Remember the world’s first Tesla pickup truck, Truckla? Well, apparently, it was kinda like 80% finished at that time. Fast forward to 3 years later, Simon Giertz decided it was time for an update. But this time, she decided to let the experts finish the rest.
The trims on the updated Truckla have been fixed and the suspension gets a bit of lift, and the bed is now properly fixed to the front end and waterproofed, well, kind of. There’s no bedliner yet, though. The major update is perhaps the tailgate which now opens like an actual pickup truck but in a way that is not quite like a regular pickup truck.
The design of the rear end does not allow a regular hinged tailgate. Instead, a custom sliding mechanism was fabricated to allow the tailgate to slide out and lower down. This ensures that the tailgate is level with the truck bed when opened. And it is pretty strong too, capable of holding up to 500 lbs when opened. This means it is tailgate party-approved.
Another important update is the development of an automatic charger, aptly called, Chargela. Chargela is a robotic charger inspired by the Tesla ‘Solid Metal Snake’ Charger that never materialized. Simone worked with Viam, a robotic company, to realize what Tesla did not do.
However, there is no solid metal snake. Instead, it is an explosive ordnance disposal robot-like device on omnidirectional wheels, armed with a charging plug. Chargela is not perfect either. It took a while for it to locate the charging port on Truckla and the charging port had to be opened by the user for Chargela to insert the charging plug. But it works all right.
Chargela is open source which means you can build one yourself too.
EV charging robot is not new, btw. VW has a working prototype.
Images: YouTube (Simone Giertz).
