What went wrong is that 1) Tesla never made a low-end vehicle, despite announcements, and 2) all the other US manufacturers treated electric as a premium product, resulting in the overpowered electric Hummer 2 and F-150 pickups with high price tags. The only US electric vehicle with comparable prices in electric and gasoline versions is the Ford Transit.
BYD says that their strategy for now is to dominate in every country that does not have its own auto industry. Worry about the left-behind countries later.
BYD did it by 1) getting lithium-iron batteries to be cheaper, safer, and faster-charging, although heavier than lithium-ion, 2) integrating rear wheels, differential, axle, and motor into an "e-axle" unit that's the entire mechanical part of the power train, and 3) building really big auto plants in China.
Next step is to get solid state batteries into volume production, and build a new factory bigger than San Francisco.
Also the many systemic, industry-wide factors discussed last week in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692677 ("America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back (molsonhart.com)" — 1010 comments)
I agree with the gist of that piece; focusing on specific engineering choices (important as they are) is missing the forest for a particularly interesting tree.
Even startups these days seem to be a case of too many chiefs, not enough Indians.
“Smart People Should Build Things”
Places that understand that physical production cannot be abstracted forever will prevail.
And he still would've been worth over 250 billion easily.
Instead he chose to buy the president and start "optimising" the government with AI.
Could he, though?
I mean, he might have the cash, but if you look at his history you don't see that much interest or respect for basic academic principles, or even any basic academic achievement whatsoever.
He conveys an image of someone who is mentally trapped in prepubescence, and who repeatedly does things that a prepubescent kid does to try to gather admiration. I meant who desperately tries to pass themselves off as elite gamers? How long will it take until he moves on to DJing? That's not someone who has any interest in founding education institutions.
The man does have an army of terminally online sycophants, which I now wonder whether they are astroturfed.
That statement is pointless. The critical factor is not money, it's willingness. You do not even need to be the world's richest man to put together a school. There are pro athletes with a fraction of the wealth that already do meaningful investments in education.
To that dimension I would add ethics as well. It's very hard to justify working for the likes of Tesla when being mindful of the attitude the company and company representatives have with regards to basic issues ranging from workers rights to totalitarianism.
Depending on what you are looking for they are WAY cheaper than comparable cars.
They could have strong-armed the states into it with a combination of funding the construction and the way they mandated the 21 drinking age: by threatening to withhold highway funds.
https://www.govtech.com/transportation/federal-funding-for-e...
Yea let's give the federal government more power. That's going so well right now.
Investing on a nation-wide infrastructure grid that fundamentally changes the nation's energy independence is hardly a reason to mindlessly parrot state rights cliches.
While useful parts of the federal goverment are destroyed, because they dont serve ultra rich.
From an EU perspective the world as it has existed in the living memory is a world shaped by decisive US-actions. The way EVs have been approached were anything but that. Arguably neither did Germany, because of the way their politicians are entangled with the car manufacturers.
But if you sold the Spark EV for 20k today with like 120mi of range, it would be perfect and would satisfy all my needs 99% of the time. Even mine (13k all in) was great here in LA with ~60mi of range. I loved how small and easy to park it was without feeling cramped to me at all. If it had CarPlay I'd've said it was the perfect car haha.
It's a shame they haven't rebooted it yet as a pure EV. It's right there in the name!
That's because they plan to have a small number of huge factories to keep costs down.
But that means they need cheap ships, and can only sell to places with no car tariffs - which tends to be the countries without an auto industry.
Pretty sure they plan to disrupt any market
Fundamentally, IMO, EVs are such a simple concept mechanically that any company capable of building a conventional ICE vehicle can build an EV.
It's glib to say that - obviously there's a lot of unsaid complexity (battery back cooling, fitting into the frame, and so on), but the actual drivetrain component is just so simple. That EVs are still expensive is to me a sign that production hasn't ramped up yet. So long as production is limited EVs will remain a luxury product - but I can't imagine that's going to continue for all that much longer with an increasing backlog of used EVs on the market and decreasing battery prices.
Honda and Toyota weren't able to outcompete US manufacturers in the 1980s by offering higher performance vehicles but by delivering similar quality products at lower prices by making use of superior production techniques like Lean and JIT inventory management.
VW Group and Stellantis totally failed to compete with Chinese manufacturers and were driven out of the Chinese EV market almost entirely. Competition is extremely fierce.
>That EVs are still expensive
Look up what they cost in China.
>So long as production is limited EVs will remain a luxury product
Around 50% of new sales in China. Not "luxury" in any meaningful way.
The issue is that EVs do not differentiate themselves by power train. They differentiate themselves by battery and software.
https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2024/27...
Just 2018 to 2022, BYD received $5.9B. And that doesn't include all the indirect subsidies that went to suppliers like the battery manufacturers.
It's a part of Chinese government strategy of "build it and they will come". Massively subsidize select industries, dominate the market.
Which is why the EU has put high tariff's on the cars.
Today, most of BYD's products use this technology. It's been improved to handle higher charging rates. Seems to work fine. Lithium-ion has better Wh/Kg, and it's still used in some high-end cars, mostly Teslas. BYD's approach has captured the low and medium priced markets.
BYD has announced that they plan first shipments of cars with solid state batteries (higher Wh/Kg) in 2027. Price will be high at first, and they will first appear in BYD's high-end cars. Like these.[3] BYD has the Yangwang U8, a big off-road SUV comparable to the Rivian, and the Yangwang U9, a "hypercar". Just to show that they can make them, probably.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIt5z4wT9RE
[2] https://electrek.co/2025/02/17/byd-confirms-evs-all-solid-st...
I really did not expect to open this and have it be presented by Kryten! Fun surprise! :)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
[1] - https://www.motortrend.com/news/2026-mercedes-benz-baby-g-wa...
