If my mailbox was a cat’s litter box, and the cat turds were the emails I was actually interested in reading, the cat litter would be the nonstop flood of pitches for stories from various companies with some kind of agenda they want to promote, from car sales to car parts or accessories or services or insurance or whatever. I usually ignore them. I didn’t ignore one today, but not really for good reasons. The headline caught my eye: “Tesla’s Cybertruck is the Best Overall Buy Among Electric Trucks [New Analysis].” It caught my eye because how the hell is anyone calling a truck that doesn’t yet exist a “best buy?”

The email included a link to the full “analysis,” (I’m not including it here, because fuck ‘em) which proved to be just a comparison of ten EV pickup trucks, only one of which is actually currently in production, and of that list, I’d say only, oh, six are really likely to be built in any numbers at all.

Here’s their final list and ranking:

The rankings are based on the price, towing capacity, driving range (which they call “charging range,” a term that doesn’t really make sense), towing capacity, and payload. All of these numbers they seem to be getting right from the companies themselves, and since many — even most — of these numbers are for trucks that don’t actually really exist yet and as such are unable to be actually tested, should be best thought of as optimistic guesses from the respective carmakers.

In short, useless PR bullshit.

This whole thing is a complete work of fiction. There is literally one truck on that whole list that actually exists and is available for purchase at this moment: If this analysis was worth anything at all, it would be a list of one, with the Rivian getting the top and bottom ranking, because, again, it’s the only one of these that actually exists, is for sale, and has specs that could be verified objectively.

Now, there’s others that are likely to exist: the is pretty to finished, and factories are being prepped to build it. I can’t imagine Ford won’t have it for sale. Same goes for the other major automaker’s EV trucks, the , the, and I do think Tesla will eventually make a Cybertruck, but I really wouldn’t hold my breath for it to be particularly soon, since Tesla and Tesla has only said

So, maybe you’ll see Cybertrucks in 2023? And, when you do, there’s no guarantee at all that the specs Tesla is claiming now for anything will be what the final production model ends up with. Same goes for all the manufacturers: I wouldn’t trust any pre-production estimates of range or payload or even cost until a truck actually exists and gets tested by people other than who built it or are in charge of selling it.

, though I have no idea how many. I don’t think they’ll be doing massive volumes, but they’ve been at it long enough and have shown enough development and seem to have the resources to make things happen.

I don’t feel comfortable saying that about or or or , and I sure as hell wouldn’t trust any specs or numbers any of these companies say, at least not without some sort of confirmation or, at the very least, a final, production-ready truck existing in the world.

So, here’s the takeaway from this: unsurprisingly, the internet is full of bullshit. This insurance company looked at at least ten EV pickups, only one of which is actually currently for sale, and picked a “best buy” that’s a truck that, at best, you won’t be able to buy until 2023.

And, remember for the winning truck, Tesla’s Cybertruck, so you’re realistically looking at about 2024 or 2025 before you’d get one.

I really like that the only one you can actually buy came in sixth place, too.

So if you see any “analyses” or ‘buyers’ guides” for EV pickups on any site soon, remember to take them with a big grain of salt, and do a bit of research.

Now I’m going to go back to ignoring these emails.