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.
As Canadian…
American company?, nope
Owned by Bezos?, hell nah
Bezos was one investor, not the owner
Slate raised at least $111 million in Series A financing, including an undisclosed amount from Bezos. Slate then raised $600 million in 2024 from Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and CEO of Guggenheim Partners, Jeff Bezos, and General Catalyst, a venture capital firm.[5] In mid-2026, the company said it had completed a $650m series C investment round, which took its total capital raised to $1.4bn.[6]
Bezos was seed money AND part of the owner conglomerate that raised all the capital the company started with in 2024. That is enough for me to avoid this like the plague as it will, certain as the sun is hot, be enshitified to the core
If you do not believe me, here is an article explaining how this is all a big Amazon initiative
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
Same as a European, I do hope it succeeds though and as much as I hate bezos if he’s backing shit like this my opinion of him has increased by about 3.83%.
New Chinese EVs will be hitting the streets soon. Much cheaper and higher quality.
Higher quality from CCP run China. Nope. If the EV was from Taiwan, then yes.
Lol.
Wow, people really are this dumb.
Eleven down votes from the CCP representatives.
I heard that Bezos left the company as an investor. I don’t blame you for disliking anything American, but Slate Auto seems alright so far…
He was never “in it”; but he put up the seed money, then participated in the main round of fund raising and placed a ton of his people in the company. So even if his is not personally involved, he has all the strings he needs to pull it where he wants it to go (which, IMO, means Slate will be enshitified to the full the moment those little trucks start selling)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
deleted by creator
It’s never going to be released. Zero prototypes and being pushed by a billionaire.
At this point I think there’s a high likelihood that production will start close to their plan of late this year. As the other commenter said, you can go watch multiple videos of test drives. Pre-orders opened yesterday. But what do I know?
Sounds like it’s your chance to pull an Edison (like the Canadian Edison semi trucks).
Ew Edison…
But yes, some other poster also was surprised something like this could not be started up in Canada
I know our government here is also crappy and has tried to squash related initiatives before but I should look into it more
Is your issue with the man or the company? I actually don’t know much about Edison trucks beyond that they exist.
The man… Edison was last century Jobs, best that can be said is that he had a good eye for business but basically just took other people’s work, milked them and toss them aside making a profit for himself in the process without regards to the harm he was knowingly causing
Yes I’m aware of his story. The Canadian company named themselves such because they were stealing Tesla’s (Elon musk’s company) idea for the electric semi namely because they never delivered and the guy really wanted one so figured he may as well make one himself. They seem like a pretty decent company, although very small.
oh wow, that I did not know (the company’s backstory), thanks for sharing
Interesting, the telematics module is sold separately at $275.00. So for everyone worrying about spying, for this vehicle you got to opt-in and pay extra for it.
Never mind the low price, not having that shit built in is the killer feature for me, making it the only new car I would even consider buying. (It’s just too bad they won’t have a 4x4 version for another couple of years.)
It is kinda good that there’s an optional module available, though, because it means there’s an interface that, in theory, a third-party module running Free Software could hook into.
because it means there’s an interface that, in theory, a third-party module running Free Software could hook into
Absolutely this!
You don’t need 4 wheel drive with an EV truck, the weight is properly distributed between the 4 wheels, not like stupid pickups that put all the weight over the wrong drive wheels.
Pickups don’t need 4wd due to poor weight distribution, they need it for traction on loose surfaces.
JFC…take a physics class. The drive wheels are in back, the cab and motor are in front. Of course there is no traction, all the weight is at the wrong end and 99% of idiots who buy those trucks drive with empty beds.
My point is that 4WD is never used on pavement in pickups. Many pickups don’t even have 4WD and they do just fine, they have plenty of traction on pavement. Trucks don’t have 4WD due to weight distribution, they have it so people can take their trucks off the pavement. If you never intend to go off pavement, like so many pickup owners, you don’t need 4WD regardless of whether you’re in an ICE or EV truck. If you want to go offroad in an ICE or EV truck, you’ll want 4WD.
