Telo's Tiny Electric Truck Now Tows 8,000 lbs — Here's What That Means for EV Owners

Telo just raised the tow rating on its Mini-sized electric pickup to 8,000 lbs, up from the 6,600 lbs it had been advertising. The startup says months of real-world towing convinced it that the little MT1 can safely pull more than a truck that size looks like it should — and at 152 inches long, it really doesn't look like it should.

That number puts a pickup roughly the length of an electric Mini Cooper in the same conversation as a base Ford F-150. Co-founder and CTO Forest North announced the change in a video, and framed it around his own garage.

"In the beginning, we set a stake in the ground that we wanted to be able to tow over 6,000 pounds. I personally have a travel trailer and I wanted to make sure that I could tow that. Now that we're further into it, we have towed a bunch of things. We understand towing and what this vehicle can do."

What the MT1 actually is

The MT1 is about as small as a modern pickup gets, but the spec sheet doesn't read like a small truck:

• 152 inches long — roughly the footprint of an electric Mini Cooper
• A 60-to-96-inch bed, with seating for up to five
• Dual-motor all-wheel drive rated at 500 hp
• 77 kWh standard pack good for 260 miles, or a 106 kWh long-range pack rated at 350-plus miles
• 400 kW sustained charging on a dual 800V/400V pack architecture
• Starting at $41,520, with first deliveries targeted for late 2026

Why a small EV can tow big

North's case leans on the physics that favor an electric drivetrain with a trailer on the hitch. The first piece is braking. A four-wheel-drive electric truck that can move a lot of power in and out of its pack can regen down a long grade almost indefinitely instead of cooking its brakes.

"That means that we can regen for miles and miles and miles going down a pass — you're not touching your brakes and yet you have complete control over your vehicle and your trailer."

Heat is the other half. Combustion trucks dump most of their energy as heat and then have to shed even more of it under load — exactly what SAE's J2807 tow standard is built to stress with tests like the 11-mile, 6% Davis Dam grade run. North argues that math barely applies to an EV: "For us, it really doesn't change the equation that much. We have so much torque and so much horsepower together, and it's instant. That makes starting on a grade so easy."

Then there's packaging. The MT1's hitch sits close to the rear axle, which means a shorter lever arm, so trailer tongue weight doesn't lift the front end the way it would on a longer truck. And the MT1 isn't a lightweight — North puts it at over 4,000 lbs, riding on a steel chassis with a crossmember tying the hitch into the frame. In his telling, small is a structural advantage: the same strength takes less mass than it would on a full-size truck.

He was also blunt about the limits. For long hauls, "a big diesel truck is probably going to be better for the near term." The MT1's pitch is shorter trips, where a compact, easy-to-park truck that tows well beats wrestling a full-size rig.

The 8,000-lb number unlocks a new class of trailer

The jump from 6,600 to 8,000 lbs isn't a random bump. It's aimed at a wave of trailers that carry their own batteries and motors. Telo showed this off in July, when the MT1 towed Pebble's 5,800-lb Flow electric travel trailer. The Flow's "Easy Tow" active propulsion system uses the trailer's own drivetrain and regen to cut the effective load on the tow vehicle — which is how a truck the size of a Mini pulled a full-size camper without drama.

North says a lot of these new powered trailers land in the 6,000-to-8,000-lb range, so the higher rating is what makes the MT1 a real option for them. The same electrical headroom is what makes the regen story credible, too: a truck that can absorb 400 kW on a charger can absorb a lot of regen coming down a hill.

How 8,000 lbs stacks up

Against full-size electric pickups, 8,000 lbs sits at the low end of the field:

• Telo MT1 (152 in): 8,000 lbs
• Ford F-150 Lightning: 10,000 lbs
• Tesla Cybertruck: 11,000 lbs
• Rivian R1T: 11,000 lbs
• GMC Hummer EV pickup: 12,000 lbs
• Chevy Silverado EV: 12,500 lbs

For a gas comparison, a 2025 F-150 tows anywhere from about 8,400 lbs with the base 2.7L V6 up to 13,500 lbs fully optioned. So Telo's tiny truck now claims to tow roughly what an entry-level full-size F-150 does, in a package nearly four feet shorter and thousands of pounds lighter. None of the full-size EV trucks come close to it on footprint or on that $41,520 starting price.

What this means if you tow with an EV today

Telo has raised roughly $20 million total — including a Series A led by Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning — and it's still working toward production readiness and federal compliance, so a healthy dose of skepticism is fair until trucks are on the road.

But the underlying argument applies to the EV you already own. If you tow with a Cybertruck, Model Y, or Model X, the regen-down-the-grade advantage is real, and so are the practical gotchas: range drops hard with a trailer, so charging stops need planning, and hitch geometry and tongue weight matter more than the headline tow number. A quality hitch setup, the right adapters so you can reach whatever charger you find on a trailer-friendly pull-through, and roadside safety gear in the frunk are the difference between an easy trip and a long one. Trailer season rewards the owners who prep before they hook up — not the ones who find out at the top of a mountain pass.