And since 100 mile ranges with battery powered trucks is doable (along with battery swapping to allow them toe keep on rolling) I wonder how much fuel we could save by making those last mile trucks electric as well?

I wonder how many billions of dollars we’d save on highway repair if we took most of the heavy traffic off?

I wonder how many billions of dollars we’d save on highway expansion if we left the existing highways to light vehicles?

So many questions….

New car purchase is a major decision for most people. I would guess only a very small number would be willing to buy something this very different.

The vehicle is the first purely electric vehicle to be equipped with a Continental air suspension.

An
air suspension system automatically adapts damping and spring
characteristics, along with the vehicle’s body level, to changing
driving conditions and load changes. This reduces rolling and pitching
movements and wheel load fluctuations.

The efficiency of an air
suspension system is based on the interaction between sensors,
electronics, and mechanics. Continental supplies electronic air
suspension systems including scalable compressors, valve block, control
unit, sensors and software.”

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/08/20130828-conti.html

Height adjustment is most often achieved by air or oil compression used for the “springs” of the vehicle – when the pressure is varied – the vehicle body rises or lowers.

The first instance of a production vehicle with adjustable suspension was on the 1954 Citroën 15CVH. This vehicled featured a self-leveling, height adjustable hydropneumatic suspension. Since this time, these systems have appeared continuously on Citroën models, including the DS and CX.

Height adjustable suspension was banned in the United States from 1974 to 1981, due to the stringent interpretation of passenger vehicle bumper height regulations by the U.S. government agency NHTSA. Subaru was one of a few manufacturers who offered the feature after the ban was lifted on the Subaru XT, the Subaru Leone wagon and the Subaru Legacy for a short time.

Many modern SUVs use height adjustability as part of active suspension systems to improve the vehicle’s versatility on and off road. The Range Rover offered this feature from 1993. New models of the Ford Expedition
have a computer-controlled system designed for convenience, which
lowers automatically when the doors are unlocked by remote, returns to
normal height when the vehicle is started, and (on 4-wheel-drive
models), raises when the 4×4 system is engaged.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_adjustable_suspension

A pickup with adjustable height suspension needs no running boards. The truck can “kneel down” for entry and exit. As some buses now do.

An adjustable air suspension that allows driving low with nothing in the bed, but also allows expanding to accommodate a 1 ton load, might be a way to break this knot. This just happens to be what Tesla has already explored with their sedans and will no doubt put in their truck when they make one.

Everything else looks do-able. Except the running board thing. How do you have running boards you can step on if they are flushed with the hull? You’d need some sort of kludgy push-in flap to put your feet in.