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The truck will have speakers (speaker ports? Rail?) Along the front dash and glove box area.
The SUV variant is weird because it is a two door and the windows do not roll down. Think 2 door sedan.
20k after federal incentives is a deceptive way to say 28k.
The business concept sounds solid IF there is a market.
I want it.
Ah there’s the catch, ill take a used one once it drops below 15.
Headline is misleading and assumes the government is going to subsidize production. The initial, and likely optimistic price is $28k.
How much will the 240 mile extended range battery cost? That’s going to be just about mandatory to make the thing useful. You don’t typically fast charge past 80%, and start looking for a charger when you get down to 25%, so the effective range of the 150 mile battery is actually only 83 miles (150 * 0.55).
That aesthetic, of highlighting rather than hiding battle scars, is key to the Slate ethos.
I wonder how the owners will feel about the scars on their truck when a plastic body panel cracks and they need to caulk it back together?
I remember not that long ago, there was a Silverado commercial where they threw a toolbox in the bed of an F-150 and a Silverado. Toolbox punched through the F-150’s aluminum bed, and bounced off the Silverado’s steel bed.
As the owner of an S10 with 20 years worth of dents in the welded steel bed, I have to wonder how soon I’d put a board clean through an injection molded plastic body. I could see making most of the cab and engine bay…well, “engine bay” out of maybe fiberglass panels but injection molded plastic with no reinforcement?
They shouldn’t market this as a $20k truck “with federal incentive” if they’re expecting the incentive to go away
I’ve got a 50 mile round trip commute. I currently do it in a car with a 200 mile range just fine. I love the flexibility of a 200+ mile battery, but if cost was a concern, I’d be more than happy with 150 miles of range. Small battery would not be an issue for me. It’s cool that I could upgrade after the fact too, so I don’t have to plan ahead when I buy the car. Hopefully they give credit for the original battery when you upgrade, though
Highlighting battle scars is actually great! My previous car was brand new, and I would lament every dent and scrape. My current car was a used rental, so small cosmetic damage doesn’t bother me as much because it was never “perfect” to begin with. I’d love a car that leans into being “used in the real world” like that, and it sounds like it will be relatively easy to replace the body panels on this truck if they become too damaged. I’d never have to worry about rock chips again!
it will be relatively easy to replace the body panels on this truck
IDK, if they’re injection molded plastic then it kinda seems like the only way to get major damage repaired is to buy a replacement from Slate Auto. You can’t just visit the junkyard and start cutting material to weld on for patches.
Slate Auto will have a monopoly in addition to having a more expensive manufacturing process. Going with plastic panels means they need less capital to build the factory, but it also means the panels will take longer to produce. Stamping sheet metal can be done fast and cheap, but the machines to do that have a higher up front cost.
I don’t know. I get the impression they’ll be selling replacement body panels, but there will almost certainly be aftermarket equivalents you can buy, assuming this truck becomes at all popular. Maybe that won’t be the case if the body panels aren’t easily replaceable, but it seems like they’re going with ease of repairability as a major selling point
Genuine question: would fiberglass and resin adhere to this material? I’m familiar with it from patching up old boats and canoes and could see that being an easy weekend project.
I have no idea, but good thinking!
you can’t just visit the junkyard and start cutting material to weld on
Maybe you can’t but I don’t give a damn how janky my car looks. The more patchwork the better, battlecar aesthetic is cool as hell.
I wonder how the owners will feel about the scars on their truck when a plastic body panel cracks and they need to caulk it back together?
Who gives a shit? It’s a truck. Will it still drive? Haul? Tow? If yes, then there is no problem. If you’re getting it to look good, then you have completely missed the point of a truck; which, to be fair, most truck owners have.
some might like the style, but you’re right, a lot of people who buy trucks just want a pavement princess
I wonder how the owners will feel about the scars on their truck when a plastic body panel cracks and they need to caulk it back together?
Delighted, because I wouldn’t be worried about rust.
We need more cheap, good vehicles for the masses, or way better public transport. Until then the divide between those with cars, and those without, gets bigger and bigger. Also, I can crank my own windows up and down and manually lock my doors as well.
Yes please.
As much as, some people love all the bells and whistles; we need an electric "Volkswagen Beetle "
cheap~~~~ inexpensive as possibleBasic electric car. 200 miles range would be nice, but not mandatory.