I have taken a few physics classes, was required to get some science credits to obtain my CS degree. I’m pretty sure they didn’t cover this concept as, well, duh.
There are tons of vehicles vehicles than can drive off road without 4WD. Most of Rally racing has been done with rear wheel drive vehicles, and they’re actually racing, not just casually driving. The reason a truck might not be able to handle it is because trucks are actually not set up well for it, unless they’re loaded. Like the comment above says, the weight distribution is bad for it, until you load the bed. This isn’t true for an EV truck. The weight is further back, so the rear wheels won’t lose traction as easily.
Anyone who thinks they need 4WD to off-road doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Can it help? Sure. Is it required? Far from it.
Saying 4WD helps offroad is the understatement of the century.
I’ve extensively offroaded in vehicles that aren’t really built for going offroad - a Subaru Loyale 4x4 with/without a rear locker, a lifted Crown Vic, and a lifted P2 Volvo XC70. The crown vic was so much less capable than the stock Subaru Loyale or the Volvo, even with the trunk full of weight, due to it being RWD. It was all about speed and momentum to get up hills, whereas the Volvo can just crawl up stuff. The Subaru can’t crawl up stuff, as it’s a manual and doesn’t have the low range gearbox, but as long as you stay in the power band of 1st gear it’s unstoppable in places the crown vic would be totally spinning out. I always called the crown vic the hammer of offroading, since you kinda were just forced to send it up every steep hill.
Lol rally racing is done on dirt roads. It’s not off road untill it isn’t a road, in which case u need 4x4! Also handy for when there’s a foot of snow on the roads, or during mud season around here where u find Subarus bellied out on dirt roads that are now mud pits. Bonus points if you have lockers or limited slips.
A pickup is supposed to be used such that the weight is properly loaded. If you don’t have the back full of firewood or something else anyway you are doing it wrong.
Then again if you don’t have a full 8 foot bed you are doing it wrong, and those are almost impossible to buy.
I have a modern-ish F150 with a single cab and 8ft bed. I feel like I have the only one that isnt a company truck.
I do if I want to take it on proper off-road trails, mudding and rock-crawling and such.
Very interesting indeed.
I read that the telematics package is meant for fleets, not average buyers
For remote app to vehicle features:
Description A plug-and-play solution that acts as a cellular bridge between your smartphone and your Slate vehicle, unlocking features like remote access and battery pre-conditioning.
Product details Includes: One (1) Telematics Unit, complete with a one year service subscription for your vehicle. Fits all body styles.
I’d hope you can precondition your battery from within the truck as well.
Yeah I don’t know, that’s just what Slate said “the telematics module is primarily for fleet customers, Slate told Ars.”
https://arstechnica.com/features/2026/06/we-take-a-ride-in-slates-24950-electric-pickup/
I’m fairly sure some spying is required by law, like the new driver cam legislation. Wonder how they’ll get past that.
The driver cam does not need Internet connectivity to meet the new standards.
I was wondering about that 2027 legislation and how this vehicle is affected. I didn’t see anything. Maybe that’s a next year production problem.
It goes into effect September 2027 and I’m guessing there will be a price increase.
This! I’m probably ready to pay a bit more to NOT be under constant surveillance by a car maker!
I hate the state of current website reporting.
so many sites give so much information but absolutely refuses to provide the original website or source. Instead, deciding to send the viewer through ClickHell as they try to navigate their own website sending the user in circles usually via links that go to their own pages to propagate views/clicks. I hate it
How hard is it to just link to the Slate’s main webpage after reporting on the product that way, the viewer can look at it themselves. Not one of the web pages they link there or any of the pages in said links lead to the actual vehicles site that they are reporting on.
Hello Nissan and Toyota. Where are your small EV and hybrid pick-up trucks?
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.
I still cannot fathom why Honda hasn’t released an ev civic with a 120 mile range. it would sell huge.
Seriously!
suburu
brumbybrumb-e 🤤subaru e-sambar 🤤🤤🤤
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.
