I have factory tubular "steps" on my Nissan Frontier. It's just another way to transfer mud to your pants leg, in my opinion. The 5' tall wife loves them, though, and they have kept stones from chipping paint. I just wanted mud flaps, as the Nissans throw mud all over themselves going down a muddy road, and that's what they came up with. To be fair, they keep quite a bit of mud off the truck as well, but so would rubber flaps behind the front tires.
Ah well, the wife's happy, that's important to me. As for powered running boards, all I think of is Missouri's gravel roads, and I think they'd kill powered boards inside of a week. Mud is a powerful killer of contraptions like that.
They seem to be made for "town trucks" that don't get off paved roads much, if ever. I think Nissan makes a good little truck, but due to "styling", they throw mud all over themselves, maybe so they can look tougher in the sales catalogs.