Please Ford GM one of you. Please make this, you’ll sell a million
Ford&GM: “Why would we want to sell a million for $1k profit when we can sell a million big ass trucks for $30k profit? And sell more when they break down from our piss poor quality after a 3 years”
Sadly…
Except the company belongs to Jeff Bezos, so no thanks.
He’s “just” an investor isn’t he? Not the same thing. But still, if he has a major stake in it and it’s publicly traded, it will enshittify in no time.
We need to start a !slatestuck community!
Not crazy about the plastic body or the range but definitely interested. Lord knows there’s not any other options in that price range. Not in the US anyway.
Perfect idea, wrong asshole involved
Instead of steel or aluminum, the Slate Truck’s body panels are molded of plastic.
Uhhh…
I was interested until I read that.
Umm… That means cheap body repairs and no worries about rust.
No worries about body panel rust. The frame would likely still be metal.
Custom injected plastic is cheap to replace? And aluminum doesnt rust… unless your driving around in acid. But honestly as long the bed is made from metal, i wouldnt care if the sides are whatever.
You can heat it with a heatgun and bend it back into shape.
I suppose you can also just superglue the peices back when it shatters when you back into something in winter…
…so the same as every other car for the last several decades?
I don’t even like trucks, but the plain interior, ev qualities, and low price is very attractive. I hope they make a kei van version, or a sedan/crossover. A smaller vehicle could be a really interesting proposition for city use.
It’s supposed to be able to modularly convert into a SUV, so we will see how that works.
Yeah I don’t really like that aspect, because it kinda hints that the cab and the bed share a bulkhead and a non-permanent one at that like a Chevy Avalanche. That kind of thinking reminds me of Nintendo. That first Switch commercial, they show the guy playing Breath of the Wild on his TV at home, then it’s time to go so he slides the controller apart, slides the joycons onto the console and lifts it out of the dock, and now he’s playing on the bus/train/whatever it was. Then the next 2/3rds of the commercial are “Yeah! Yeah! And…” with people having rooftop parties playing two player games holding the joycons sideways like little controllers, which has happened precisely 0.0000 times since the launch of the console.
"It’s a reasonably priced, reasonably sized, barebones little electric truck, and for the sake of simplicity we’re only making it in one color and trim level. But we’re planning on offering a bunch of aftermarket options, and we’ve compromised the dry chafey B-cup tit fuck out of the design to accommodate the 3% of this shit that we’ll actually make before the company folds.
I would buy it in a second. It ticks every box on my want list. I don’t think I’ll need another vehicle when it comes out, but hopefully it - or something similar - is available when the time comes.
Yeah, I love this. Between the Slate with a bed cover, R2/R3, and Telo, there are some cool outdoorsy oriented EVs coming in the next few years that I’m looking forward to.
Not sure about those polypropylene body panels though. Most cars are going to be exposed to the sun, a lot.
Polypropylene is already used for panels for a lot of cars. They seem to hold up.
Sure, it’s used as filler and bumpers a lot. But it’s almost always the first thing to deteriorate on the vehicle.
I bought a Saturn back when they were a thing. I ran that thing into the ground. The panels were not a weakness, and we get a lot of sun where I live, and I didn’t have a garage.
And I’ve owned multiple cars where the plastics just crumbled away. The metal body panels lasted long after.
It all depends on the composite. GM used a polypropylene composites for several models in the 90s. And even after 30 years, the panels are fine. They only return back to steel panels because plastics have higher thermal movement so the fits had large gaps and consumers associated plastic as cheap and inferior as the inital dentless marketing wore off in the mid 2k’s.
What your probably refering is ABS composites that manufacturers love using for trim peices. ABS tends to have the stablizers just leech away.
That’s not a truck, that’s a render though. And not even a good one (look at the windows).
They have a real prototype. It’s not in the article, but you can find it on YouTube.
Similar sized large Chinese electric carts (super golf) with a quarter the speed and half the range start at 3k which is 10% of this price before incentives.
I can’t believe it takes 10x to get to street rated and sellable in the US
A good portion of the cost is in labor. Also your comparing a vehicle that cant drive highway speeds and smaller battery? Are you purposely being disingenuous?
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