Just like code, regulation isn't intrinsically valuable - it's a means to an end, and piling lots of poorly-written stuff on top of each other has disasterous consequences for society. We have to make sure that the code and law that we write is carefully thought out and crafted to achieve its desired effect with minimal complexity, and formally verify and test it when possible.
(an example of testing law may be to get a few clever people into a room and red-team possible exploits in the proposed bill or regulation)
It seems that the goal is to pressure automakers to improve the efficiency across their entire line instead of simply banning low-efficiency models altogether.
If an automaker discontinues a low-efficient model in order to have access to a market, isn't this an example of regulation working well?
The spirit was surely be too accelerate efficiency by ensuring all manufacturers improve. That has been negated; reducing the necessary efficiency for some manufacturers just because others are doing well.
It's like if you allowed multiple people to mix blood samples for a DUI check. Sure, there'd have to be less drinking over all, but some would still be drunk af and the effectiveness of the law would be greatly reduced.
All local industry distorts their relevant politics. There’s lobbyists in the EU too.
The EU economy has a lot of car manufacturing, so cars are probably a big deal in Brussels.
Car manufacturing is a strategic component of a nation's defense infrastructure. It goes way beyond trade protectionism.
And Germany is fairly influential in the EU so they probably extend the protection of these companies to the EU level.
The situation here is pathetic. We can't have truly small trucks or sport-utes because of obviously incompetent or corrupt regulations.
It's like complaining that you bought a boat, but the water surrounding them is dangerous and you could drown in it. So we need to make it work on land so that you can take the kids to school in it without drowning.
Related note: I just saw a Suzuki Sidekick on the road in L.A., in Geo Tracker trim... a rare sight nowadays. It sounded like shit, but with a robust platform a vehicle like that would be just what the U.S. market lacks: a burly SMALL sport-ute.
1. Poorer people tend to drive older vehicles, so if you solely encourage higher fuel economies by taxing carbon emissions, then the tax is (at least short-term) regressive.
2. You can work around #1 by applying incentives for manufacturers to make more efficient cars should lead any carbon tax
3. If you just reward companies based on fleet-average fuel economy without regard to vehicle size, then it would be rather bad for US car companies (who employ unionized workers) that historically make larger cars than Asian and European companies.
4. So the first thing done was to have a separate standard for passenger vehicles and light-trucks, but this resulted in minivans and SUVs being made in such a way as to get the light-truck rating
5. We then ended up with the size-based calculation we have today, but the formula is (IMO) overly punitive on small vehicles. Given that the formula was forward looking, it was almost certain to be wrong in one direction or the other, but it hasn't been updated.
Every single one of your ideas has problems that are solved by a carbon tax. Taxes are simple, they accomplish what you want, and they don't have loopholes. A carbon tax will _never_ have the unintended consequence of making emissions worse. Many of our current regulations, including the one I was responding to do exactly that because they actually cause people to buy larger trucks than they otherwise would with worse fuel efficiency.
A carbon tax might not on it's own be enough to solve the problem (especially if you set it to low), but no matter what level you set it, it will help. Thanks to unintended consequences, many of our current regulations are actively counter productive, while _also_ having negative economic and other costs.
Shifting cost to the emitters is a better way to put it. If a factory can make 10m in upgrades over time to reduce their carbon tax burden by 15m over time, they are definitely going to do it. So I disagree: I say it does change behavior and it does reduce actual carbon.
> There's a lot more low-income emitters than high income ones
Whether that's true or not it does not mean a carbon tax would not 'reduce actual carbon'.
An ICE vehicle sitting in a driveway with its engine off emits no pollution (that is, after the initial impact of manufacturing and delivering it).
However, the part where the resulting revenue is pooled and payed out in an equal amount back per capita is progressive, since that payment is a greater fraction of a low income. Desirably, it also means that low-income people emitting less than the average would make money overall: consider a household consisting of a single mom and two kids that take public transit to work/school.
If you set the carbon tax at about $1/gallon of gasoline, the corresponding carbon rebate would be about $1000 per family per year.
That wouldn't affect rich people much; neither the $1/gallon nor the $1000 extra income is significant. But many rich people get rich by being penny-wise, so many would change behaviour, by buying an EV or similar.
But for poor people both $1/gallon and $1000 per year is significant. If gas was $1/gallon more expensive, poor people definitely would drive less.
The trickle down as those cars depreciated in value was years away.
Someone has to buy them for full price before they show up on the used market 5-10 years later.
New Zealand used car market is likely very different from the market where you are. The cheapest Model 3 I could find was a USD18000 for a 2020.
Subsidies make sense if the environmental gains outweigh the costs of the subsidies.
Subsidies: there was a purchase subsidy, charging stations were subsidised, and I think electric cars are not paying their fair share of road maintenance (much of our road costs are paid for by an excise tax on usage via petrol-tax or heavy-vehicle-milage).
And if you pretend that there is no subsidy, and the original owner paid $80,000 just because it cost that much unsubsidized, the second buyer still gets the same discount off the original purchase price.
So the fact that the car was originally subsidized isn’t relevant.
The issue with this is that it creates a whole parallel (and largely fake) carbon accounting world. Fake estimates, fake offsets, a complex web of compensating subsidies - but real public money.
The field of carbon taxes is tricky because we can imagine simple schemes which handle a few scenarios in a fair way (ok, fuel! we know how to tax that) but once you start thinking about agriculture or construction you quickly get into complex estimation. You then end up with armies of carbon accountants who spend all day looking for loopholes and rorts.
Which is dismaying because carbon taxes are a conservative solution to this problem and IIRC the first political entities to suggest the implementation of them in Canada were Conservative.
At the end of the day you have a nontrivial amount of the population, and many in positions of power who just outright deny environmental concerns and climate change as an existential threat.
They aren't going to approach this problem in good faith and it isn't obvious what the solution to their nefarious influence on policy should be.
1. The textbook implementation involves 3 parts: tax, rebate and tariff. Canada only did the first 2. They were in talks with Germany/EU to create a carbon tariff zone, but that never happens. Without the tariff the carbon tax is massively unfair to local producers.
