cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/electricvehicles/p/2162853/usa-slate-s-new-electric-truck-will-cost-slightly-more-than-24950
Range is said to be 205 mi (330 km), higher than the original estimate. This price is for the basic truck. The SUV configuration is expected to be $5000 more.
These are going to sell out so fast and I’m here for it.
Why do EV companies keep trying to make electric trucks, it seems like the least efficient form when it comes to getting long range out of a car, is it that insecure American men won’t buy a ev if it wasn’t in the gender affirming shape of a truck
Might be cheaper to buy a used kei truck and convert it to biodiesel or electric.
oh its from the usa and bezos involved? well no thanks.
Do u have any better recommendations for EVs available in the USA that don’t have a rich dickhead involved? The slate truck looks very appealing I’m not gonna lie!
By a used EV. They all drop in price dramatically.
Is the Rivian owner an asshole too? I don’t know enough about him honestly that’s the only one I’m not too familiar with.
The Nissan leaf is always an option though they seem to be well received. And the bigger model one of the Nissan electric line I can’t remember the name.
Wasn’t Rivian owned by Amazon too?
I didn’t know this if it was!
After seeing the bumper repair I’ll pass there
I could never support Nissan after all their predatory loan tactics, their fucking sheisters and feed on poor people! Can’t speak on rivian don’t know much about the company besides their too expensive lol well over 2x price of a slate.
It looks like a scam
Of the 100 or so options available at launch, 33 percent cost under $100, 50 percent are under $250, and 80 percent are under $500.
It just looks like they’re going to nickel and dime people for every little thing. Car meets DLC.
The whole premise is a blank slate so if you don’t need any fancy gadgets you can purchase a low cost vehicle
Have you ever bought a car stereo? Those numbers sound completely reasonable in comparison to third-party vehicle mods. It doesn’t sound at all like they’re nickle-and-diming people.
Perhaps a better comparison is that the mainstream automakers are forcing vast feature bundles on everyone. You aren’t given the choice to buy a paired-down automobile. It simply has to come with a spyware infotainment system glued into the dashboard.
Honestly, it would be a lot better if vehicles came in fairly and cheap forms. Then you can take them to any third party mechanic to add whatever additional upgrades you want.
Pricing looks crazy. $2300 for a 300w flexible panel cover https://www.slate.auto/en/store/ACCMEU019?fromCategoryId=accessories_exterior&fromSubcategoryId=accessories_exterior_utility
That’s a pretty reasonable price. You can’t just look for a big number and conclude anything based on that. Sometime things cost money. You have to compare it to comparable third party products.
You’re not just talking a few panels here.
300w panels are like $200.
This. I don’t need a shitty touchscreen that lags over the simplest tasks. I have a high quality one I carry with me.
I first heard about these cars a few months ago and it made me realize I’d be fine just leaving a bluetooth speaker in the car. Doesn’t need to be a part of the vehicle. Just need power.
I agree. Besides the spying, the big issue I have with infotainment systems is, let’s call it, lifespan incompatibility.
Cars routinely last decades. Ideally, they would last forever. Once you strip away the bells and whistles, a car is a simple utilitarian object meant to accomplish a universally necessary task - the movement of people and cargo from one place to another. People dealt with the transport problem a thousand years ago, and they’ll be dealing with it a thousand years from now. There will always be need for a box on wheels that can move large amounts of things around quickly. Critically, a car can be a reasonably independent device - it doesn’t need to interface with some outside network in order to function. Yes, modern vehicles do often phone home, but that isn’t necessary to fulfill the vehicle’s core function. There are people living in 2026 still driving around Ford Model T’s. Sure, cars need roads and gasoline or electricity, but the same electricity can charge an EV from today or an EV from a century ago. When the Saturn car company went under, its passing didn’t brick all the Saturns on the roads.
