[commandar]

>Then compare this to something like a Kei truck and it's really quite pathetic.

I will forever be sad that Canoo was wildly (possibly fraudulently) mismanaged and went bust before they ever built any of their planned pickup trucks:

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/canoo-pickup-tr...

They were going to be built on the same platform as their vans and the best way to describe them is "Kei truck upsized and uppowered enough to be safe on US roads." They had neat party tricks like a compact bed for daily driving that could expand out to fit full size ply and fold out workbenches on all four sides of the truck.

I'm not even a truck guy and I desperately wanted one of these things. Just such a cool concept.

[deltoidmaximus]

> They had neat party tricks like a compact bed for daily driving that could expand out to fit full size ply...

Unless I'm missing something this sounds like the bed extenders which I've seen on lots of trucks that allow the tailgate to be used as part of the bed when folded down. I was initially think they might be allowing the passenger compartment to be opened up to temporarily get full bed size but I didn't see anything like that when browsing the page. The closest thing I ever saw to that was on the Subaru Baja (which was far more a sedan than a truck) and given how short the bed was and the the fact that the back window was immobile seemed like it had less hauling utility than a standard hatchback.

[commandar]

It was a built-in expander. The bed was 4x6 in standard configuration and could pull out another 2 feet to get 4x8 when you needed it.

[ljf]

Thset is really sad - I'd seen a review of an early model on YouTube and it seemed like a brilliant idea - really hope someone else can make something similar work.