“Nobody,” Tisha Johnson declared, in a careworn voice betraying three consecutive days of jet-lagged speech-giving, “wants a bunch of tech in their car.” Not exactly what you’d expect to hear from a senior executive of any Amazon-backed firm, let alone one devoted solely to the production of a controversial new electric vehicle, but the audience didn’t seem worried. Hundreds of them, mostly automotive industry employees and media personnel, had come from around the world to the “Car // Design Event” in Munich. While there was plenty of eye candy on offer, from an irreplaceable 1972 BMW Turbo supercar prototype to the global premiere of a new subcompact bearing the infamous Yugo name, most of the attention was on Johnson and two hastily 3D-printed, shoebox-sized models of the electric pickup she’s designed. It’s called “Slate,” and it’s already generated more than 100,000 $50 deposits from eager would-be customers.

As with Ben Franklin a full 249 years ago, Johnson’s task in Europe is significantly different from what she faces back home in America. Stateside, the very idea of a $20,000, after taxpayer subsidy, as is par for the course with electric vehicles, electric pickup with room for just two people and a modest amount of cargo in a tidy 5-foot bed is a bit heretical. As a red-blooded Ohioan, your author drives a pickup that could carry one Slate crosswise on the pickup box while towing a string of four more Slates behind it, and I’m a long way from having the most serious truck on my street. This country hasn’t been particularly excited about compact trucks since the debut of the 1982 Chevrolet S-10. Many people believe this lack of enthusiasm to be the direct fault of the aforementioned S-10.