The lovable heresies of Amazon’s electric pickup

“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

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