Imagine a bare-bones electric pickup: it’s the size of an old Hilux, it seats two, and the bed fits a full sheet of plywood. Too good to be true? Wait until you hear that the Slate Pickup is being designed for DIY repairability and modification, and will sell for only $20,000 USD, after American federal tax incentives.
There are a few things missing: no infotainment system, for one. Why bother, when almost everyone has a phone and Bluetooth speakers are so cheap? No touch screen in the middle of the dash also means the return of physical controls for the heat and air conditioning.
There is no choice in colors, either. To paraphrase Henry Ford, the Slate comes in any color you want, as long as it’s grey. It’s not something we’d given much though to previously, but apparently painting is a huge added expense for automakers. Instead, the truck’s bodywork is going to be injection molded plastic panels, like an old Saturn coupe. We remember how resilient those body panels were, and think that sounds like a great idea. Injection molding is also a less capital-intensive process to set up than traditional automotive sheet metal stamping, reducing costs further.
That being said, customization is still a big part of the Slate. The company intends to sell DIY vinyl wrap kits, as well as a bolt-on SUV conversion kit which customers could install themselves. The plan is to have a “Slate University” app that would walk owners through maintaining their own automobile, a delightfully novel choice for a modern carmaker.
Of course, it’s all just talk unless Slate can make good on their promises. With rumors that Jeff Bezos is interested in investing, maybe they can pull it off and produce what could be a Volkswagen for 21st century America.
Interested readers can check out the Slate Motors website, and preorder for only $50 USD. For now, Slate is only interested in doing business within the United States, but we can hope they inspire copycats elsewhere. There’s no reason similar vehicles couldn’t be made anywhere from Alberta to Zeeland, if the will was there.
What do you think? Is this the perfect hackermobile, or have Slate fallen short? Let us know in the comments.
We’ve covered electric trucks before, but they were just a bit bigger, and some of them didn’t use batteries.
I wish all the best for this car to reach the market. Reminds me of the Sono Sion though. I peronally lost a few hundred euro with this due to preorder but I’m ok with that. I was aware of the risk. But my point is that this was also a great product and it was really viable but I think in the end there were too many stones put in the way by other car manufacturers and mybe political players.
Hope the us has better investors for such an idea!
I absolutely love this and really hope they bring it to the UK. I hope they’ve also given the same level of consideration to upgrading the powertrain down the line too, and that that’s also designed around modularity and maintainability.
Yay for actual physical controls!
Fumbling to change songs or set the temperature or whatever on a touchscreen where you actually have to look away from the road instead of having a physical control to touch and physical feedback is madness. I hate the stupidity of modern car makers who think that a touchscreen is oh-so-futuristic and stuff.
It sounds like a product I really would think about, was I in the market for a two seater.
I believe NCAP has started deduction points on the safety rating if some common controls are not physical buttons
Don’t celebrate to much. They offload import functions to a smartphone app
You think this means less fumbling to change songs?
It’s not an old radio with physical buttons. It’s no radio.
TFA suggests just using your phone with bluetooth speakers.
That’s going to be worse than an in-dash touch screen!
I’m find with their idea of no radio included as a standard option.
Just give it speakers and a double-din hole with the requisite cables in back of it.
They could even skip the speakers, just have holes where speakers can be mounted and wires pre-ran. Let the buyer pick.. they can deck it out with the loudest, fanciest set they can afford.. or just a couple cheap, old-fashioned, sounds like a tin can jobs or anything in between.
Same with the antenna. I bet a lot of people wouldn’t even bother. Just give me a couple or more 50 ohm wires leading into the 2-din hole and out to some place(s) where antennas could be mounted on the truck. Then the user can mount a cheap stubby on there for local FM if they care to, or a big fancy ham array.. or anything in between.
Whether it is good or terrible is really a question of whether it can work without any phone present as an “infotainment” system. If it can run standalone, no dependency on phones, apps, clouds or anything else outside of itself, then wonderful. The trouble is that so many companies instead use digitalised technologies to make things worse, some now even sell cameras which won’t operate without a phone connected to them. If this new pickup is avoiding that trend and actually going for true versatility, independence and repaiarability then it will be a great commercial success for finally giving buyers what they’ve all been asking for. And I think the first mod someone might design is a hydrocarbon fuelled (diesel, petrol, wood?) to sit on the flat bed and let you fill up quickly then recharge the batteries while you drive, diesel-electric can be extraordinarily efficient for rail locomotives, far more so than diesel direct-drive, the same hopefully applies to road vehicles. A hydrogen fuel cell mod with a similar focus, fill up with chemical fuel, then have this chemical fuel “burned” so as to power a generator and recharge the battery, could be another good idea. Either of these becomes, to some extent, a plug-in-hybrid design which gives you the advantages of an electric car (can recharge at home overnight between short trips which might not need the generator to kick in at all) but also avoids the problems of a pure electric car (lack of range, long charge times to re-“fuel”). Provided you can refuel quickly with an actual fuel, then an electric drive train might be quite good for tough “road” conditions too, possible for far more precise control of torque and speed and adapting them in realtime, than with a more mechanically complex classical drive train.