2. The rebates were almost invisible. If they would have been cheques in the mail it would have had much more impact psychologically.
But I agree, the main problem was denialism and its use as a political cudgel. It should be hard to argue that carbon tax is stealing money when all of it is given back, but they successfully did that.
Second, and probably more important: the rebates showed up in your bank account with a description that didn't make the source obvious enough for laypeople. Had people seen monthly "CARBON DIVIDEND" credits in their bank accounts, they would have noticed.
If you want proof of this, just look at what happens to sales of large vs small cars when the price of gas changes.
I'm poor. I could get just the $X back as my carbon tax dividend and continue with my current lifestyle. Or I could make choices that emit less carbon, which will cost less since they don't have a carbon tax cost to them, and save an additional $Y on top of the $X I'm already getting.
What do I do?
Let's say that instead of taxing carbon, we pay people a bonus for emitting a below-average amount of carbon (proportional to the amount that they are below average by). If the amount is in a certain range, it will be too small an amount for wealthy people to care about, but large enough for poorer people to do things within their means (e.g. carpooling) to try to get it.
The results would hit certain geographic areas much worse than others, and (if priced enough to change behavior) would also probably depress car sales, which are two reasons why the federal fuel tax has been flat for over 30 years.
The original suggestion could be collected at point-of-sale for carbon emitting products. Gasoline, airplane tickets (based on average for the flights), even electricity are easy to measure and charge at the point of sale.
In your example, the person has to prove how much they didn’t emit, which is way harder in practice, to get the credit.
And similarly i would extrapolate to do we tax the buyer of electricity (which could be green sourced) or the manufacturer - the gas burner. Or maybe even at the first point of contact with the carbon source, the oil company.
So you're saying that the government should incentivize poorer people to sell one of the last bits of their functional autonomy for what would be trivial amounts? "We'll just hang onto to this for a bit until you decide to stop going anywhere or make friends at work".
I believe this would be more fair to children who are the ones who will be most impacted by climate change in the end.
I believe there are even some governments that use this approach, but many of them don't make it feel as significant as it should. You should get a big fat cheque in the mail every month as if you won the lottery.
"Taxes are simple... and they don't have loopholes" is not at all how taxes work in the US. Perhaps your imagined perfect carbon tax is simple, but a simple tax with no loopholes is not likely to happen. Everyone wants a break or exception, and many of the interested parties are powerful.
You could say the same thing about zoning. Higher density is better for affordability, but faces opposition from landowning existing residents. Does that make it wrong, or not worth pursuing? No, and that particular movement seems to be getting traction despite the political opposition.
I read "trivially fixable" as "there is an elegant solution to this," not that "it is easy to get it politically passed."
> I read "trivially fixable" as "there is an elegant solution to this," not that "it is easy to get it politically passed."
The huge problem with this line of thinking is that it's easy to identify a half-dozen key players standing in the way of your elegant solution and it would be easier to remove them from the situation than change their minds. It's an attractive idea that can become a fixed idea.
In an ideal world, I'd like the tax to be made more progressive, but I'll take anything!
I'd like to see a carbon tax coupled with massive investments to make public transit legitimately good. There are too many places where there is no viable alternative to driving, a carbon tax will unnecessarily punish those people without giving them a reasonable alternative.
Government ‘carrots’ are almost universally a terrible idea because they codify specific solutions. Instead you can get the same effect more efficiently with a carbon tax large enough for people to notice.
I'll boil it down to:
If you want less of something, tax it.
Why would you think so? People driving older cars, not being able to afford to fly - will certainly spend more money on fuel for their car.
Maybe they drive a more efficient car, but they own much larger houses which are heated or cooled consistently, they travel a lot more, and they buy things with embodied carbon emissions.
That's close to impossible to implement. You'd need to track production and usage of everything in an extreme detail. Plus tracking all purchases (items + services) to a given person. So complete state surveillance of citizens. Globally.
For a carbon tax, I think you only need to track imports, and domestic extraction of coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
What problem was solved here? None.
Finally a good use for tariffs!
I don’t think that level is sufficient to cover the externalities.
Unfortunately, poor people don't have the cash on hand to hold them over until they get their Carbon Stipend on April 15th.
It's going to hurt poor people to charge them more at the counter, even if you give them more later. The stipend is just going to end up paying for less than the interest the tax created on a credit card.
You give it back to poor as a income-phased out refundable tax credit. Crucially, base it not on how much they drive or consume, but on their income.
Name it something like the "Worker's Energy Credit". In the worst case, it cancels out the carbon tax spent by them commensurate with their lower income.
In the best case poor people who don't drive much actually come out ahead, and it's just a very progressive sales tax.
The rich might hate it, and call it "redistribution", which is fine because that's exactly what it is, and what taxes have always been, but this one would redistribute downwards instead of upwards, and incentivize lower carbon emissions by those who can afford it.
Personally, I think it’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the 99+% perfect.
Larry Page would be pumped. His annual salary is $1.
I feel pretty strongly that adding exceptions and loopholes to taxes only benefit wealthy people, which is the opposite of the intent.
I would be interested in reading a study where all the tax laws in the country were burned down and rebuilt, with no loopholes or exceptions. Also, eliminate borrowing against a stock portfolio. That is downright evil.
It depends what the exception is.
If the exceptions are "we treat a form of income received disproportionately by the rich a 'not income' and tax it at a lower rate, and on top of that we add an extra tax on top of income tax on labor income, and cap the larger part of that extra tax, too, to avoid burdening high earners", that helps the rich, sure. But there are plenty of exceptions possible that don't do that.
The tax would be on consumption, the credit would be based on income, so Larry still pays when he buys gas (if not for his cars, then for his planes).