Consumer electronics are the opposite. They’re built knowing that they’ll be obsolete relics in just a few years. The tech moves quickly and people want the newest features. People who change their phones even just every 5 years are considered frugal. Devices like smart phones also exist deeply embedded in vast tech ecosystems. My phone needs to be able to work with countless other sites, services, and apps. As their protocols and languages change, the phone must keep up. If my phone can’t talk to all the computers in the cloud, it can’t do its most basic functions. A 20 year old phone would be pretty useless in 2026. I would doubt you could even get a carrier to sell you a plan for it.
Consumer electronics and cars are fundamentally different types of objects. Assuming it was properly preserved, a person from 2126 could get real every day utility out of a car from 2026. But a 2026 phone, even if it was miraculously functional, would be a paperweight, of no use to them at all beyond a historical artifact. Cars fulfill a universal and timeless need. They should be designed to be bullet proof. Phones are born with their days numbered. Consumer electronics are meant to be a thing of the moment, constantly evolving, constantly changing. There’s no need to build in extreme durability. (I would prefer phones that can be repaired, but I’m not going to use even a highly repairable phone for 30 years.)
And this is the problem with permanently embedding consumer electronics into cars. They fundamentally exist on different time horizons. Inevitably the infotainment part of the car ends up a junk relic while the car part of the car still has years of good life left in it.
Something about this vehicle not mentioned: Because of the easily replaced plastic panels, insurance should be a lot less expensive.
But of course, meth heads are going to start stealing panels now.
And do what with them? Scrap yard don’t buy plastic.
It won’t be. But cute idea.
Not much of a turnaround on plastic, but worth a shot I guess.
Enter the aftermarket replacement panel bolts with security heads. Now they can only mangle the panels while trying to remove them!
If they sell enough trucks for meth heads to profit in the grey market by stealing the plastic panels, that’s a huge win
Jeff Bezos’s truck?
He’s an investor in Slate. He had no role in the concept or the design.
Yeah I don’t have a problem with giving credit to engineers if it’s a good thing like this. It’s when it directly gives evil people like that more wealth and power.
Jeff Bezos is a very evil man and I don’t want to touch or support anything that benefits him with a million foot pole.
Imagine if it were Musk or Trump or worse. I have a hard time accepting that, ethically.
I love trucks, and the electrification of everything, sustainable infrastructure and energy. But it has to serve the wellness and the future of the people, not a fucking evil billionaire who is going to turn around and choke us all to death as slaves while the takes over the world.
And as much as I really love stuff like this, engineering and sociologically, and would have idolized this as a teenager and bought it blindly could I have afforded it then, I’m an adult now and have a pretty strong sense of social responsibility to my fellow citizens and the future wellness of both people individually and society. And I just… It’s really hard to justify buying or advertising or supporting or even wanting stuff like this if the net outcome is just gonna be the same old, same old.
Like, I don’t want a Tesla anymore. Not only because their quality has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY, but also because the company refused to drop musk after all of his literally political interference and throwing up multiple sig heils or heil hitlers or whatever the fucking Nazi salute.
So when I ask “is this Jeff Bezos’s truck?” And the answer is “he’s an investor”, I really don’t think anybody should be promoting it or talking about it irresponsibly without considering the ethical concerns and track records of these far alt right billionaire backed corporations.
And unfortunately, I still see way too much of it.
I get that people are sick of horrible shit and life is short and these are nice things… But repeated exceptionalism and social irresponsibility are EXACTLY how we got here in the first place. I’m disgusted, disappointed, frustrated, angry, and sad.
I need good news. Not head-in-sand and keep-shitting-in-the-house-because-it-feels-good.
I do understand what you are saying. I do.
But its impossible to not benefit some greedy dickhead CEO of a corporation in one way or another. Anything you buy will do that. Some companies are better than others but there’s no avoiding having the money go to bad actors in some way shape or form in the end. Its all venture capital companies and billionaire ceos all the way down.
Its been designed to be this way.
I’m sure Bezos is broadly invested across the entire market. If you’re buying anything from any publicly traded company, you’re giving Bezos some money.