If they sell enough trucks for meth heads to profit in the grey market by stealing the plastic panels, that’s a huge win
And do what with them? Scrap yard don’t buy plastic.
Enter the aftermarket replacement panel bolts with security heads. Now they can only mangle the panels while trying to remove them!
Not much of a turnaround on plastic, but worth a shot I guess.
It won’t be. But cute idea.
FYI: it looks like slate has switched battery chemistry and suppliers. They will now be using LFP batteries. Cheaper, but they’ll last longer. Especially if you charge them to 100% and discharge them below 15%.
An overall win, as there was a zero chance I would have bought one if they put the NMC batteries in it they were going to use.
There will no longer be battery options for a small 150 mile range battery or a bigger battery that would go around 240 miles, though. Now (due to LFP batteries not being as energy dense) there’s only going to be one battery option that they claim will have a 205 mile range.
Unfortunately for me, this means I won’t be getting one. I need to go 180 miles round trip between charges, and that’s just cutting it way too close. Especially during winter time when the range would be reduced by quite a bit.
Yeah, same for me. Buying groceries or going to see a doctor is a 100+mile round trip for me. At a 240 mile range, it was doable for me. At around 205 miles, that’s cutting it really close considering winters here can be very cold trimming the range. And while I know I can charge at home, chargers in the wild are still far and few between.
I still want one though. I’m very jealous of those can find them useful. The whole concept of being able to absolutely repair and change your base vehicle at home and when you want to is going to be a big selling point to many.
Yeah. I’m hoping it’s a big success and after a couple model years all our supply issues with Trump’s dumbass and AI and lack of tax incentives for EV will be different and they release one with a longer range. I want a 20 year vehicle (my Prius is about 20 and it’s still going like a boss at nearly 300k miles) so ideally, with battery ware and such, I’d like one that would start with a 300 mile range. I’d expect that to get me 200 miles in the winter after 10 years of battery ware.
Hard pass for me for various reasons but I hope this does well enough to make other auto companies want to compete.
Same. I want to want one. The interior colors are either melt-your-balls black or something else I didn’t like. But the older battery tech kills it for me.
Thats why I want to consider getting one. Hope the segment offers better options, but someone has to be the early adopter
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Toss my bike in and goooo.
EDIT: Dammit I am legitimately curious why someone down voted this. Did they read my comment and go “You know what fuck you for riding a bicycle.” Or were they like “You fool! You have to strap it down too. That’s unsafe!” Maybe they’re a hardcore bicyclist and had sympathy pains imagining me tossing my bike in the back of a truck.
I. must. know.
We know.
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
The concept is a good one. The marketing and financial backing is bad. I think an affordable ev would be a good thing, but this is America.
You’d have to be a massive idiot to think buying into a Bezos led infrastructure won’t nickle and dime them to death down the road…
Tbh that kinda sounds like the point from the start. The price they give is the base-base. Like, an absolute barebones build. Any color you want as long as it’s grey.
But making each individual add-on available…individually…is pretty damn sweet. And also making them available after-market…presumably in an easy-to-install method (kinda figure to be scalable it must be, otherwise the build-to-order model would flop at the assembly line), is icing on the cake.
It sucks that it’s a Bezos initiative, otherwise I’d be yelling to shut up and take my money. A basic-ass EV two-seater that can handle light open loads is exactly what I want. And one that is (seemingly) user-servicable? Hell yeah. AND A FRUNK TO BOOT!
But if bezos is behind it, it’s instantly sus. More sus than any other billionaire, save for a handful.
Off the bat, this thing is basically a dumb phone and it’s going to be very easy for third parties to mess with the platform. My bigger concern with the first launch is quality control. It’s a new vehicle, a new platform, and they’re trying to be extremely cost conscious. I won’t be surprised if there are quality issues with the first production run.