> I would be interested in reading a study where all the tax laws in the country were burned down and rebuilt
That would burn down the country. Tax policy and the economy are a ship that has to be gradually turned in the optimal direction, just like how for the last 40 years tax policy has been gradually redistributing growth/wealth upwards. Sudden changes (like we are seeing now with indiscriminate tariff policy) are what results in the most harm to the poor.
> Also, eliminate borrowing against a stock portfolio. That is downright evil.
Agreed, or just heavily tax borrowing against a portfolio above, say, $2M/year. That way you don't penalize working people borrowing against 401ks or taking home equity loans for home improvements.
Salary might be $1 but what is his effective income when he files his taxes? That is what he is taxed on, which includes things like dividends and selling of stocks.
It would be a good deal for the country to let the billionaire use their skills to grow wealth without interrupting it and tax them all at death.
Not correct. Fuel for private aviation is taxed, including jet fuel and avgas. However, there are very few "private" jets, most are operated by some company, and therefore not private. Jet-A1 for a truely privately operated C172 with a diesel engine is taxed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_Sta...
The emissions just to shuttle rich people from one side of the country to the next (For some, multiple times per day) is insane. You should need to be a billionaire just to afford flying private jets and it should still eat a significant portion of your income if that's what you choose to do.
And for what? Like, we live in the modern era, why does anyone need to travel from NY to Florida to Texas to California in a day?
These guy will never ride a subway or take a train anywhere.
A super easy solution that doesn't cost the iraq war is adding new trains and running them every 15 minutes.
You'd have to deal with lower occupancy trains as a result, which means it's not as cost efficient.
Doesn't mean that anyone engaging in this behavior should get a pass nor that we shouldn't keep advocating for such a tax.
The Las Vegas "loop"[2], on the other hand, is basically a parody of a subway - with a fraction of the capacity.
> In July 2021, the peak passenger flow was recorded at 1,355 passengers per hour.
As a comparison Toronto's subway can handle 28,000 passengers per hour[3] per direction or more.
[1] https://www.jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Convention_Center_Lo...
[3] https://dailyhive.com/toronto/ttc-toronto-subway-station-rid...
>Stop the development of high speed rail in California
I thought that got funded, what happened?
Don't discount that these guys find ordinary people to be scary and disgusting.
There are vans carrying 6 people on international routes in Europe, is this public transport? Private? Anyone can book it.
TIL that US car companies won't make smaller cars in the face of different regulations, even though they made larger cars in response to current regulations.
The only way to avoid perversions is to tax the problem directly. The market will adjust to all proxies in unintended and harmful ways.
The only way to avoid perversions is to incentivize the things you want.
Taxing cigarettes led to vaping. Maybe less bad but still a nuisance.
The idea that policy makers care about this in any meaningful sense is absurd given the EV mandates, as EV's radically change the lifecycle costs of cars in a way that is absolutely destructive to people who aren't wealthy.
EV's lower the 'fueling' cost but shift part of it into large cashflow crushing battery replacement costs.
Automobiles have been a significant engine in elevating less wealthy americans because you can buy a old junky car for very little and keep it limping along with use-proportional fuel costs and minor maintenance. Even if it's an inefficient car, you use it to go to work, so you're making money to pay for the fuel. Less work, less work fuel required.
EV's significantly break the model and will push many more less wealthy people onto predatory financing which they'll never escape. Yet policy makers refuse to even discuss the life-cycle cashflow difference of EVs, and continue to more forward with policies to eventually mandate their use.
> it was almost certain to be wrong in one direction or the other, but it hasn't been updated.
It's been broken all along. We've had decades to fix it.
Tax diesel more than gasoline, LNG less.
We have to come up with a rigorous alternative that doesn’t disproportionately affect lower income folk, because people tend not to be overly concerned about nebulous concepts like the climate impacts on unborn future generations, especially when my carbon impact at the margin is negligible when taken in context of global population.
Doesn't this just punt the morass into the magic variable of one's carbon footprint?
How about this: fleet efficiency standards are stupid, anachronistic and counterproductive. Scrap them. Then, separarately, create a consumer-side rebate based on a vehicle's mileage. (Because a gas tax breaks American brains.)
It's a good concept that is also ripe for abuse with anyone who has some amount of "fuck your rules" money. Same reason why fines that don't scale with income/earnings in some form often do nothing to deter "the rich".
I certainly like carrots more than sticks, but we need a couple of sticks as well.
Criminalizing fossil fuels is insane. The fines should cover the externalities.
You think the rich suffer from pollution and car dependency? It's not at all clear that taxing gas will lead to worse outcomes for the poor. It's entirely clear that subsidizing pollution from the poor will lead to worse outcomes for the planet.
What is the difficulty with that?
Electricity from unclear source?
Human ingenuity is infinite. It is not enough to enact simple rules, people will just produce electricity with hydrogen and claim it green if it will make them profit. If it will help them evade carbon tax. Nevermind that hydrogen came from some extremely polluting process involving damaging our planet atmosphere and everyone's health.
PS, regressive use taxes are 100% moral, fine, upstanding, and ethical.
The proverbial blue collar truck owner is already screwed. Random surburban dude should be paying through the nose for his F-250. Create demand for fuel efficiency, and you’ll have cars like my dad’s 1993 Escort Wagon, that got 45mpg.
You can’t import them unless they are old because we want to protect the automotive industry. But we can’t build them new either because they don’t meet the safety standards (FMVSS) and are penalized more for being fuel efficient because the standards are stricter for smaller vehicles.
No, it does not. See Q4 at the following link:
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/topic-h-frequently-asked-questi...
Which means no one is getting your tax dollars to buy vehicles (though there may be some infrastructure or manufacturing grants for companies).
[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12600
[2] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-credits-for-individuals-wha...
If the taxes someone would otherwise pay are going to their electric vehicle instead, somebody else has to make up the difference.
So yes, other people are getting my tax dollars to buy electric vehicles. It just takes two steps rather than one, if you want to look at it that way.
