According to a report by the Mexican daily newspaper La Jornada, the small truck is expected to cost 150,000 pesos (around 7,600 euros).
The new vehicle is intended to bridge the gap between motorcycles with their limited cargo capacity and conventional light commercial vehicles with higher acquisition and operating costs. Due to its dimensions, the Olinia Carga is suitable for short, low-speed routes in urban traffic.
As a mexican I see this as pure propaganda. But I do hope it works because it has the potential to be a very hackable… thing.
Yes this. There’s a lot of travel going on between cities and towns. The range of these things is far too short for any meaningful work outside a very narrow set of criteria. It’s like they think there’s nothing outside of CDMX. I wanted to take my EV out to the California Peninsula but realized there’s no Level 2/3 charging infrastructure like at all. A car like this would fail to work in such a region.
Yes anyone who says “it’s larger than a motorcycle but smaller than a truck” are right but guess what? They have the range to take their cargo where it’s needed like from a town center to a field or rural area.
It’s a golf cart. Makes sense for Mexico city, which is huge.
This scared me away:
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So I found the original article but frankly I’m not sure it’s much better; I’m on mobile and have tons of ad blockers anyway.
Olina has it’s own website.
It sure does have its own website.
As someone who literally works out the back of their pickup truck, I don’t get the point of making them smaller and then marketing it towards people like me. I consider a 6ft (180cm) bed to be the bare minimum to get anything done. I’m still constantly tossing stuff on the roof racks because it’s too long for the truck bed or I’m towing a trailer, like today. Buying a truck seems pointless when it has less cargo space than a station wagon does.
This is why people who do actual work use vans. Pickups are for cosplaying a trades worker.
Let’s insult the one person actually using a pickup truck for work. And lets upvote them for the insult as well.
Great. Just wonderful.
Congrats, you converted a pickup to almost a van.
How is this better than a small-medium panel van? Unless you need to do serious off-road stuff or carry bulk cargo regularly, a panel van seems more practical in every way (shorter, lower load floor, better fuel economy, more convenient sliding door, more capacity, easy access to the cargo area from passenger area if desired). I guess it makes sense if there’s a sea of lightly used pickup trucks from idiots using them for commuting, so you can get them much cheaper than a van.
Most farmers here in europe rely mostly on beat-up panel vans to carry most supplies to fields and produce away from fields. Pick-up trucks are used specifically for carrying bulk. It just makes the most sense.
I never claimed it’s better or more practical than a van but it definitely is more fun to drive and better looking. This is both my personal and work vehicle. Life is too short to drive a boring car.
a small-medium panel van
Do you have an example of a model in mind? I suspect that those vehicles simply couldn’t pass US fuel economy regulations, which paradoxically rewarded bigger vehicles with a larger fuel economy allowance, and completely hollowed out the US market for either small cars or small trucks/vans.
I don’t remember the exact model number but the short wheelbase second-gen Ford Transit (not Transit Connect, just a regular Transit) is the most popular vehicle in Georgia (the country), used by almost all tradespeople and farmers. Granted it is probably on the medium rather than small side of the scale, but it would work great for the kind of loads pictured above & also for towing. I would be surprised if a Ford product was not available in the US.
The current generation Ford Transit is pretty long (3.3 m wheelbase in the base model, 3.75 m wheelbase in the long model) and tall (2-3 meters tall), and is one I would consider to be a fairly large vehicle. At least the North America models.
I’m not sure whether a short wheelbase model was ever available in the U.S., at least under that model name.
Looking at the parent comment’s truck, that looks to be a Nissan Frontier, maybe mid-2000’s or so? I think that’s a smaller vehicle than the contemporary Ford Transits of similar timeframe.
Either way, my point is that the development of electric drivetrains and the abandonment of fuel economy standards in the US market might actually lead to the creation of more small trucks/vans, which were difficult to justify in the previous state of the technology, the market, and the regulations. But there is a huge gap from around 2010-2025 model year for smaller vehicles in the US.
this does not fit MY exact use-case therefore it is STUPID
Sorry bud, but this is how you sound like.
The VERY FIRST LINE is “larger than a motorcycle, smaller than a truck”. The use case is hauling SMALL CARGO in a dense urban environment, a use-case where tiny, nimble vehicles are infinitely more beneficial than massive pickup trucks or panel vans.
Cuando necesitas más que una moto pero menos que una tonelada
When you need more than a motorcycle but less than a ton.
Olinia® Carga es el vehículo que faltaba entre una moto y un camión. Carga más, sin tanta inversión.
Olinia Carga is the vehicle that was missing in-between a motorcycle and a truck. Carry more, without as much investment.
[Promotional video showing small business transport like florist, a bakery, etc].
This one, literally isn’t marketed towards you.
Olinia Carga is the vehicle that was missing in-between a motorcycle and a truck.
That already exists - it’s called a car. I don’t see what niche this (or the Slate truck) fills that isn’t already better served by some other vehicle.
Not seeing the point of something does not equate to the price of butter. Or value. Or anything else. Your anecdotal usage and interaction paradigm with the world…
Shouldn’t need to dictate, inform, or even related to why another sovereign Nation is literally investing in it to solve a problem of theirs that they have ID’ed.
That already exists - it’s called a car. I don’t see what niche this (or the Slate truck) fills that isn’t already better served by some other vehicle.
The little spark that made you think this piece of commentary of yours where you don’t even discuss the thing in question, but plop down a malformed absolutist view of the world instead and expect everyone to nod thoughtfully or applaud?
That is the root of why the world hates the US, why Mexico is making a tiny electric car/motorcycle bullshit of their own instead of Ford/GM/Etc having sold them anything they, the consumer, would actually need, for their real situation.
I’ve managed to pack an absurd amounts of stuff into a sedan over the years (it often looks like the photos of your truck, jammed floor to ceiling) but there have been times when I really wished for an open bed for bulky items. This thing has more cargo space than my four-door and looks smaller overall which is a huge plus in city driving (even my sedan feels too big a lot of the time). Plus it’s cheap to buy, cheap to operate, probably cheap to insure because of its low speed. If they are frequently hauling cargo but less than you are, and need to drive and park in tight roads in the city (where it’s intended to be used) it seems like a better fit than a car (from someone who uses a car).
