It’s been nearly a year and a half since Scout Motors first showed the Terra truck and Traveler SUV to the world. The response was fairly positive, if you’ll remember—most folks who I talked to liked the design, and rather than making them EVs and leaving it at that, Scout also promised models with gas range-extenders. There was plenty to be excited about at the event, where reservation books opened for $100 deposits. For anyone who hasn’t had theirs refunded yet, Scout has an update: It’ll still be a couple of years.
The word comes directly from Scout CEO Scott Keogh. While talking with members of the Automotive Press Association last week, the executive said, “When do I see the cars in the hands of a physical customer? I see that sometime in 2028.” This timeline tracks with a February report from German outlet Der Spiegel, which cited technical challenges that would delay Scout production.
“The first thing I don’t want to do is play the communication game of, ‘What exact day and what hour are you launching the car?’ when we’re doing something as ambitious as this,” Keogh explained. “So the most important thing to me is one, we’re on course, and we’re on plan. Number two, put a killer product in the hands of a customer, that’s an absolute home run, without a doubt.”
Keogh referenced the Terra and Traveler concept reveal. At the time, they told everyone that “cars will come down the line in 2027.” He says that hasn’t changed, though people assumed deliveries would start immediately after.
“These early phase [prototypes] will come down in 2026,” Keogh said. “That’ll be a few dozen cars, but that’ll give us the ability to test a lot of things on the platform. Then we’ll build a second generation. We’ll build a third, then we’ll build a fourth. So we will do this through ’26 through ’27.”
“Is it significantly far off from what we communicated in October of ’24? I would say no,” Keogh continued. “More importantly, are we executing the plan? I would say yes. And, of course, when I say executing the plan, you’ve got to get the timing just right, where you get everything done with the maturity, you don’t overhire and overstaff before you can get the revenue in the door, right? And this is the movements that we’ll be making all the time.”
When questioned about the reported technical challenges, Keogh gave his perspective:
“There are hurdles every minute of every day, and we’re going over those every minute of every day. So there’s no defining ‘Oh, my God’ technical challenge that can’t be solved. Or this is a roadblock, or this is a thing. It’s physics meets everything, and there are challenges all the time. We have a new team. We have an all-new platform. We have an all-new software architecture going in there. But honestly, I think what we’re doing is miraculous and cool. So I don’t see roadblocking, technical challenges. Automotive startup business is what I see. And this is quite normal in my mind.
“So, no, I don’t see overwhelming challenges. I see everyday things we’re overcoming, full stop.”
One example of those challenges could be the range-extended trucks’ max towing capacity. Keogh told Jay Leno last year that Harvester models will tow 5,000 pounds, whereas the full EV variants will tow up to 10,000 pounds. Apparently, Scout has “some solutions” for that discrepancy, as Keogh said at the APA event last week. Exactly what those solutions are is anyone’s guess right now.
Knowing there’s still so much time between now and when these rigs reach production, Scout will have to keep the fire stoked for potential customers. The hype was high at the time of the reveal, but now, it’s steadily dropping—and we aren’t even halfway to the delivery date yet.
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