We need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Burn out the cancer. If we can’t plug the leak, it’s time for a new boat.
Then in the meantime, after you’ve tore everything down and while you’re building your utopia from scratch, everyone starves to death.
That’s kind of a shitty argument though. Because I don’t think we should just give up. We have to at least try.
But also, when society is this fucked, this deeply, by this type of cancer… It’s systemic and we’re heading in a very dark direction. People are going to starve to death no matter what, and compared to full on ww3, I think at some point we need to head it off, identify and cut out the cancer, and try our best to not let corruption back into the power vacuum.
None of this is easy. Not easy to do, not easy to talk about, not easy to even think about. It’s uncomfortable. And many won’t agree. But until society isn’t ratfucking select parts of itself and enriching evil people, I think there’s some structural improvement to be had. The real question, then, is how far down do we need to go? How deep do these shitty roots with a stranglehold on all of us go?
At that point you might as well consider every possible publicly traded company as benefitting Jeff Bezos.
I don’t want to touch or support anything that benefits him with a million foot pole.
I hate to break it to you, but probably over half the websites you go to are powered by AWS, Amazon Web Services.
Can you recommend an electric truck for me that doesn’t have the stink of men who have raped the planet, children, or exploited the poor?
The original price of 24950 included the federal tax rebate. This is why they used cheaper batteries and other cost cutting to try to keep the price the same. The rebates are gone.
I wonder if Aging Wheels will be able to get a hold of one of these for review.
I sure hope so. Maybe he can do a collab with Technology Connections about it?
Or Zip-tie Tuning
Alec is the best. Love his stuff. Valid ranting with well backed reason is such a niche area (especially non political) but I really enjoy finding it.
You should watch his videos on solar panels if you like a rant, though it gets increasingly political as it goes.
The video may be primarily about solar, but he goes nuclear by the end.
I loved that episode. I don’t mind political stuff, I’m just inundated with it around every corner and happy when I find something without it as a regular or defining feature.
He also helped me make my dishwasher work better.
I’ve been wanting to buy the detergent powder he helped with. But it’s pretty pricey compared to what I can get locally.
Oh god, another cross country roadtrip collab video please.
I love the old couple energy they have when they are together, lol.
They did a collab before. I gotta see this
They’ve done two road trip collabs before. Theres been a few other crossovers too, mostly on Aging Wheels. . Though Robert did appear in Alex’s video about the color Brown.
Can an Electrick Truck Tow Long Distance?
I am a avid fan and patreon of both of them, lol.
Meanwhile in germany that’s the cost of a compact car EV…
But those are usually 5-seaters while this looks like a two seater. And it doesn’t have a trunk, just this weird truck bed that does nothing to protect your stuff against the weather. I like the design philosophy of this truck, but I’d argue that you get much more value out of a compact car.
and the point of the truck is that it’s highly modular, if you want more seats it’s made to add them in
Okay, I won’t pass judgment until I see the actual real-life price of the truck with the modification for an additional row of seats and can compare that to other car models.
It also has a trunk in the hood
just this weird truck bed that does nothing to protect your stuff against the weather
That’s what’s called a pickup truck bed.
Sorry, my European brain cannot fathom how such a pickup truck bed could be useful in daily life.
I love how riled you got them.
Pickups are big, stupid and wasteful. And not pedestrian-friendly. Just get a van-based tipper truck if you really need to haul mulch or waste.
The Americans have a pickup-truck based cognitive blind-spot and really cannot see it any other way.
Toss my bike in and goooo.
How could such a bed be useful? They’re incredibly useful!
They’re useful to load things quickly. Awkward objects can be placed in the beds without having to carefully maneuver around a vehicle interior and all its obstructions. I do a lot of woodworking. Before we got a pickup, I would transport 2x4s and other lumber inside a Toyota Corolla. I’ve discovered it is actually possible to fit several dozen 8 foot long 2x4s inside a Corolla. But the pickup truck is such a better tool for the job. Plus you’re not moving a full sized sheet of plywood in a sedan.