The whole point of the no-infotainment system design is for it not to require any computers at all for the user interface to run. They’ve made that quite plain. As for hydrocarbon propulsion, if it’s done it will have to remain a hack; the whole reason they can consider building a hilux-sized truck instead of a nouveau American monster is that it’s immune to COLA calculations which make it cheaper to enlarge the wheelbase than to try for the ever-tightening mileage targets for smaller vehicles, which would make a Ranger-sized gas pickup have terrible acceleration and no towing capacity at all.
Now do the same thing for a truck with an ICE.
Is it spy-free (no cell modem?) If so, I’m interested. Not a big EV person, but the cost seems reasonable.
No cellular modem; that is also offloaded to the cell phone you connect to it. (OTA firmware updates will supposedly be available via the app on a phone.)
Can we apply the same concept to an electric car?
I don’t need (and don’t want) all the fancy crap stuffed into cars these days.
I just need a battery powered box that is safe to drive. Two or four seats, driveable on the highway.
My wife and I wanted to buy an electric car to use some of the power our solar panels generate. It turned out that an electric car would cost way lots more than a gasoline powered car.
The various Chinese electric cars are heading in that direction. European safety standards are a bit more of an effort than the US market, but it’s certainly doable
Most Chinese electric cars are headed for or already in huge junkyards in China! The EV business there is similar to the Ghost Cities. The Bank of China makes loans to Party members who start an EV company, company bankrupts and Party officials order the bank they control (BofC) to forgive the loans. Persons who started the company move money to Malaysia – and to party members who approved the process. Where the Party is involved nothing is as it seems. (The key to understanding China is that all decisions by party members are based on fear of the people. They are outnumbered 20 to 1 and a repeat of the purges of the Cultural Revolution is their primary concern.)
There is NO WAY I’d ever buy a Chinese EV. There are a lot of videos of BYDs burning to the ground, in spite of the CCP trying to censor the release of such videos.
It’s a fully electric rear wheel drive vehicle. It can also become a four seater SUV.
aw crap, I didn’t catch the “RDW” part. I don’t want to drive this in the winter.
EVs don’t have weight in the front
Yes there are other minor issues, but the biggest FWD advantage is increased traction due to weight over the driven wheels, and that doesn’t apply.
It’ll still have 45+/-5% weight in the front. AWD will never not be an advantage over 2WD (with the exception of fully open diffs on the AWD vs some form of LSD on the 2WD) on low traction conditions. That said, for this vehicle and the uses I have for it, I prefer the low cost design and would just stick winter tires on it as I do with all my vehicles.
Yeah, I was just referring to FWD vs RWD rather than 2WD/AWD. Normally I would say “and the RWD traction issue’s overblown anyway” but most people are terrible drivers.
Unfortunately with the impaired driver lockout systems due to roll out in 2026 they are only going to be packing more and more fragile electronics into cars (ICE or EV). These are “passive” systems that will use cameras / microphones / etc. to monitor the driver and shut down if he/she appears drunk (or presumably sleepy?). And with the “remote shutdown” mandate which will allow “authorities” to remotely kill your car, that means all cars will have a cellular / internet connection. So this will at best be a total privacy invading dumpster fire since they’ll have audio and video inside the car which can be transmitted to (or hacked by) God knows who…
“…And with the “remote shutdown” mandate which will allow “authorities” to remotely kill your car…”
Classic Big Brother: Impose sweeping regulations that will allow spying and centralized control on an entire population of peaceful, law-abiding people… meanwhile, anyone who actually plans on committing a crime needing a get-away car will simply unscrew the coax to the cell antenna.
$500 ’94 Ranger, 375k miles, daily for 13 years…. the ‘future’ can get wrecked……
And all of the downsides externalised for our grandkids to deal with…
It probably gets better MPG than most new SUVs….
HOW? Even with minor maintenance, I have less than $2k invested in 13 years of transport.
