Tesla’s Founders Bankroll The Anti-Cybertruck, A $41,520 Mini Truck Running Their Original Playbook
Tesla founders Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, the two engineers who started the company and recruited Elon Musk as its first big investor, are now backing TELO, a California startup building a mini electric pickup its own team frames as the opposite of the Cybertruck. Forbes reported the investment on July 23, twenty years after the original Tesla Roadster introduced the company to the world.
TELO has raised about $27 million to date, including a $20 million round in September 2025 that drew Tarpenning’s Spero Ventures and Eberhard as investors. Its truck, the MT1, starts at $41,520, measures about the length of a two-door MINI Cooper, and is targeted to reach first customers by the end of this year or early 2027.
EVXL has tracked the American small-truck counterattack since Slate’s April 2025 reveal, and the pattern keeps repeating: the most interesting U.S. EV startups right now are building smaller, not bigger. This one comes with a twist, because the people funding it wrote Tesla’s original playbook.
Tarpenning And Eberhard Bet On The Truck Tesla Won’t Build
Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, the two engineers who founded Tesla in 2003 and convinced Elon Musk to write the first check, are now investors in a San Carlos startup whose product rejects nearly everything the Cybertruck stands for: small footprint, soft styling, low volume, and quiet ambition. Tarpenning sits on TELO’s board through Spero Ventures, where he has invested in cleantech since leaving Tesla in 2008. Eberhard, forced out of Tesla in late 2007, joined the September round and also advises Swiss minicar maker Microlino, according to Forbes.
The symbolism runs deep. TELO operates out of the same Silicon Valley office park where Tesla was headquartered when the Roadster launched in 2006. Cofounder Forrest North is a former Tesla engineer. And CEO Jason Marks openly cites the original Tesla ramp, 2,400 Roadsters before roughly 10,000 Model S sedans, as the template: TELO plans just 500 MT1s at first, then a 5,000-per-year run rate, and Marks claims the company can turn a profit even at that volume.
Neither founder hides what they think of Tesla’s pickup. “I personally think Tesla’s lost its way a bit, especially with the Cybertruck,” Tarpenning told Forbes, adding that no professional designer would have drawn it without Musk’s fingerprints on the file.
The MT1 Starts At $41,520 And Ships Without A Factory
TELO’s MT1 is a pickup roughly the length of a two-door MINI Cooper, priced from $41,520 with 260 miles of range, and the company plans to build its first bodies through Michigan contract manufacturer Schwab Industries rather than a factory of its own. A $45,500 long-range version stretches to 350 miles, and adding a second motor pushes the price to $50,000. TELO installs its own battery pack and components in San Carlos, which keeps its capital needs a fraction of what Rivian burned reaching production.
The engineering bet is packaging. The MT1’s flat battery pack with integrated motors is designed to stiffen the frame, and Marks says the team started from the minimum frontal crash structure needed for a five-star rating, then packed a working truck behind it. That claim faces its first real test when crash testing begins later this year. Computer modeling is not a crash cell, and a truck this short has no margin for error.
Pricing is the other open question. The MT1 undercuts the roughly $55,000 average price of a new EV, but $41,520 is not cheap for a vehicle this small, and the federal purchase credit that would have softened it is gone. Tarpenning concedes the price will need to come down for mass-market reach. The startup claims roughly 12,000 reservations, per TechCrunch.
The Founders’ Verdict On Today’s Tesla Lands Harder Than The Money
Both founders told Forbes they remain proud of what Tesla achieved over two decades, and both watched the company hand its global EV lead to Chinese rivals while Musk redirected the business toward robotaxis, humanoid robots, and AI instead of vehicles people can actually buy. Their money is now a statement about that drift.
The contrast with Tesla’s own truck is brutal. EVXL documented 10,000 unsold Cybertrucks worth roughly $800 million sitting on U.S. lots in May 2025, against a product once projected at 250,000 units a year. Meanwhile Musk’s attention sits elsewhere: EVXL reported in June that Tesla asked Nevada for a 5,000-vehicle robotaxi permit while running roughly 20 driverless cars nationwide.
TELO is not alone in the segment it is entering. Slate, backed by Jeff Bezos with more than $700 million raised, is chasing the stripped-down end of the same small-pickup market. Eberhard sees room for both, arguing TELO’s value is that it competes in a lane nobody else occupies rather than fighting Tesla or Chinese makers head-on.
EVXL’s Take
The two people who invented Tesla’s playbook just endorsed a competitor that runs it better than Tesla currently does, and that says more about where the company under Musk has drifted than any single delivery chart or earnings call ever could. Start small. Prove the product. Delight the buyer. Scale when the math works. That was the 2006 plan, and in 2026 it describes TELO more than it describes Tesla, which is asking regulators for 5,000 robotaxis it cannot field while its halo truck rusts on inventory lots.
I’m not anointing TELO. Twenty-seven million dollars is lunch money in car manufacturing, the crash test hasn’t happened, and $41,520 without a federal credit is a real ask for a truck the size of a hatchback. Slate’s 100,000 reservations show the demand signal for small and cheap; TELO still has to prove the demand for small and $42,000.
Two checkpoints will settle it, and both are on the calendar. Watch the crash testing later this year: if the MT1 pulls a five-star result at a 152-inch footprint, the industry’s “big trucks are safer” excuse dies in public. Then watch whether the first 500 customer trucks actually ship by early 2027 as promised. Startups that hit their first delivery window earn the right to be taken seriously. The founders’ judgment of the Cybertruck is already on the record. Now TELO has to earn it.
Source: Forbes, TechCrunch
EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