My guess is that, like with Rivian, Bezos is more interested in an EV platform for logistics. These are cheap, they don’t dent, they the don’t have a lot of electronics that can break, they can be easily retrofitted with new logistics platforms if you have an Allen wrench, they’re small enough for urban areas, and you don’t pay for gas.
Bezos is a lot of shitty things, but what made him rich was being a penny pinching logistics geek. This is right up his alley. Cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, cheap to operate.
My buildout went to $33,600 for fastback with roof rack and speakers
While that’s a lot more than base, it’s exactly what I want and it’s still a great price compared to any other EV available to me. The only thing it would really not be good at is road trips but I still have my model Y
But as a big and tall guy I would never buy a vehicle without trying it to see if it’s comfortable for me …… and to see if I can remove the back seats and fit it out as a camper. (My brother is doing that with a sienna hybrid and he probably has the right idea: lack of range could be a problem if you want to camp for a week with no electric)
If you are camping for a week a few solar panels can give you some useful range, perhaps enough to get a full charge (depending on sun, how many panels, and what else you do for power)
“Hey Jim, can you get started on dinner?”
“No, I’m busy setting up my 25 panel 5kw solar array so I can get home!”
That sounds ridicoulous, but it’d still take 14 hours of broad sunlight to charge the Rivian R1T with the 141kwh battery from 25 to 75%.
Unless all the camping you do is staying for a week in each location, or just stay in campgrounds near highways, an EV just doesn’t work yet, as much as I want it to. Offroading is brutal on range in both gas and electric vehicles, and without a way to refuel quickly in rural areas, it just doesn’t work. If there were as many fast chargers as there are gas stations, it probably would be viable, though you’d still run into the edge case where you want to go further between charges and can’t simply bring a Jerry can with you.
I understood this as camping in one location, or parking in one remote location and hiking for a week. This is a fairly common way to camp. Over a week you can get a useful charge if you are not driving. Likely just 1kw would be enough to get a useful charge over a week. If you are driving to a new spot every day this doesn’t work (unless the drive is really short).
I suppose I’m not the type to camp like that. I usually stay in each location two or three nights tops. Also, I don’t think I’d feel comfortable relying on solar to get me home, even if I was in the same spot for a week. If the weather changes to rainy/overcast and I’m getting 100w instead of a kw, I wouldn’t want to be stranded. I’m also not a fair-weather camper, and go out in all conditions, which could be considered unusual.
Yeah, this is my scenario: stay for a week of hiking or going to the beach. I live in New England where everything is close and there are plenty of superchargers.
For example Acadia National park is 280 miles, has dozens of superchargers enroute, and lots of hiking.
Or there’s beach camping like 20 miles away
Yeah, I’m in the northwest of the US and often I drive for hours after leaving the pavement, then move on the next day.
big and tall guy I would never buy a vehicle without trying it to see if it’s comfortable for me …… and to see if I can remove the back seats
Only 2 doors for the SUV is pretty wonky.
well it’s not a minivan
I mean, Blazers and Broncos have been around forever as 2-door SUVs, not a big issue there
ah, but todays full-sized husky American kids can’t squeeze past the seats in a two-door.
The range is now 205 miles, from a 63-kWh battery.
That’s… Not that great. For comparison, the 2022 Chevy Bolt has a similar sized battery (65kWh) but about 260 miles of range. The weight’s a little less than the slate at 3,600 lbs though it still wouldn’t be enough to gap the difference in performance. There’s either some heavy drag introduced by the truck or some drive system inefficiencies.
I don’t understand the obsession with range. I agree that efficiency is important, but who is regularly driving a pickup truck 200 miles in a day?
Rural people, as in the folks who actually have a use for pickups. As it so happens, it is about 200 miles round-trip to my nearest airport/major city, so if this were my vehicle, I’d have to take a charge break when picking someone up/dropping them off at the airport, or making a shopping run, or going to a concert/special event, or seeing a medical specialist. And I’m not even that far off the beaten path; I have family for whom the one-way drive to their nearest major city/airport is over 200mi. Plus if you’re hauling anything, I’d imagine that range goes down quick.