Do you want to bet on whether his carbon footprint is lower than owning and junking 3-4 “green” cars in that same time period instead?
I love almost everything about this – but why couldn’t they just put in a standard single-DIN stereo slot and provide space for standard automotive speakers? I had to do the “Strap a Bluetooth speaker to the dash” thing before and it sucks, but it seems the alternative for this is to buy their proprietary in dash speakers. Also, I am a dinosaur who still wants an AM/FM radio receiver…
It’s a cool car. I love the idea. But to be honest, I wouldn’t buy it. I live in the most densely populated country when looking at electric car chargers and it’s problematic for the people who own them. It’s too expensive to drive compared to a normal car. The range of this is, for what it is, extremely short. The range is 150 mile / 240 km in perfect condition, so realistically it’s more like 150 km with a brand new battery considering no one drives absolutely perfectly to save fuel/charge and traffic is a thing too. And what does it do after a few years? Tesla has it figured out but when you look at the Fiat 500E that’s pretty much useless after 3 years because the batteries only last such a short time, or the Zoe, that also has major battery issues after only a few years, this makes it a huge financial gamble.
“$20,000 USD, after American federal tax incentives”
That’s false advertising. They are advertising that price, but in reality it’s 28k. If it was 20k with a powerful plug in hybrid system, I’d almost be begging to buy it.
That is some solid misinformation you are spreading there.
It’s called information. Nothing I said was wrong.
I mean you said that “Tesla has it figured out” so yeah that’s total garbage
Where did you get the zoe battery knowledge from? Zoe’s for the most part are rental batteries and so renault cares a lot about quality batteries. Also I dont rrally hear anyhing about battery issues on zoe’s.
Disclaimer, im a zoe owner.
Don’t know about OP but where I live (edge of Boston) electricity is really expensive and gas is (relatively) cheap so it is in fact more expensive to drive an EV than an efficient ICE car or hybrid.
Consider that’s your situation now… Wait until EVs proliferate/dominate. You won’t be able to afford heating your house in the winter–that’s FUD, it’s the basic law of [limited] supply and [increased] demand.
That’s where EVs are better than their gas counterparts – lots of braking = energy recovery for the battery.
Hey I’ve owned my 2013 Fiat500E for over a decade now and I haven’t noticed a decrease in the battery life nor range. Your quote of “the Fiat 500E that’s pretty much useless after 3 years because the batteries only last such a short time” is the most ridiculous ill-informed comment that I’ve read in a long time. The Fiat500E’s lithium-iron batteries are liquid-cooled (like a Tesla) and they will most likely outlast the lifetime of my car. Seriously, you should delete your whole post as it’s filled with inane, slanderous garbage.
Slander refers to speech. Libel is for writing.
Thank you (long-ago former tech editor walks away satisfied).
nononono you need to do it in the spiderman language
A lot of Fiat 500e’s are being scrapped due to battery issues. Great that you got lucky, but most people aren’t. Friend had one as a lease and when it was new he couldn’t even reach 150km on a charge (advertised as 185km), after 3 year when the lease was over, the range dropped to 75km on a charge. The car was scrapped after he returned it. This is sadly extremely common with these cars and why they are so incredibly cheap with a low odometer. That’s why Fiat stopped production several times due to the low demand. After the initial run of these cars, less and less people wanted one due to these common issues.
You are probably angry that I write this because you like your car and it’s great that you got lucky. Some people drive a Renault for 20 years without issues. It’s rare, but it’s great when that happens. Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis. But to call what I wrote, what the vast majority of people agree with, insane or slander, isn’t great. Don’t be angry at the truth, try to be nice and civil about it. It’s better for you.
Again, your bias shows through…and your constant exaggeration. I have a real-world sample/experience. I also know others that own the vehicle and have had no problems. I tried to do research online, but there are no figures posted for percentages of cars with battery issues. I delved into some forums and noticed that some posters referred to an incorrectly calibrated battery level display. The batteries weren’t failing, the gauges/sensors were off. EV batteries (like the Fiat 500E’s) typically lose about 1% of range/efficiency per year and my car appears to be much more healthy than those figures. All cars have issues, but this is not an epidemic with the Fiat – you quoted: “A lot of Fiat 500e’s are being scrapped due to battery issues. Great that you got lucky, but MOST people aren’t.” Most? That implies a majority (over 50%). I stick by my initial post. You are spreading a lot of misinformation, although another poster did correctly point out that it’s not slander – it is actually libel.