What if someone declines a promotion and thus doesn't increase their income and pay more taxes? Is that also taking your tax dollars?
Sure, yes, if the government doesn't follow PAYGO[1] (which they almost never do) and offset tax expenditures (tax incentives) with reduced direct spending and government debt increases then maybe, some day, some portion of your tax dollars may get indirectly spent on this.
But how do we really know? Do we know what other secondary effects will come from these tax incentives?
If electric cars catch on maybe the government will get more revenue somewhere else (there are North American manufacturing requirements to qualify after all) or have to spend less revenue on something else (surely burning oil must have some effect).
Or maybe the person getting the electric vehicle then uses it to make more money and pay more taxes than they would have before (unlikely but possible).
But, directly, they're getting back their own money. The real issue with the credit is that it disproportionately favors people who already make a lot of money (but taxes also disproportionately tax people who make more money so maybe that's fair).
Second, Congress absolutely adjusts tax rates as well. Not precisely one-to-one to match spending each year, but over the long term it's all got to add up. Every dollar the government spends today is paid with people's taxes either today or their taxes tomorrow.
Third, the person who received the tax credits isn't being affected "equally". If 1% of people get the credit, but 100% of people pay for it, then the people who receive the credit end up hugely ahead in the end, while the other 99% lose out. So yes, for the 1% of people getting an electric vehicle tax credit, it is almost entirely paid for by the other 99% of people.
Or is there more to the incentive structure?
https://apps.irs.gov/app/understandingTaxes/student/hows.jsp
Non-refundable means that if the rebate drives your owed taxes below zero you don't get the negative tax debt back.
If you don't earn much money most of your paid taxes go to SS and medicare rather than income tax, so the rebate may not do anything for you. But if you make at least median income you should be able to fully use this rebate.
If you're retired and buy one of these trucks you'd be wise to realize $100k in investment gains in that year in order to fully exploit the tax credit.
Though, of course, you don't earn interest on it while the government is holding it.
Then who is making up the difference between the tax that would have been paid, and the credit reduction?
E.g. a early 2000's Nissan frontier base model was $23k in today's money. It was a somewhat better speced (e.g. more hauling capacity) and much better range, but this new car likely has significantly lower operating costs that would easily justify a 5k uplift.
So I think it ought to be perfectly viable without the subsidy, especially so long as the absurd CAFE standards continue to exist giving EV's a monopoly on this truck size.
That's why we have TeH gOvErNmEnT.
Later they made a one off version for Goodwood that has a V8 stuffed under the hood.
Maybe that's a good thing. It compelled Aston Martin to provide their customers with a fuel-efficient option.
Which was borne by its sales: sold for nearly 3 times the price you'd have paid Toyota for an iQ, it sold all of 600 units in two years before being cancelled, Aston's second shortest production run. The shortest was the Virage which sold more than 1000 units in a year.
Consumer demand is still an important factor.
Sedans and compact cars are still out there, sitting on dealer lots with reasonable prices.
The famous 67MPG requirement was for a hypothetical 2026 model year car
But Honda discontinued the Fit in the United States in 2020, long before the hypothetical 2026 target.
The reason is consumer demand. People weren't buying them. There are thousands of lightly used Honda Fits on the used market for reasonable prices, but they're not moving.
Yes, the regulations are flawed, but that doesn't change the lack of consumer demand.
I think this over-simplifies things. Strict milage standards force a set of compromises on ICE car design that make them both shittier and more expensive[1]. Why would anyone buy such a product when they can get an SUV instead?
[1] Some examples: turbochargers, CVTs, start/stop systems. All of these increase both the cost and complexity of building as well as repairing the car. And with higher complexity comes higher chances for something to fail as well so reliability suffers.
Isn't this just a circular way of admitting that people actually wanted SUVs?
This doesn't explain why the used car market is full of very cheap cars like the Honda Fit for much less than a new SUV.
> [1] Some examples: turbochargers,
Have to disagree. These are a great way to downsize the engine and maintain the same torque output. Yes it's more parts, but modern OEM turbochargers are very reliable. If you can reduce the number of cylinders from 6 to 4 or 3, that's a net win in moving parts, consumables, and repair costs.
Is it really? Just to check I looked at carmax and found this kind of price:
2016 Honda Fit LX $16,998* 26K mi
You can get cheaper ones in the $11k range with like 110k+ miles on them, is this really a meaningul price difference?
> Some examples: turbochargers
I disagree that turbochargers are shittier. For most people, hell even for a large subset of people that only want to race their cars on a track, turbochargers provide huge benefits. Yes, they add complexity and cost; they also vastly improve fuel efficiency, create the best torque curve possible on an ICE vehicle, and substantially improve power output. Sometimes you actually need more complexity to build a better system. I think turbochargers are a marvel of modern engineering.
And while it's subjective and admittedly more enthusiasts prefer naturally aspirated to turbocharged, I personally prefer the character of a turbocharged engine. I'd rather hear turbo whistles than a whining V10.
> V10
Lmao what
Buy whatever you want. But most people's perceptions of 'reliable' for cars is based entirely on rumors and hearsay and has nothing to do with data. Most awards for reliability are marketing gimmicks and aren't based on useful data.
It's just that Americans do not buy tiny cars or tiny engines.
(*Ironically, though small it has a considerably longer bed than many currently produced larger and less fuel efficient trucks... I'm mystified by trucks that can't even contain a bike without removing a wheel or hanging one over a gate. Looks like the bed on this EV is a bit short too, but a short bed on a small truck is more excusable than a short bed on a huge truck)
... and this is why American cars got so huge, if anyone was curious.
For a case in point, consider that headlights that turn on and off automatically in response to darkness (or rain) are not a standard feature on many cars, yet they include a manual switch that costs more than a photosensor only because of the trim-level upgrades.
Cars could include a slot for a tablet but instead come with overpriced car stereos and infotainment systems that are always light years worse than the most amateurish apps on any mobile app store.
