How many of the trucks you see in the US are actually needed, though? Most of them are only used for commuting, and twice the size of a truck used for actual work.

They're not used for commuting, a simple hatchback would do that trick; they're used for status/signaling!

A truck used as a truck once per year and for commuting the rest of the year is cheaper than a truck and a small car. some of them could rent, but the restrictions on what you can do with a rental truck combined with the convince of a truck when you want it (rentals are sometimes sold out, and even if not you need to go get it while the truck is right there) mean a truck looks very compelling.

Yeah, renting a truck for, say, 2-3 days was something like $250-300 in my case. If I need one more than 2-3x a year it approaches the price point of a cheap truck vs a family sedan or SUV.

I don’t think you’re accounting for other costs like fuel needed for a truck which is an ongoing cost.

Actually I am. Rental trucks are not cheap if you use them for any period of time. If all you need is to get a sheet of plywood from Home Depot a couple times a year, then rent. Fuel is cheap, even at $5/gallon, compared to the costs of a rental, so it only takes a few times per year of renting before you are better off just paying for fuel in the truck.

That is before we account for rentals often being sold out. The fact that you don't have to plan ahead to use your own truck is worth something as well.

My old truck got 22 highway mpg, and the average family size sedan gets somewhere between 27-35 mpg (or up to 45 mpg if you count the Prius), coming out to roughly an extra $1,200 a year at $5/gal assuming 10k miles a year. Additionally, larger and taller vehicles are far easier to work on yourself.

In short, the operating costs are not all that much different. The true cost comes in with overall vehicle price and insurance costs, which heavily favor the family sedans.

there are hybrid and ev large trucks now, as well as 4-cyl turbo. truck doesn’t mean large engine.

It's not a matter of needing trucks, or this NEV/LSV, it's a matter of functionality and legality, and whether the purchase makes sense.

Functionally this electric truck has limited use case - low top speed, not street legal, low range, etc. - but there are a few niche cases where it's perfect for the job.

People could buy this small truck and try to make it street legal, but as mentioned by the article that would be prohibitively expensive, defeating the point of buying it because it's cheap. At that point you may as well look into a sedan EV because it's going to be comparable in cost (at least within 2x-3x of the price).

General use vehicles, both trucks and others, have a much broader area of operability. There are also EV trucks coming to market more quickly if that's what you want to spend your money on.

It fees like it’s competing with things like the John Deere Gator (~$15k) more than a regular on-road vehicle. Or even a regular golf cart, those things aren't cheap!

Exactly. This looks like a good alternative to importing a Kei car from Japan. With a bigger battery pack and some outlets, could be a be a perfect little runnabout truck for a small farm or ranch.