It sounds like he has “real world experience,” too. Two things can be true at once. There are always people who have positive experiences with products with which others have horrendous experiences. Why is it that we are supposed to take your word over his? Your opinion is just as valid as his and vice-versa.
As a matter of fact, a simple search on “A lot of Fiat 500e’s are being scrapped due to battery issues” returns PLENTY of results backing up what HE is saying.
That the problem today.. anyone who disagrees with you MUST be “spreading misinformation.”
I have no horse in this race but, ever hear the phrase, “your mileage may vary?”
Just because your experience is stellar doesn’t mean another person’s will be. Battery life is tied to all sorts of variables that can differ wildly from one location, clime, driver, and use-case, to another.
It’s my observation that most people predisposed to purchase EVs have decided in advance that the experience WILL be wonderful, whether it actually turns out to be or not.
Spot on. That is valuable and accurate information you are spreading. I to would be very interestes if it was a hybrid.
Once it’s done its rounds in testing I would take this over a Tesla any day especially a Cyber Truck.
The only gripe I have is I wish it were all wheel drive, I’d pay extra for that. The ethos behind the vehicle matches my own when it comes to cars. I don’t want a distracting dash, I don’t need 80 cameras and LIDAR, I want to know how to repair my vehicle when its reasonable to do so, I don’t want doors/trunks/hoods closing automatically. I don’t want any feature of my vehicle to be based on a subscription, the internet, and especially not a chat bot, all of that is literally on my phone.
I hope an unenshittified sedan comes out soon too. I think this company or at least these designers have a real head on their shoulders. I hope it achieves its goals. My family has been belaboring upgrading a vehicle in this era. Now we at least have something to wait for.
I’d rather nail my scrotum to a buffalo than give money to Tesla.
That’s called animal cruelty, and it’s prohibited.
– Unless you’re big business and claim to feed the masses, then it would be considered “modern farming”. Using a certain budget for greenwashing you may nail your whatever to any animal. Or at least any since there are no dogs anymore (all eaten).
I’d buy it, if it came in a v4 configuration
My fondest wish for this thing would be a range-extending genset you can stuff in the “frunk” for long trips, like Edison Motors is doing but removable when not needed.
The bed on a Slate isn’t exactly as plywood friendly as they are making it out to be. It is barely over 4′ wide, but that’s measured over the wheel wells. Also, the bed is only 5′ long, and even with the tailgate down there will be quite a bit of wood sticking out of the back. Add to that the sheet teetering on the wheel wells it doesn’t sound to me like a fun trip from the hardware store. If you want to throw some other sheet goods like drywall in the back it will absolutely have to be supported with an elaborate frame of some sort.
So what you are saying is give us a platform like the old world trucks and a set of walls like a K truck? I mean. You got a point.
There are two things about the Slate that are a non-starter for me:
1. Size of the bed. A 4×8 sheet of plywood, lying flat in the bed, should not extend beyond the tailgate when the tailgate is down. A K-truck type bed would be awesome.
2. ‘Everything is an app on your phone.’
3. PEV only at this time. Haven’t seen any mention about solar charging options, etc.
Agree. But this is modular, there’s even a “SUV kit” so a longer bed should definitely be possible.
Onboard maps are terrible, media centers too, so most people will install an aftermarket media unit, or use Waze/Gmaps anyway, and stream music from the phone via Bluetooth. If it have mounts for speakers, it’s fine for me.
Solar charging is a gimmick. The area of the truck isn’t enough to fully charge a large USB powerpack, let alone a truck. It adds weight, adds cost, complexity, and will not save any reasonable charging time.
why the heck is “everything is an app on your phone” a non-starter??
Have you seen the garbage software that car manufacturers put out? And those things are directly connected to the car’s controls! There was literally a case where a remote software exploit could actuate stuff on a Jeep – while it was driving!
I feel safer without that crap interfacing to the car.
This, and also, I’d rather replace my phone than try to update my vehicle. I don’t have number, but I suspect that the more electronics there is on the dashboard of a vehicle, the lower its resale value, since electronics goes obsolete faster than anything else. I can understand treating the battery as a “replace on purchase” for used electrics, but trying to replace the info-operating-tainment system because of proprietary crap will be a complete nightmare, and cars won’t be drivable without it.
The infotainment thing in cars is a modern disaster. We went from having totally standardized radio slots that you could customize crazily to “you get this and nothing else.” Oh, plus they all suck. I have yet to come across one of them that I didn’t think had at least one issue that wasn’t massively annoying and stupid.