That 200mi estimate is based on driving around 30-40 mph
You can expect like 140 miles of range at highway speeds
I live in Wyoming so I understand rural, however we are not the only folks with a “real” use for trucks. Plenty of reasons for a townie to own one.
My point was more that a pickup’s core demographic live in places where range is absolutely a consideration. Some city folks do have good reason to own a pickup, but for most it’s an aesthetic/image thing. Which, given the environmental/traffic safety consequences of driving a larger vehicle than necessary, is plenty deserving of judgement imo.
Americans get anxiety from having to do math in their heads. Average commute distance is 30 miles a day, and there is always some asshole who whines about towing his boat.
But don’t try rational arguments with pickup drivers who commute to office jobs and drive a tank for that one time they needed to move a brother in law’s couch.
Miles are a bad way to track performance because real life conditions can wildly impact BEV efficiency. I can tell you from first hand experience that towing, elevation changes, or moving at highway speeds in winter can cut per kWh efficiency in half.
And beyond that, you’re supposed to be capping your daily charge limit below 100% for battery longevity. 200 theoretical miles can turn to 160 miles and down to 70 real quick. That can get uncomfortably tight if you miss an overnight charge.
Frankly, its dumb to criticize people who expect their personal vehicle to perform reasonably well in situations where a personal vehicle should excel. Why own a car if it can’t do a round-trip weekend excursion or haul a bit of furniture?
By your logic everyone should only need a tiny moped with a rain jacket and a backpack. It’s irrational to worry about climate control or passengers or suitcases, you statistically never need them.
You know what? You’ve led me to the diagnosis of my own EV range anxiety: Unpredictable performance.
In a gas powered car, you pretty much can think in miles. They put the “24 city, 29 highway” numbers on the sticker in the window, and that’s pretty close to what you’ll get out of it. Maybe loading it until it squats on the suspension or pulling a trailer or driving like a maniac will decrease the economy. But, if you do those kinds of things, you can fill the tank, note the mileage, drive like that awhile, fill the tank again, note the fuel consumed and the mileage performed and you’ve got a figure you can pretty much rely on no matter the weather. The limiting factor is almost always the driver. Drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank, drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank…
I happen to be a flight instructor. There’s a whole chapter in flight school about cross country flight planning and predicting aircraft performance. Wind is such a factor that you really can’t rate a plane in miles of range, but in hours of endurance. So to plan a flight, you look up the route of flight on an aeronautical chart, the weather forecast, read performance charts and tables out of the plane’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook, crunch a whole bunch of numbers and you’ll know fairly precisely how long you’ll be aloft and how much fuel you’ll burn.
With an EV…they spit out a range in miles that the vehicle will do in unspecified ideal conditions, tell you that heat, cold, using the heater, using the air conditioner, carrying weight, wind and age will reduce the range, and then they’ll get impatient with you if you try to work out what the vehicle will actually do and they’ll mail you anthrax if the answer you arrive at is “not enough.”
The plane trip is a great analogy. There’s probably plenty of data on which aircraft can fly it and, optimizations aside, you might have the option of over-fueling to be sure you can accomplish it.
With a BEV your pitiful energy limit might mean doing all those cross country calculations just to reach the other side of the state. And even then the sheer number of variables (Will I hit traffic? Will a fast charger spot be available at X? When exactly will it drop below freezing? Will my battery be conditioned at start? Does M miles of ~N mi/kWh surface streets beat M-Y miles of highway…) makes it impossible to precisely say.
You basically have to drive by feel, hence my reckoning of my car needing 1.5-2x dashboard mileage buffer for critical margin trips. I’ve personally made the exact same trip in different conditions and pulled in from as low as 3% up to 35% battery remaining.
The only solutions are way better/larger batteries, much smaller cars, or massively expanded charging infrastructure. Unfortunately nothing [affordable] in the market is addressing any of those.
The only solutions are way better/larger batteries, much smaller cars, or massively expanded charging infrastructure. Unfortunately nothing [affordable] in the market is addressing any of those.
