| A week doesn't go by without Detroit smashing the pedal a little harder on electric vehicles. So why is the American auto industry suddenly so green? Quite simply, they came for its trucks. For all the talk of "Tesla fighters," Fiat-Chrysler, Ford and General Motors were fine to let Mr. Musk have his fun and his fun-house stock valuation. That is until 2018 when Tesla started tweeting about making a pickup. Around the same time, it became clear that Rivian and a crowd of other startups would be doing the same. Within months, Ford was teasing an electric F-150 and General Motors promised a battery-powered Silverado to follow its all new GMC Hummer pickup. Dodge is reportedly joining the silent truck scrum as well. (For the current state of the race, see our recent deep-dive). Frankly, it's odd the announcements didn't come sooner -- at least from Musk and the startup crowd. Americans love pickups and increasingly so. These days, about three in four vehicles bought in the U.S. is either a pickup truck or an SUV, up from about 50% in the past decade.  As long as EV designers stayed away from trucks, Detroit kept hauling off huge half-ton profits. What's more, pickups are one of the few places where U.S. manufacturers still enjoy a massive trade barrier, so competition is a little less crushing and they can carry larger profit margins. Ironically, this same dynamic offers some tidy unit economics for electric trucks. Because Detroit enjoys such pricing power and makes so many of these rigs, electric trucks should be far more profitable than, say, a scrappy Chevrolet Bolt. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kevin Tynan says it is the one vehicle segment where all-electric motors can be profitable at scale -- and that's currently, not assuming big gains in battery efficiency or cost savings. In the next few months, America will quickly become e-truck country. It's anybody's guess how many EV skeptics they will attract, but it's not a stretch to suspect the parade of battery-powered pickups to account for more for EV adoption than anything to date, including Mr. Musk and $7,500 federal tax credits per purchase. And the decisions at the plant level will ripple through the entire EV ecosystem. Electrify America, one of the nation's leading charging networks, is shifting some of its infrastructure focus from interstates to rugged destinations like ski areas and national parks, according to Robert Barrosa, senior director of sales, business development and marketing. "With these types of vehicles," he says, "it starts to open those types of locations up." Tesla delivered 367,500 vehicles last year, mainly sedans and small SUVs. Americans bought as many pickups in less than two months -- mainly from Detroit's Big Three. In an e-truck future, they probably like their odds.  Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 14, 2020. Subscribe now. Photographer: Jeremy Liebman | 
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