It’s just totally nuts. The idea of replacing the infotainment crap with something standardized and exchangeable is just awesome, and needs to be pushed more.
That sounds exactly as plywood-friendly as my 1994 Toyota pickup which is to say “not quite”.
My Ranger has slots in the bed where you can insert 2×4 lumber to properly support plywood over the wheel wells. I’m sure Slate could do something similar.
Could.
Let’s wait to hear if that’s a did.
Given the drivel marketing stuff on their website (measuring volume in daschunds, really?), no one who knows anything about actually doing truck stuff has come near this turkey.
There are easy work arounds too. When my son owned the truck, he didn’t realize what the slots were for and made a couple of simple wooden frames to support plywood.
It is a “did.” You can look at pictures of the truck to easily see the slots above the wheel well.
Get it in SUV trim, put a roof rack on it, problem solved.
Just leave the tailgate up, lol. It’s not rocket science.
They will sell a few as long as it has over 220mi range, same as newer Leafs. All day delivery or work truck. Even a commuter
Base model is only 120 mi, but the extended range battery can be added after purchase and doubles it to 240 mi. (Minus whatever percentage we need to discount from the marketing. Maybe its 100 mi and 200 mi in real-world conditions. We’ll see!)
Even people down south will say it looks way better than a cyber truck
What makes you think that “people down South” think a Cyber Truck looks good? As a “person down South” – aka a redneck, aka a country boy – I think that the Cyber Truck is ugly as hell. I also think that this looks like a plastic model toy.
Clancy might be referring to New Zealanders.
B^)
These weirdos, the CEOs of the companies, go like “Is THIS the car/truck you want? No, you need overpriced gas-guzzling SUV instead! No, wait, you want THIS cheap truck? Okay, but you don’t NEED this, you need overpriced gas-guzzling SUV repackaged as truck! You still want this? Okay, let’s see, no, it will take 15 years to design and develop one, meanwhile, buy this overpriced gas-guzzling SUV repackaged as obese sedan! You still want this?”
Meaning, the feedback from the average Sam to the CEO’s brain has been destroyed in the early 1990s and hasn’t properly recovered since.
What I (average Sam) NEED is a $15K car/truck/van. Simple. Reliable. As few parts as possible. I don’t give **** if it is ICE, EV or anything in between (hybrid). Plenty of spares. Assembled in all 50 US states, no exception. No fake “dealers” bull****g me with their teaser prices they never have. Direct sales, like Saturn. I literally drive to the assembler plant to pick up my new Sam’s basic car/truck. $15K, not “teaser $20K price that baloons into $30 at the dealer and I cannot order the expensive gotchas to be removed to lower the price”.
$15K is what most average Sams can afford to buy with no loan, cash paid on delivery. If they can scrape together a $10K kind, even better. That’s why parts should be 100% made in the US, in all 50 states, CEOs should be starting from there and see where it goes. Basic car, not uber-doober-souped-up-nobody-asked-for-Cadillac-sold-for-the-price-of-Bentley. We, average Sams, can figure out our own customization after the sale.
Sorry about the vitriol; last good affordable and RELIABLE sedan I had was meager Buick Century off a lease. Lasted very, very, VERY long while. Those $14K I paid in 1995 were just right back then, and Century was a good solid thing before GM destroyed it together with other good things, Pontiac Bonneville, etc etc.
“$15K is what most average Sams can afford to buy with no loan, cash paid on delivery.”
Most average Sams take the financing on something bigger and that’s what the companies want.
you apparently don’t know many average Sams
$15K in cash is the absolute upper limit. I’d very much rather see $10K advertised price paid at the dealer lot instead, taxes and all.
Meaning, $15K should buy some kind of basic car with all the options included, no haggling. There should also exist $10 sub-variant that will be truly “base model” that the stealerships usually advertise, again AVAILABLE TO THE AVERAGE SAM, not hidden away so he cannot buy one directly.
Entire “dealership network”, ie, US Congress-guarded unnatural monopoly had long outlived its original purpose – cater to the average Sam’s needs. Right now it mostly offers what it wants to sell, not what I have been asking for for decades. The difference grew into quite a chasm over the decades, and it is one of the reasons we should stop buying from them, but we can’t they guard their turf quite well – almost as good as the trucker’s union guards any attempts at returning cargo rail lines where they are needed the most (intrastate).
