgate Photo by Stellantis
Ram knew it didn’t have to tell all about its first electric pickup truck to get people excited. It’s a new truck! It’s a new electric truck! And so here we are, topping our list of recent pickup-related headlines with what few details we have regarding the Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept and the production vehicle it will spawn, to arrive in 2024. From the 3,500-word press release on the vehicle, here is the one sentence we’d classify as must-read: “The Ram 1500 Revolution BEV Concept can add up to 100 miles [160 km] of range in approximately 10 minutes with 800-volt DC fast-charging at up to 350 kW.”
Another interesting tidbit that surfaced after the initial launch leading us to believe the feature won’t be ready for year one is that the truck may welcome a gas-powered range extender at some point in its life cycle to help address lacking skills in two categories Canadians tend to care about: towing and winter performance.
All the trucks Canadians couldn’t stop buying in 2022
2023 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro Photo by Toyota
Pickup prices are at an all-time high. Their average selling price has risen 7 per cent since last year. Meanwhile, volume remains a serious issue. What did this all add up to? Why, record pickup-truck sales in 2022, of course!
Sales of pickups of all sizes rose in 2022, but not for just any old thing with four wheels and a box. Canadians have the same taste as their American cousins when it comes to trucks, in so much as anything with a Blue Oval and an “F” in the name is gobbled up on both sides of the border. Ford’s F-Series, though down one per cent over the year, was the most-purchased in 2022, while GM’s Silverado and Sierra fell into their spot in second position as the only other truck to sell over 100,000 units. The Toyota Tacoma held its position as top-selling midsize truck, but only barely, as the Colorado and Canyon from GM, and Maverick from Ford, nipped at its heels. Click here to see what other pickups sold big in 2022.
We crunched the crew-cab numbers to get the truth about towing
2024 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD High Country Photo by Chevrolet
Truck-makers do a lot of bragging about towing capacity, often in ads that display a small disclaimer about the model shown doing the heavy pulling being a “properly equipped” model, a.k.a. one most heavy-duty truck users aren’t likely to purchase, because it’s not a crew cab. In the interest of servicing the hard-working men and women who use these big rigs, we’ve listed out the towing capacity of Canada’s popular work trucks in the spec they’re most often ordered in, breaking down figures by conventional towing, fifth-wheel towing, and gooseneck towing.
All of the haulers included are crew cab, standard-length box for single-rear-wheel trucks, and four-wheel-drive.
Read on to see the towing figures for the 2023 Ford F-250 Super Duty, 2024 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 3500 HD, 2024 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 2500 HD, and more.
Ram forwards Maverick-fighting midsize pickup
A spy shot of the Ram 1200 Photo by Spiedbilde
Ram has never been one to sit back and watch Ford feast in an uncrowded truck segment, so it’s not shocking to see photos of a small Ram pickup camouflaged to look like an SUV out and about in Europe.
Rumoured to be called the Ram 1200, after the existing Ram 700 and Ram 1000 minitrucks sold outside our market, the unit was spied undergoing extreme weather testing in Sweden alongside a Fiat Strada, which looked slightly smaller in comparison. Sources suggest shoppers will be able to choose between a diesel or gas engine, but based on the trend here in North America, we predict Canadians having the gasser picked for them.
Audi’s Activesphere concept is half pickup, half coupe, and fully awesome
Audi Activesphere is a pickup-coupe concept vehicle Photo by Audi
Audi revealed a wild concept that combines the characteristics of a pickup truck with the body of a four-door coupe this week. As the latest of the brand’s ‘Sphere concepts, the Activesphere is designed to be capable of autonomous driving with controls and a steering wheel that retracts beneath the dash. Drivers wearing third-party headsets will be able to interact with mixed-reality objects such as ventilation controls that appear when the system tracks their eyes to the vents.
With the glass top back, the electric concept looks much like a fastback four-door coupe, albeit one with a generous lift; but when it drops the tailgate and moves the glass top into the forward position, its pickup truck genetics really come through. The Activephere’s powertrain is made up of electric motors on the front and rear making 435 horsepower and 531 lb-ft of torque. More details and images in the link above.
Keyword: Pickup News Roundup: Ram’s EV, and Audi’s pickup-coupe concept