As should be very clear by now after the 2008 US auto industry bailouts and the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, the US auto industry is heavily protected and faces virtually no competition, which is why a common sense vehicle like the one in the article sounds revolutionary, though I imagine BYD could deliver something a lot more impressive for $10K if allowed to compete in the US without tariffs.
If the us were not to fight back, the non subsidized industries would die, Chinese would stop subsidizing, rack up the price and competition would be too difficult to start again because of the monopoly on lithium and advance on technology.
It's been done thousands of times with other industries and countries.
Most recently Google, who had been giving Android for free when windows phone were licensed and Samsung tyzen cost money to develop, then forced manufacturer to accept outrageous terms to ship Google play service in their phone when all competition was already dead, is now under scrutiny for antitrust.
I'm a huge fan of many car safety regulations, but this isn't one.
(Sign me up for car-hiding-in-blind-spot notification lights on side mirrors, though, those are great)
Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on.
Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone.
Is X > Y? We don't know.
> Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection
There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
There would be other factors, like drunk people are probably safer with their lights on too. Lane keeping probably makes it harder to detect drunk drivers too but also may make them safer.
Go to any small town watering hole at 2AM to see this in effect. The police have no legal obligation to prevent crime or enforce laws. None.
No switch at all, ignition on, headlights on, period.
When the oncoming cars do not have headlights on I find it easier to give them just enough attention to see that they are behaving normally leaving more attention to devote to things other than oncoming cars.
Parents who sit in their idling cars for (fucking) ages while their cars are facing the tennis courts thus blinding the player on the other side of the court for however long it takes them to either turn their car off, drive off, or someone to tell them turn their fucking headlights off.
Before that I've not had to intervene at all, as far as I can remember.
There aren't that many courts where cars park facing them, but my home courts are one of them ;)
I'd still prefer to override both on/off though.
The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chinese ones, 15k will not happen.
Japanese, Korean, and European brands already make a lot of vehicles to get around tariffs, although it makes sense for some sedans to be made abroad given American lack of interest in them (so economy of scales doesn’t work out), and sedans typically not being tariffed as harshly as trucks.
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?).
Huh? Out of the top 25 vehicles sold in the US in 2024, 16 of them are non-US automakers. Just because the US is actively blocking China from dumping heavily subsidized vehicles into the north american market, doesn't mean they "face no competition". Kia and Hyundai alone show that it's VERY possible to break into the US market if you have even a little bit of interest playing fair.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars...
And yet, that applies to everyone, including US automakers, which is why Ford had to do unnatural things to import the transit from Europe.
They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of.
Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
Why should manufacturing jobs be well-paying? Human productivity has not kept up with business improvements at all. A contemporary robot can assemble car modules much faster than a robot from, say, the 60s. A human now works at the same speed as a human from the 60s.
"The US can't make anything" is an absurd delusion. We are the second most productive economy in the world.
> Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.
We are fully capable of meeting our defense needs already. If you really care about reinforcing our military-industrial capability the best way to do it is to arm Ukraine.
Here is what could be potential deal-breakers:
- Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues.
- Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Either that, or a cheap and easy to replace battery pack. I'd really like both!
- Comparable hauling and towing capacity to the 1998 Ford Ranger. Those numbers aren't exactly impressive, but I do use the truck as a truck, and I occasionally need the hauling capacity (weight).
- Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work.
If anyone from Slate is reading this, this is how I'm looking at this truck. FYI, I'll be comparing this to the Ford Maverick.
Noooooooooo! No apps, please! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it!
EDIT: Ughhh, according to the video that another user posted, it looks like there's an app, and yes, "updates" go through it :(
> - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Either that, or a cheap and easy to replace battery pack. I'd really like both!
Yes to a simple battery system!
> - Comparable hauling and towing capacity to the 1998 Ford Ranger. Those numbers aren't exactly impressive, but I do use the truck as a truck, and I occasionally need the hauling capacity (weight).
Yes!
> - Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work.
Yes, definitely. It being a 2 seater is kind of a deal breaker for families. You really want a bench seat to at least stick a small child between the driver and passenger. Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that.
The article mentions an SUV upgrade kit that will bolt onto the back of the truck. Ugh, OK I guess. Sad that that's the way it will probably have to go.
What you need is not a pickup truck. Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc.
> Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that.
Rightfully so. Back in the day we did so many things we shouldn't have, and survivorship bias makes us default to thinking it was ok. As kids, we used to go barrelling down dirt roads in the back of pickups or played in the backs of station wagons. There's a reason automobile deaths have gone down.
It absolutely does NOT mean those things.
Cars didn't have entertainment systems for nearly a century and families did just fine.
<Get off my lawn>
My entertainment system was the window. Observe the world, not just whatever AI-generated garbage some algorithm pushes to a small screen 8-10 inches away from your eyes.
</Get off my lawn>
A physical holder for a personal pad device.
The amount of not-invented-here, duplicate functionality that car companies execute poorly, when buyers already have devices that do that well, is ridiculous.
The biggest benefit of aligning manufacturing costs for profit should be jettisoning the "post-sale" revenue streams that drive complicated built-in tech for current cars.
And also, you-know, 100% A+ on getting back to "customize your own car, because it's cheap and supported"!
Owners being afraid of doing what they want with their devices/vehicles has to stop.
Like when GM invented their own computer to put into their cars instead of just buying one off the shelf decades ago
What is the need for OTA updates for an EV, once you remove the autopilot and touch screen? Genuinely interested, I would guess there is none, right?
All products are defective. Full stop.
Cars are necessarily complex and have a lot of software to get the safety, comfortable, and reliability we expect today.
Most vehicles get some sort of recall; usually minor. I just checked the NHTSA recall website and every car I could think of owned by people I know (~30 vehicles) had some had some recall.
Cars should have an easy way to update. I’m generally against always connected cars (which are the norm today), but there must be some way to patch them.