Regardless, from what little I know about how car parts are made, it is not airplane making, the tolerances are quite forgiving, and if CEOs cannot get the next Lee Iaccoca to bootstrap 100% US-made $15K car, they they are not worthy the million dollar salaries, maybe they should be paid janitor wages instead.
Markets used to take care of the dead companies, but we no longer have proper markets in the US, but mostly carefully fenced communist parties guarding their “5-year investment plans” socialism for themselves. The results are quite predictable, and I’ll stop at that.
Inflation would put that $14K at $28K today… which is right about the price of the pickup in this article. And it’s new, instead of used!
The official inflation stats say that 14K USD in 1995 would be the equivalent of about 29K USD today, in terms of purchasing power.
This company seems to be aiming for exactly what you want: basic, customization after the fact, and as-cheap-as-possible while made in the USA. They just can’t make your price point, unfortunately. (And as you can see in these comments, a lot of people seem to bet they’ll miss their own price point.)
Right, and I meant “$15K in today’s monies”. Which would have been around $9K back then.
I merely mentioned Buick Century as a reliable average Sams’ sedan that can easily serve as a mid-size truck platform. GM had metal dies for the Century unibody since early 1980s, so they really milked that platform almost as long as Ford has been milking their Fiestas.
Translation – the fig GM/Ford/Stellantis care. They are in the biz for making money with more money. Cars is a byproduct.
Oh my absolute favorite commercials are ones that feature employee pricing. You notice they never run a commercial for the same vehicle with standard asshole from the street pricing. And employee pricing is getting worse since most of those ads are for leasing a vehicle lol. Just shitgoblins shitting on shit they are.
When you have a truck, everyone is your friend – when they have to move or run errands.
I know this is a common complaint but it’s honestly one of the reasons I love having a small pickup. I like helping people, especially if it’s something the would struggle to do themselves.
A UTV is cheaper, but harder to license on the streets (well, possibly – this truck hasn’t gotten approval yet, so it may be just as difficult) and comes in a variety of configurations including 4 wheel drive. They generally have a much higher towing capacity, and can be had in 4 seat configurations.
Maybe we should just find a way to allow UTVs to be licensed on the street. Don’t get me wrong, I love the simplicity of this, but I wish it came in about 10 grand cheaper.
Couldn’t they have just put in a single-DIN slot and space for 2 standard 6.5″ speakers in the doors, so you can DIY a stereo install with off-the-shelf affordable standard car audio components instead of cludging a Bluetooth speaker to the dash or buying their proprietary in dash speaker system?
Door speakers are an option.
Yeah but looks like they’re proprietary, and are Bluetooth devices paired to your phone. I’d really like a reliable AM/FM radio with ergonomic physical controls that works independently of my phone, that also has Bluetooth capability.
Just let me install a $50 head unit from Crutchfield…
If this is popular, Crutchfield will probably offer an installation kit to put the radio under the dash or somewhere.
This is a problem industry-wide with consumer vehicles: a scandalous shortage of DIN slots and why aren’t things labelled as “DIN” like they used to be. DIN, I say!
Have you ever taken apart a single-DIN radio made after 1985 or so? You could lease all that empty space to a small family. They already make cellphone holders for vehicles and it would be easy for someone to make a cheap iPod knockoff (I have one from China the size of a key fob, and it works fine) and mount it with Velcro. There are far better options than speaker and radio caverns which were standardized when most car radios still used vacuum tubes.
I would buy immediately if it was an ICE, absolutely the perfect vehicle for me otherwise
This will be my first car if it isn’t vaporware and the price doesn’t go up considerably. It’s like they designed it to my exact specifications.
Yes. But in the UK ☹️
Same here in Australia there are still so many old small Hilux and Courier/B-series utes around because hate the Rams and large F-series trucks that don’t even fit in a single parking space.
Is This The Truck We’ve Been Waiting For?
Nope.
Found the Republican.
The uniparty has two sportsball teams. You’re the guy in the stands waving the foam finger.
So if you don’t like electric vehicles, you must be a Republican. With binary thinking like that, no wonder you lost the election.
obvious vaporware. people innovate in design when they’re freed from the burden of actually building anything
Agreed. Looking at their marketing fluff, it’s obvious they don’t know what they’re doing. I hope they learn, and I hope they pull this off, but the odds are so stacked against them. Number one danger sign: you don’t just “add an SUV body to the back” – that changes so many safety aspects of the vehicle it’s ridiculous. The way to do it is old Bronco style – build an SUV that can have the roof and back seats removed. The first challenge – seat belt anchor points, and you can’t get away with not having shoulder belts anymore.
