Truck fans are already cooling on EV pickups despite more options on the market and news of upcoming models from the likes of Chevy and Ram. The Silverado EV and Ram 1500 REV have yet to be released, while the Tesla Cybertruck has recently joined the Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning for sale in the U.S. And, yet, all of these current and upcoming EV trucks are trailing the electric Toyota Tacoma in popularity, according to a survey from Autolist.
The Toyota Tacoma EV doesn’t even exist yet, nor is there a timeline for its release. Toyota has committed to making an electric version of its popular midsize truck, but what form it will take and when it will debut is unknown. Toyota previewed a Tacoma EV concept in 2021, and it turned out the concept looked a lot like the 2024 Tacoma.
That could point to an imminent Tacoma EV release but don’t hold your breath, especially considering that Toyota waited this long to release a hybrid Tacoma, what with the addition of the i-Force MAX model. It’s anyone’s guess when the Tacoma will go electric, and when I’ve asked Toyota, representatives decline to comment. But the uncertainty is not robbing truck fans of any enthusiasm for the Tacoma EV, as the latest fully-electric truck survey from Autolist shows:
In 2023, The Toyota Tacoma EV overtook the Ford F-150 Lightning to become the most popular EV truck in America. Autolist notes that the survey presents a hypothetical matchup because it includes EV trucks that are yet to be released.
But that hadn’t prevented the Ford F-150 Lightning from taking the top spot in the same survey for the last two years, when it was voted the number one choice for prospective EV truck owners consecutively in 2021 and 2022. Now, nearly one quarter of survey respondents say the Tacoma is the EV truck they’re most likely to buy, which may point to how underwhelmed people are with current EV trucks, according to Autolist CEO Corey Lydstone:
While the Toyota moved up four percentage points from 2022 to 2023 to claim top spot, the Ford Lightning fell by the same percentage year-over-year.
“We would attribute some of this decline by the Ford to the fact that it’s less of a novelty for consumers these days,” Lydstone said. “With more than a year of deliveries under its belt, the Lightning may not hold the same gee-whiz cache as the rest of the top-ranking models on our list, all of which have yet to launch.”
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“For Toyota to outrank Ford here means either truck owners have high hopes for the electric Tacoma or they’re underwhelmed by what they see in the current F-150 Lightning, possibly both.”
The Ford F-150’s massive success on the U.S. market just doesn’t seem to be translating to success for its EV sibling. And while the Tesla Cybertruck has technically gone onto wide-scale release, early reports say the pickup is not as appealing for truck fans as the hype around it would suggest. And the Cybertruck is nowhere near production capacity of the F-150 Lightning.
The Tacoma has long been a bestseller among midsize trucks, so comparison between a (hypothetical) Tacoma EV and the full size F-150 Lightning is complicated. A new Ford Ranger EV would be a more appropriate comparison, but there’s no indication when it’ll be released, if at all. Ford says it will make a second EV truck alongside the F-150 Lightning, but who knows when?
It’s telling that an EV truck that doesn’t exist yet is already more appealing to buyers in the U.S. than what is currently on the market. It could be a case of people pinning their hope for a better EV on something that’s yet to materialize.
It’s hard to find fault with something that isn’t actually real, but many current truck owners and non-truck owners alike — along with EV early adopters and EV holdouts — say that they’d rather wait for the Toyota Tacoma EV than take their chances on most other EV pickups.
