Face it though: the vast majority of truck consumers never use a truck as a utility vehicle, they use it as a family car with occasional hauling. As much "size comparisons" go on between average Americans and their truck engines, very little of it matters beyond marketing and bragging rights.

American car companies seem to have been reluctant to put EV engines in trucks for exactly those same sorts of marketing and bragging rights. "Guys" know how to "compare sizes" when it comes to wacky ICE engine numbers and descriptors like V8 and "ultra boosted turbocharged", but no one is actually really paying attention to physics or day-to-day commute reality. To announce that they were finally going to build an electric F-150, Ford pulled a marketing stunt of "towing a train" with it, because they felt they needed some way to brag about how powerful it was that looked interesting for ads.

Meanwhile Rivian is the interesting EV truck company not enough people are currently paying attention to.

Tesla's truck looks as ridiculous as it does for its own reasons of wanting to look futuristic and gather PR attention. They could have picked a more "traditional" form factor if they wanted (look at Rivian's projects or Ford using a traditional F-150 look), but they as much wanted to do their own version of "we can tow a train with it", albeit in this case it was probably more "we remembered Blade Runner was set in 2019 and were sad there weren't enough dystopian looking futuristic car models on the road like we were all promised".