I wish them luck, I really do. And if this thing comes to market even at $28K, I’ll be pleasantly shocked. My rule of thumb is it will be double the press release price.
The SUV conversion is a bit more than just the top. There’s also a stamped steel “roll bar” structure that gets bolted in to protect the rear seat passengers. I suspect this also has the provisions for shoulder belt anchors.
While I also worry that they’re marketing vaporware, or at least haven’t solved a lot of the hard problems yet, I don’t get your “number one danger sign” – they are essentially designing something like an old Bronco or first-gen 4runner, they’re just not including the roof and back seats with the base model. The various configurations all have to pass modern safety regulations and they’re clear that they’re building with those in mind.
The SUV version has a roll cage with included rear air bags and shoulder belt anchor points. Presumably the base truck has adequate attachment points for the rear seat and roll cage.
And this is a solved problem in production vehicles – modern small vans (ford transit etc) have no trouble offering optional rear seats, and modern jeep wrangler / ford bronco still have removable rear tops along with rear seats in many cases.
I’ve seen one in the wild so IDK about vaporware
That depends on your definition of vaporware. They have prototypes that have been spotted on the open road, so it’s not pure vapour. OTH it’s not yet under mass production, and I know some people might cry “vapourware” unless units ship, and that’s fair.
If I put down a deposit and didn’t get a truck, I’d call it “vapourware” too, no matter how many prototypes were seen in the wild.
heh i am entirely using a kind of ad hominem reasoning here to parse it but. kit-bashing an existing car with a one-off custom shell to convince people you’ve made a prototype has already been done before :)
there’s a science experiment that says black body radiators get hotter. if they were going for a single colour the best one for usability is white or silver. as it is, you won’t be able to sit in it on a summers day.
I think they’re on the right track though.
i saw trump on the tv whining that us in the eu won’t buy their autos. I don’t have much sympathy for him because us autos are a bad joke, they’re oversized, mpg too low, they don’t pass eu safety standards. it’s like they don’t even know the us auto industrial complex is so corrupt they made a fleet of albatrosses that don’t have a market.
pump & dump …
“150 miles of range”
That’s unfortunate, will there ever be an electric pickup that can tow anything across any state besides Delaware? I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing only gets 60 miles range pulling a trailer with any kind of load on it.
What kind of market wants or needs these things? Just bring REAL Hiluxes to the states please.
I daily drive a small pickup and I would like one of these if it actually comes to market.
There are reasons to use a truck that don’t involve pulling a trailer. Admittedly most days I don’t do anything that I couldn’t do with a sedan but I am a lot of people’s “friend with a truck” when they need to move bulky items like furniture. I could still do that with an electric. And if I ever did need to haul something larger I could still do it with fast chargers.
a lot of people need a ton of range every day and a lot of people don’t. that’s the whole premise, that existing vehicles serve part of the market very well but leave other parts with a poor fit
Looks awesome, and I would buy one if I were looking for a new vehicle. No need to overhype though..
“and the bed fits a full sheet of plywood.”
No. It doesn’t. Your thumbnail pic for this story shows that it doesn’t. No one would accept that explanation for any truck that size making this claim. It is wide enough to fit plywood widthwise, and with the tailgate down it can carry plywood. But its bed does not fit a full sheet. It fits about 3/4 of a sheet lengthwise.
The rest of it is great though. I’ve been saying, and commenting for years now that we should have at least some availability of a simple utility vehicle. Not just gluing a fancier tablet to the dashboard and calling it the next years model. Theres a lot of jobs where that is desirable.
It’s less than half the price of Telo Trucks’ MT1 mini-truck, but not as aesthetically pleasing.
If you are going to make a truck … make a truck. A 4×4 truck is made to haul/pull things for many miles up/over/crawling around in the mountains/on the farm or to job sites, or wherever. Not just fill the bed with a single golf bag… Anyway, this doesn’t look like that vehicle. Of course that is my perception of a ‘truck’ in my locale. My ’97 Dodge full size meets that criteria. On new trucks, leave off all the electronic do-dads. Use your phone for the electronic/entertainment side of things if that is your thing. Keep it Simple…. and reliable, to get you there and back.
One thing going for above truck it has a normal cab. Not a big four door like you find now-a-days. I don’t mind an extended cab so you throw things behind the seats, or maybe a couple of kids, but a full car like area is just excessive in my opinion.
Small trucks are useful for people who don’t need to do truck stuff every day, just some days. I’ll take the inconvenience of a small bed if it means I get better mileage when I’m driving it empty.