I think the market is addressing all three. The F-150 Lightning is giving way to the Slate and Ford’s upcoming Ranchero. They’re working on battery chemistries, they’ve been getting better. Charging infrastructure HAS been built out.
Gas car owners haven’t seen EV charging stations going in, because they’re often put in out-of-the-way places. They’re not as visually obvious as gas stations, so gas car owners may have been surrounded by them and not realize it. So they don’t feel like the infrastructure is there, when it is. The EV charging industry has done a better job of concealing itself from the American public than the NSA.
I could rant about charging stations being difficult to find, “But use an app” you mean nazi stalker software? We’re in an age where a lot of people want to step back from all that shit because of who’s running it all. I genuinely do prefer to find gas stations by seeing their signs. I could throw my phone in a lake and drive my 2005 Buick to California, right now. I know how the US interstate system works and I know how to find and buy gas without any precise location enabled spyware.
Let’s ignore that for now, and instead: EV prononents like to point out that most charging will be done at home, and charging away from home will be a rare occasion mostly on road trips. Lemme ask you something: You got an app on your phone you only use occasionally? It’s a pain in the ass, right? Go to order your quarterly pizza from Domino’s and the app needs to be manually updated and logged back into and their terms of service have changed…sounds like fun to deal with when you’ve been sent on a 4 hour mission and you need to find a charging station. Phone apps aren’t tools you can get and put in your toolbox until you need them, they rust.
BUT ANYWAY. What they need is better communication of the vehicle’s limitations. The manufacturer spits out a number achieved in ideal conditions. Then you talk to owners and they go “Yeah. WELLLL…it depends” and start listing the conditions where you won’t get that. Start telling me what the machine WILL do, give me ways to predict the vehicle’s performance in non-ideal conditions, or start engineering those limits out.
I’d rather hear “It will do 200 miles between charges.” more than “It’ll do 300 miles. WELLLL…it depends. Maybe it’ll only do 180 if it’s cold out and you’re running the heater.”
Why own a car if it can’t do a round-trip weekend excursion or haul a bit of furniture?
The overall point I’m getting here is that yes, that’s a fine expectation to have. But do you really need a King Ranch Super Duty just to go to the airport twice a year?
Thats the trouble with private vehicles in a nutshell. Sit idle for 95% of the time, and we need to buy models that are capable for the 1% of the drives we might want to do in a year.
Sure they do, but then complain about aFFoRdAbIlIty when a tank is $250.
That’s a false dichotomy.
I’ve been driving an S10 for decades. Yeah, it’s a little bit 20th century, it makes 18mpg out of a large, slow, primitive V6. It’s great for small truck missions, it’s reasonable for long hauls, and I can expect to go THIS far on THIS much gas.
Not far on a lot of gas.
It isn’t regularly, it is what you do on the margins. that one trip a year. Those really cold days in winter (ICEs have a built in heater). 200 miles is more than enough most days, but once a month it will be really close.
My obsession isn’t with range, it’s with charge time. Yes I’m a bit irrational wanting a fully charged car every morning but that may not happen with a lower battery efficiency using a level 1 charger. I’m sure you’d appreciate better range efficiency like any gas car user would want better MPG.
Even with high efficiencies, you are going to have troubles with a level 1 charger. Level 2 charging is 5 times faster and still takes a long time to fill a battery. The most efficient consumer EV, the Kona, only charges at 6 miles per hour of level 1 charging. Yeah, you can get 80 miles of charge leaving your car charging overnight, but it completely limits any flexibility in using your car outside of commuting. I should know, I tried to do level 1 charging with a 90 mile range car for a couple months. It sucked, so I got a level 2 charger installed. After that, the 90mi range was fine for 3 years.
Yeah, 120v15a is a pain. At least see about rewiring an outlet for 220v 15a. An electrician can often do it cheaply because its the same wires. Then you can get most of a full charge between commutes.