I don’t like the idea of cars having cellular modems in them (my mind goes to nefarious implications), but having a way to securely update it without having to bring to a mechanic would be nice.
OTA updates on my truck have vastly improved suspension response and cruise-control/ lane-assist features. My wife's car has had OTA updates that improve her cars charging curve, and have implemented recalls for stuff like brake light response when regen braking.
Sure one could say these things should have worked perfectly from the factory, but that's not realistic: not with my cars, not with your cars, and not with this new brand either.
The only alternative I see here is the old fashioned way of having to bring it to a dealership. I would rather have an entire foot of ingrown toenails over dealing with dealership service centers of any brand.
Yes, and no.
I've only started following this recently, but a lot of OTA updates aren't just bug fixes, they're additional features.
My wife's car recently got a free OTA update which upgraded her radio to get HD stations. A previous update allowed her car to start recognizing more types of School Zone and Night Speed signs.
I've read that every year (February, I think) Tesla pushes out a big update that adds features. However, the last two Tesla pushes included a bunch of features that came standard with my wife's (much cheaper) car years ago.
You could certainly argue that her car should have come with HD Radio enabled from the start, and ditto for the Tesla features. But to suppose that all OTA car updates are nothing more than more invasive tracking and bug fixes is not strictly correct.
I don't personally disagree with you, but today it pretty much does.
Anyways, my point is that this is designed as a utilitarian, cheap truck that covers the use case that most pickup trucks are actually utilitarian for, like local farm or light duty construction work. It's got a short range, no entertainment for long drives, etc. The article doesn't even say if it has AC (Slate's site seems to have images that allude to it having it).
The OP wants something for families, which exists and costs more because most families want more. They want good, cheap, and available when you can only have two. Even with gas/diesel powered trucks, there's a huge difference between the utilitarian ones construction workers and farmers buy and beat up and the expensive "luxury" quad-cabs that families now buy because minivans are too uncool.
I want something much more utilitarian than what is being pitched to today's families. If you want a Quad Cab, Infotainment systems, and yadda, yadda, yadda - the market already has options. Lots of them.
If you want a cheap, light duty truck similar to what a Chevy S10 or a Ford Ranger used to be, then you're pretty much SOL.
The world is pretty freaking boring when it's just pavement and the 5,000th time you've passed the same strip mall, gas station, and McDonald's. The same dirty snowbanks on either side of the same gray asphalt under the interminably gray winter sky.
Maybe you lived in a place of wonderful natural beauty, or a vibrant urban street culture. A lot of people don't.
However I strongly believe we can cultivate fascination with the droll.
A gray worldview might possibly say more about you.
Is a gray grain of sand interesting? Blaming a local world for being boring seems overly negative.
And yet, somehow the children survived and thrived.
They learned to make up games, to entertain themselves, and to -- perish the thought -- talk to other human beings in their own family! /shudder/
I hate to tell you, but a lot of them didn't thrive. Some of them didn't even survive. Some of them didn't have families that particularly want to talk to them. Or when they were spoken to, it wasn't exactly healthy.
Just because maybe you had a great childhood, doesn't mean everybody did.
Citation needed.
Maybe we shouldn't pretend that a small number of exceptions are the norm. Nobody is saying that every child had a completely happy childhood. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with not being entertained 100% of the time. Being bored is a good thing.
Just because maybe you had a great childhood, doesn't mean everybody did. Let's not look at the past through rose-tinted glasses.
I think you're projecting.
ARE WE THERE YET? ... ARE WE THERE YET? ... ARE WE THERE YET?
Honestly, I got bummed when I found out this was an electric vehicle, I wish there wasn’t a chance for my vehicle to get bricked through an over-the-air update, and I personally would like to have a basic stereo with an aux input just so I can listen to FM stations or Spotify while I haul a bunch of DIY materials around without having to install my own speakers.
My friend keeps telling me to get a truck for my next vehicle, and while this truck doesn’t make the cut for me, hopefully future trucks made either by Slate Auto or other manufacturers inspired by them will add juuuust the right amount of creature comforts to win me over.
I believe I saw there are plans for some sort of SUV conversion.
> Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc.
IF it could just get a bluetooth signal from an iDevice or some Android thing, that would probably suffice for a basic option. If the owner needs more than than, let them install (or have installed) some sort of third-party infotainment head of some sort.
Back in the old days, cars sometimes had a single speaker and that was plenty sufficient for listening to music.
It connects via bluetooth and not WiFi. If the company goes belly up, I'd just need the APK and an android phone to continue using the app to configure the valve and see/download water usage data.
Fast forward 20 years when I can't install the APK on android v79, I'd need an older phone to run the APK.. but that seems to be pulling hairs.
Apps would be great, it's how you handle the backend to it that's the gotcha.
I also have a water softener with an app that no longer works that had it's backend shut down. It can still be configured via the valve head button presses, but none of the "smart" usage data is available. As an example of good design, this is a perfect dichotomy of one company doing it well and one company doing it un-well[sic].
I saw in another post that a person said there's a difference between "device dependent" and "device augmented" that really resonated with me.
There's diminishing returns on everything, and just throwing your hands up on any subject as bad/good might be a disservice.
If I live through an era where phones are no longer a thing and APKs are a thing of the past.. then I either...
A. Don't use the iron filter like that anymore. (manual programing now) B. Get a new iron filter. (ewwwww) C. Keep a legacy-device for the purposes of programming the iron filter. (doesn't need any internet connection or subscriptions)
(C) would be my most liked solution.
40 years? How about, like, 3 to 5 years? Remember when Apple decided to kill all 32-bit iOS apps for new hardware? I have an old iPod and iPhone 4S with "landlocked" software I enjoy using but can't anymore because Apple.
Phone manufacturers have shown they don't give a damn about allowing old software to function. Physical devices tied to software is a terrible idea.