For just driving around, I have cars for that. For example in the last 3 years, I’ve only put 900 miles on my truck as I only use it, when I need ‘a truck’. I get better mileage that way.
Unfortunately, EVs are an immediate non-starter in the US.
We don’t have the infrastructure to support them.
The requirements for owning an EV:
– Vehicle itself
– Tesla chargers supporting your vehicle (bc let’s be real, there aren’t many non-Tesla EV chargers at the moment)
– Living in a city that has chargers around
– No desire to road trip more than 400 mi or so or to anywhere where there won’t be EV chargers like in your city
– A house with a garage to install a charger
– A charger installed in your house
In other words, you have to be a wealthy urbanite to afford to use an EV.
That’s not difficult enough for there to be no market for EVs, but Slate is trying to sell itself as a cheap and fixable truck, but the cost to EVs is not in the vehicle itself. Mainly, it’s in having to buy a house and where you have to live.
Generally speaking, people that need a truck or SUV are not gonna be in the EV market.
The EV market is premium with premium people. They aren’t gonna want a cheap vehicle. They want a stupidly rich and fancy car they can show off. Goodness knows that’s the Tesla approach, and it’s why it has been successful. It’s why the Cybertruck sold even tho it is widely considered to be one of the ugliest vehicles ever – bc it’s for rich people to show their wealth.
So imo, this thing can’t succeed bc it’s for a market that doesn’t exist.
Friend, you need to get out more. Every day I see more EVs on the road, driven by absolutely normal people. They’re not all flashy Cybertrucks or Rivians either, just Kias and Hyundais doing normal car things, all day every day. I have yet to see someone weeping at the side of the road because they overextended, either.
“A Slate comes with everything you need to charge at home, no need to buy anything extra. With the included charging cable, you can charge using a regular household outlet. If you have access to a 240-volt outlet (the kind of outlet used for dryers, stoves and other appliances), you can charge faster with Level 2 charging. Many EV owners choose to purchase an optional wall-mounted charging station, which can add convenient features like cable storage and Wi-Fi connectivity, but you don’t necessarily need one to charge at home. ”
https://www.slate.auto/en/charging
Judging by the number of EVs I see on the road nowadays, the entire premise of your comment is patently false.
I suppose it depends on where you live in the US. Kaliforia may have more EVs. Around here in MT it is rare. “Oh, look isn’t that an electric car?” . Like sighting a bear :) . Agree with most of above for our ‘area’. For the town only people maybe there is a market for them. Gives them the warm fuzzies I guess to own one.
Clueless much??
No!
I am NOT waiting for an EV, pickup or otherwise.
Yes I’m being a smartass but also asking out of ignorance:
__ are there trucks that don’t
____ “and the bed fits a full sheet of plywood”?
If it was “the length to width ratio of the bed is equal to phi” that might make me go “hmmm” but “It’s 4 feet wide”? It’s got metal on the top and rubber on the bottom. It’s a truck.
If it keeps all its promises, I might actually get one. I wish it was more cabover so that a 4×8 sheet could lie flat with the tailgate down, but as long as it has a reasonable, if not perfect, method, I only do that a few times a year.
Thailand got or was supposed to get a $12,000 toyota truck with a modular bed.
I assume it came out because it was announced over a year ago. We can’t have that though because it’s too cheap and everyone will buy one. Ford and chevy would cry.
Oddly enough people with pink or yellow vehicles pay a tiny bit less in their insurance. (Ok the resale value sucks, because only a microscopic subset of people want to actually own a pink or yellow car/van/trunk)
The logic of the insurance companies is that historically and statistically, because they standout other drivers actually see them and, less people crash into them. And because they standout, they are less likely to be stolen.
Grey only, will probably mean that insurance will be a bit more.
It is not the kind of information that insurance companies advertise, because if everyone drives around in pink or yellow vehicles, they will no longer standout.
Oh and any minuscule saving in insurance, is totally dwarfed in relation to the much lower resale value.
I think it needs a longer bed to be a functioning truck. 4×8 (or at least with the tailgate down and a fence up) would be nice.
“Real” truck owners have toolboxes, a center console for the laptop, a gun rack, trailer hitch etc. – I don’t see any provisions for this. It’s like a nicey show truck, not something practical, outside of the box literally.
“fake chinese dodge ram” youtube videos pretty much sum it all up, kinda hilarious.
I would consider it. I honestly love the cybertruck, but the 80k pricetag and the “smart” features are a non-starter for me.