They’re useful fit to large objects that would never fit inside a vehicle. If properly strapped down, a pickup can transport an object much taller than the roof of the truck.
They’re useful to move really dirty things you wouldn’t want in your car interior. Imagine you want to fill some garden beds with mulch or compost from a garden supplier. You could get it in small bags, but that would be expensive. It’s cheaper to buy in bulk. You could have them deliver it, but that would be more expensive still. If you need to move soil, compost, rock, or anything else dirty in bulk, a pickup is the way to do it. You can have the garden center fill your truck bed with a back hoe. Just dump it right into the bed. Then shovel it out when you get home. To clean out the bed, all you have to do is hose it off.
Now, this is pickups in general. We have a mid-2000s Ford Ranger, which is much smaller than the trucks all the big American manufacturers are selling today. A small pickup is a great utility tool. A giant one is a pointless penis extender.
We know.
Go to the garden store, buy 20 bags of mulch, sling them on the back, drive home. Or go to the drive-in theater and lay blankets in the back! Or put a kayak in the back and leave the tailgate down.
That’s my use case anyway.
So… a fiesta then? How many times a year do you need to haul 20 bags of mulch? Do you not have a trailer hitch?
Still not seeing the daily need for something so agricultural. I don’t drive a unimog to the grocery store.
Go to the garden store, buy 20 bags of mulch
I can’t afford a car, but I’ve got a house with a yard that needs that much mulch?
I’m sorry? We have an acre that we’re converting from all grass to trees, shrubs, herbs, crops, and wildflowers.
We have an acre
Must be nice.
I think the point is that a pickup truck bed is better for hauling this than vehicles with other body styles.
You can get a flatbed pickup for $25k if it’s not brand new. And it does the job just as well as whatever this thing is.
People act like the home depot wont deliver, and that trailers don’t exist and that they have to daily a pickup so that they can move mulch once a year.
My brother in christ its a codpiece for insecure people. What you need is a fiesta, rented/borrowed/shared utility trailer and a removable tow ball.
Go camping and just throw all the dirty stuff in the back to clean at home. Take all the yard clippings to the mulcher without having to bag them or keep a pile on the curb. I have a hard tonneau cover so sometimes I like keeping my tools under there if I have to park in the city without worrying about people seeing the valuables through a window.
People like to say truck owners never use their trucks but I use mine constantly. I’m camping at least 12-15 weekends per year, hauling yard equipment, kayaking, helping people move, and all in a midsized truck.
I don’t really hear people say that about tacomas or equally sized trucks. Moreso the bigger ones and usually they don’t have a scratch on them.
Well there you are it really is as crap as they promised.
That build quality would embarrass an Indian auto worker.
How do you know what the build quality is like? It wasn’t mentioned in the article and the Slate isn’t in production yet.
Hard pass for me for various reasons but I hope this does well enough to make other auto companies want to compete.
I only have a truck so i can tow a trailer. I wish they included some towing capacity and range numbers.
Cargo is 1500lbs. Towing is 2000lbs. I doubt… at the same time.
Those are numbers similar to a small truck in the 1980’s. Im sure its fine unless youre one of these guys who NEEDS to haul four tons of cow shit to texas twice a week or whatever excuse is always given against a small electric vehicle.
The payload is actually pretty damn good for a truck of its size. Compare it to an S10, most are rated for 999 pounds in the bed. In which I have hauled cow shit, half a ton at a time, from one end of the county to the other. Thing is…I don’t think the Slate can carry 1500 pounds of cow shit, the bed is too small.
Towing capacity is better than they initially said, earlier they quoted 1400, 2000 is lawnmower trailer territory. Compare that to the 5600 pound towing capacity of my S10.
And how often do you use the 5,600 pound towing capacity?
Personally? Never have. I know folks with similar trucks who do so daily.