In almost all cases your 120V15A outlet has other outlets on the circuit and so it cannot be rewired that cheap. In almost all cases it is really 120V 20A though, so you can set your level 1 charger to a slightly faster rate since odds are nothing else is running on that circuit (but good luck finding a charger that supports that faster level 1 rate).
The shorter your range the more important fast charge is. My car with a 200 mile range is almost(!) always fine on level 1 since I so rarely use make so many trips in a row that it would empty the battery. My wife’s phev with only 30 miles of range is always at near 0% when she gets home and she (like most people) is likley to be making another trip soon so level 2 is a must. (of course it could switch to gas it isn’t charged, but gas is several times more expensive so we try to use gas for long trips only)
More range not only means driving further without charging but also fewer charge cycles being needed.
Imagine it being like your phone when you play games and the battery dies after 6 hours. How long do you think your phone’s battery is going to last when you’re regularly charging it that often? Now imagine you paid $30k-$100k for the phone and you’ll see why range is important to most people.
I personally have a 100 mile work commute and have decided not to get an EV for the time being because I want one I can keep at least a decade like my current ICE (Camry) without worrying about a $20k battery replacement or having to constantly keep it on a charger. It looks like the new solid state batteries should solve this issue but nobody is producing them yet.
My only problem with the Slate’s range is that, being a truck/SUV, I would want to use it for overlanding (the kind of use-case where even gasoline vehicles need extra fuel tanks strapped to them, as shown here). Trying to do that with an EV with anything less than exceptional range would be limited and take careful route-planning.
Obviously it’s not a “regular” use and therefore shouldn’t rationally be a deal-breaker, but nevertheless taking a couple of jerry cans is a lot less weird and complicated than towing a generator. (And the fact that I’m seriously considering the latter as an option just goes to show how much I like the Slate truck anyway.)
I would say probably the boxy front and truck bed. They have to do the range tests on the base model so I wonder if it would improve the range with the SUV mod
Pickups have better aero without a bed cap.
I remember watching that Mythbusters episode and being convinced. But it still doesn’t fit neatly into my intuition of the thing.
Intuition is just bias. Physics explains why.
I wonder which is actually more aero between the squareback and fastback options?
Squarebacks have a huge void you have to drag along.
That seems likely, yes, but you don’t know for sure without CFD or wind tunnel testing. It could be that there’s some weird detail with the fastback that somehow manages to make it worse.
Aerodynamics. The Bolt is a slick little running shoe. The Slate is a slab.
Slightly more than $24,950, so likely less than $30,000
Yeah, leaving the destination charge unknown for this announcement leaves a lot of uncertainty.
I don’t know where they’re getting the “slightly more” from, but no.
Ford’s $30,000 EV truck is supposed to be here fairly soon as well, although it looks like that will only be available as a crew cab, sadly.
But it will be a real vehicle made by a real company with things like a ‘radio’
I put a deposit down on one when they were first announced. But that was when its price was competitive with cheap used EVs. Then accepting the stripped down bare bones truck made sense. This is too close to new EV pricing. Bolt, Leaf, Ford EV are all within range of this, especially with an option or two to make it livable. Plus at $25k you’re now competing with very clean used examples of the Hyundai triplets and mustang Mach e.
Best of luck, Slate, but to me the truck doesn’t justify its price.
But it will be a real vehicle made by a real company with things like a ‘radio’
That’s a bad thing, because “radio” these days implies “spying and enshittification.”
Slate is the only EV on the entire market that isn’t fucked with that deal-breaker.
CarPlay isn’t enshittification
CarPlay itself, perhaps not. The telemetry, ads, annoying safety nagging, and sometimes even paywalled vehicle features that tend to be implemented alongside it (because the underlying computerization facilitates both the good and the bad) is, though.
Im planning on waiting 5 years to see if it will become a thing and be well supported. Ive been burned by experimental tech before. But I hope to see more of these kind of projects pop up in the future.
I wouldn’t touch a Ford with someone else’s money
The company who invented plastic oil pans.
