Truck

An innovative trailer attachment plate designed to prevent injury and death among truck drivers has proven itself in the face of a roaring jet engine, the cabin quickly jettisoning the tipping trailer as it is buffeted by immense winds.

Earlier in the year, TuSimple sent one of its autonomous trucks on a 900-mile journey from Arizona to Texas, though human drivers took the wheel for the first and last parts. Now a semi-truck has completed an 80-mile trip on public roads on its own.

This all-electric 4x4 off-road concept has a monster battery pack, a brutally angular and military look, and pop-out solar panels for off-grid charging. Oh, and if you need extra range, you can snap two extra wheels and a battery onto the back of it.

Much like 2020 before it, 2021 made much of the population want to forget about civilization to seek out the embrace of open, natural spaces. The year also brought plenty of clever 4x4 camper rigs for reaching those spaces and making home of them.

The inflatable Air-Topper from California-based Flated provides the cargo-containing security of a shell when the driver needs it but gets out of the way immediately when they don't, deflating and packing small enough to take up a fraction of the bed.

Perhaps you've got a Toyota Tacoma pickup with a cap on the back, and you'd like to sleep in there when camping, but the truck's cargo bed is just too short. Should that be the case, the Topper Tent may be for you.

Loki Basecamp introduced itself this year with the Falcon pickup camper. A beautiful product, the Falcon also wore a hefty six-figure price tag. With the new Icarus, Loki puts together a smaller, more affordable pickup-top overland micro-home.

The commercial vehicle arm of auto giant Geely has revealed a concept semi truck called the Homtruck that's planned for production in early 2024, and boasts a powertrain that can run with swappable batteries, a range extender or as a methanol hybrid.

There are certain to be plenty of Cybertruck-specific campers, but Form Camper has designed a pickup camper for both the Cybertruck and traditional pickups. The camper starts off as a carbon fiber box before growing into a hard-walled truck hut.

Toyota marries a Tacoma TRD Sport pickup chassis with a custom "micro-house" to create the amazing Tacozilla 4x4 mini-RV. If there was ever a time humanity needed a Toyota camper truck for going "anywhere on this planet," that time is now.

EdisonFuture will introduce itself in a big way at this month's LA Auto Show, premiering an all-electric van and an e-pickup. It calls its EF1-V a delivery van, but large all-terrain tires and a rugged body form give it the look of an old-school SUV.

Squeezing a bathroom into a pickup camper without making the truck a big, lumbering beast on road and trail is no easy task. The Flip90's power-rotating design creates a hard-sided shower/toilet room that also adds elbow room and indoor cooking.