Here’s my thing though: It’s got weirdly high onboard payload capacity, but a small bed. So…how do you load it that heavy? At the same time, it has a low towing capacity, so it’s not great for a contractor pulling a trailer. It’s almost backwards in a way.
Its not for contractors any more than its for people who think they need to tow four tons of cow shit to texas twice a week.
Contractors have trucks. People who want to traffic feces to texas have trucks. This truck isnt for them. Its for the person who just needs to grab stuff from the garden center or haul a couple of bikes to the lake without buying a $70,000 land yacht.
They venn diagrammed too close to the sun. They tried to make a single vehicle appeal to as many people as they could, meaning it’s for basically no one. It sucks at everything.
It’s a pickup truck that has a weirdly high cargo weight rating for the tiny bed you’d have to haul it in. Ideal for those who must move very dense cargo very short distances, like our nation’s many millions of short-haul plutonium deliverymen. I’m sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drug store.
It’s a 2-door 5-seat SUV in a market that already has three 2-door 2-row SUVs: The Jeep Wrangler, the Ford Bronco and the Land Rover Defender. All three of those are pretty serious 4WD offroad machines, all three are available as more normie-fied 4-door variants, and all three sell WAY more 4-doors than 2-doors. Because what the 2020’s American public needs is a full-size sedan, but they want to look rugged and outdoorsy, because if they actually drove a sedan or minivan, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson: “That says 'I’ve had my children and now I’m waiting to die.”
It’s an EV with the frame weight and aerodynamics of a pickup truck. So for it’s battery capacity, it’s got awful range.
It’s an EV that’s also cheap. So it’s got 400V architecture, no Vehicle-To-Load or Vehicle-To-Home, no 110VAC outlet, relatively slow charging despite its relatively small battery, and no heat pump.
So much of its fundamental design is in conflict with itself that it really only appeals to people who have no cargo, no passengers, and nowhere to go. It’ll probably carry home some Stouffer’s and White Claws from the Food Lion every week.
Shame too; I kinda like the eschewing of dashboard tech, the a la carte options list, prominent whatever-the-owner-wants mounting rails everywhere.
That would tow a utility trailer with a lawn care setup. That’s not bad at all.
There’s an entire website about it
This sounds nice for someone who needs a truck. But I have lots of kids. Why can’t I get an EV minivan for under $50k?
But I have lots of kids. Why can’t I get an EV minivan for under $50k?
I think you can get a vasectomy for less than that. Unless you’re murican, in which case, condoms maybe… if they’re legal in your state.
They’re offering a 5 seat SUV body as well. Not a minivan, but, closer.
The minivan is important. That sliding door means my kids never slam the door open into the next car… Many people get too attached to perfect paint on their car even though they have a history of trading in “that old thing” every 3 years.
Also the SUV config is 2 doors only, not really comfortable for everyday use as a family.
Politics. It can be done
https://m.made-in-china.com/hot-china-products/Electric_Mini_Van.html
The Chinese government is subsidizing the cost of their EVs. They are smart enough to realize that’s the future and want people hooked on them as the supplier. So, yeah it can be done cheaply if you own the entire supply chain and receive government subsidies.
I want a people’s van.
Really tho you’d think that vw would be making an easy to maintain ev version of their Volkswagen van instead of targeting 60k+
Perhaps some sort of people’s station wagon.
Or just a people’s wagon.
Or why be so formal, why “people,” instead of the more casual and fun “folks.”
The folk’s wagon, if you will.
Hello Nissan and Toyota. Where are your small EV and hybrid pick-up trucks?
I still cannot fathom why Honda hasn’t released an ev civic with a 120 mile range. it would sell huge.
suburu
brumbybrumb-e 🤤subaru e-sambar 🤤🤤🤤
The new Hilux does have both mhev and bev version.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux
Seems like it’s available everywhere except america
Hilux are not small, look at a Ford Falcon AU Ute.
lol, they’re $66,000 in Canada.
Seriously!
