Pickup Review In The WSJ -- The 2024 Chevrolet Colorado -- June 28, 2024

Locator: 48063TRUCKS.

With only years, not decades, to go before California and other states mandate EVs across the board and with all the excitement (hype) regarding EVs, it is interesting to note this review in The WSJ today.

Why, oh why, oh why, if EVs are the future, why is Dan Neil reviewing the 2024 Chevrolet Colorado?

Dan raves about the Colorado, and then finished with this:

Why is Dan not extolling the virtues of an EV?

Whatever.

But it gives me a chance to take another look at truck classification.

From a post a long time ago:

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Truck Classification

In a long note like this, there will be typographical and content errors, errors of omission and commission. If this is important to you, go to the source.

See wiki.

Vehicle classification in the US.

Light duty.

• Class 1: passenger cars and really, really light-weight pickup trucks like the Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier.

• The F-150 is almost a class 1, but it falls into the the class 2 category, but class 2 is the only class further broken into class 2a and 2b. So, the F-150 "upsets" the "trend" that one sees below. 

• Class 2a: F-150

• Class 2b: F-250

Medium duty.

• Class 3: F-350

• Now, it gets a bit interesting. An F-350 is a class 3 truck but an F-450 comes in both the class 3 flavor and the class 4 favor. 
• so, Ford markets two class 3 pick-up trucks: the F-350 and the F-450
• class 3 F-450: the typical pick-up truck;
• class 4 F-450: just the cab and the chassis; no "box." It's like the typical urban tow trucks one sees everywhere picking up stalled EVs

• Class 4: F-450 (chassis only model, as noted above)

A trend is starting to develop, continuing with medium duty.

• Class 5: F-550

• Class 6: F-650

Heavy duty

• Class 7 26,001 - 33,000 pounds.: F-750; Kenworth K370, Mack MD, Peterbilt 220 and 337/348, etc.

• Class 8, 33,001 - 80,000 pounds: Volvo Truck VNL, Freightliner Cascadia, Ford F-750, Kenworths, Nikola TRE, Peterbilts, Western Stars, and so on. 

I figured out the nomenclature using the quarter-ton, half-ton, three-quarter-ton naming, but now the "class nomenclature" makes sense. Whether it was planned that way or not.

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Back to The WSJ Article

But this is why I am posting this.

 

In the comment section of The WSJ article:

 This goes back to this by Dan Neil in the article:

Note: two things in that screenshot above -- first, the "size" of the pickup truck as the reader referenced, but also, the towing capacity.

Towing capacity of 7,700 pounds. Now let's compare all this with the Cybertruck.

 

From MotorTrend, payload and hauling capacity:

Payload:

Towing: the dealer will tell you the Tesla is rated for a maximum 11,000-lb towing capacity but in reality:

So, finally, back to where we were, what is a half-ton pickup truck?

But, again, why in the world is Dan Neil still reviewing ICEs? Shouldn’t we be well beyond ICEs and moving to EVs by now? Or even hybrids?