Also there are evergreen interfaces, so to say. An RS232 / RS485 connector that serves 115kbps 8N1 serial interface and runs a VT220-based TUI should still be serviceable 40 years from now (VT220 was released 42 years ago). A now-modern web-based GUI also has a great chance to be serviceable 40 years from now.
Battery balancing and conditioning does not need to be fancy, and does not need a fancy screen; a couple of LEDs should suffice.
But I'd like my batteries charged competently, recharged efficiently while braking, worn uniformly, and kept at reasonable temperature. It's not hard to do completely automatically and invisibly; a quality electric bike would have it.
Why should it lack that? That's a tiny piece of software in the charge controller, which on this vehicle ought to be some tiny microcontroller.
Just ask a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt owner.
I wish devices could have web servers and web-based UI rather than thick "apps" that end up rotting when device manufacturers arbitrarily decide that old software won't work anymore (cough, cough-- Apple-- cough, cough).
I know we can't because "security", no end-to-end over the Internet anymore, etc. >sigh<
It seems like we've engineered the networking and software ecosystem to promote disposable "smart" devices. It's almost like somebody profits from it. Hmm...
For the extra paranoid, a car could have a USB socket that pretends to be a wired network interface, offering DHCP.
Run a web server for car diagnostics and maintenance when connected to this interface. Do it from the comfort of your laptop, or anywhere anytime using your phone. Zero chance of remote exploits, if you set the things correctly on the car side. An ESP32-based system with $5 BOM would suffice to provide this.
From there, you can have as much TLS as you want, but that still won't give you server identity unless the server certificate is signed by someone you already trust. So a generic web browser would be screwed, because you either add SlateTruckCertificateAuthority to the globally trusted list, and then you still have to deal with revocations and certificate expiry, or you use some other CA that is willing to delegate. There's no good support for self-signed certificates or pinned certificates, and even if there were, the initial connection would be tough.
Unfortunately this really isn't a well-solved problem. Bluetooth can get you part of the way there, but it only offers really good security in theory (in practice it is constantly having issues) and it is intrinsically limited.
But I don't see much incentive to produce a fake wifi AP for me to connect to with my car diagnostics. I'm not going to punch my bank account and password into it anyway. If I'm misled to alter the battery charging settings for someone else's car, or for a pretend mockup of the car controller, I don't see what the perpetrator could gain from it.
Then there must be a button on the car dashboard, or near, which I should press to activate the AC (it does not need to be up all the time), and press again to switch it off. This can serve as an easy way to check if there's doubt. The interface may have a function like headlights on / off as a simple way to check that the connection works.
But you realize this will make cold-weather range suck and on-the-road charging suck, right?
Preheating the battery and cabin on "shore power" is something EV buyers just expect at this point because that can consume 2-3kWh of energy (equivalent to 6-10 miles or 10-16 km). That's almost 10% of Slate's range (see below).
Preheating the battery about 10-15 minutes before you arrive at a supercharger is another expected feature. It can increase charge acceptance rate by over 50% (reduce charge time by 1/3).
The 150 mile range is extremely optimistic given the size of the battery and shape of the truck. With just 5% top and bottom buffers, you'd need to achieve over 3.1 miles/kWh... which is the consumption expected of a small aerodynamic sedan. I would bet real money that highway range (at 75 mph) for the small battery is less than 120 miles from 100% to 0.
Your charge rate acceptance number is surprising to me, I've never seen anything like this in my years of experience designing EV batteries. Preconditioning helps extreme fast charging but isn't necessary for 1-2 C charges at all unless it's very cold out.
There's some caveats to this depending on the exact chemistry but if anything the newer semi solid state NMC cells are even less dependent on this and can charge down to -20C.
What car is tied to your phone? A mustang mach-e, for instance, does not require your phone at all. It has a FOB for opening the doors and starting it, you can program the charging times from the in-car screen.
The app is optional, exactly as it should be. This car DESPERATELY is going to need an app when it comes to charging whether you know it or not. With no in-car screen you'll have absolutely no way to control charging which WILL come back to bite you.
>Yes to a simple battery system!
"simple" in this case will add cost. Nearly every EV has the battery as a part of the structural frame of the vehicle for a reason (there are some niche exceptions in China). Nothing is impossible, but I don't see them making the battery easily swappable, while also being structurally sound, and keeping the low price point.
I don't own an EV. What for? Do you really need more than a button or two and some leds?
You want to know when the vehicle finishes charging so you can vacate the public charger.
You want to be able to reduce the current when the charging is tripping breakers wherever you are.
You will almost assuredly also want to be able to precondition if you live in a cold climate.
Take her car on those trips then. You wouldn't complain you can't take a Miata camping, why would you complain you can't take a 2-seat pickup? camping? The product isn't trying to do everything. It's trying to be the minimum viable truck and be good at it. And just like the purpose built roadster you give up unrelated stuff, like family hauling.
Because 2-seat pickups used to function this way. It's okay to pine for functionality that has been lost, particularly when a new product like this comes along and gets your hopes up.
The hauling and towing is another one. Unfortunately batteries are much heavier than a combustion engine and take away from the total capacity of the vehicle. It's curb weight is 500lbs more than the 1998 Ford Ranger. Same thing, budget vehicle means budget suspension, so its weight lowers the capacity instead of increasing the cost of the suspension.
It also makes sense that the total capacity of the vehicle would diminish, but at the same time, and engine isn't weightless (though neither is an electric motor). If I had 1,500 pounds capacity, then I should be good to go.
I believe airbag requirements prevent this because the middle seat would require a console mounted airbag where infotainment systems normally live
1. Cars that offered manual options needed a center console. Japanese imports would always have a manual version, even if that version wasn't in the US. Same with European.
The only one alternative is a column manual shifter which is horrible to use.
You couldn't use a forward floor shifter unless you want to shift between the legs of the person in the middle.
There are dash mounted shifters but would probably hit the middle person's knees. Not sure since these are rare and usually European (fiat multipla) /Japanese
2. At a point a US safety requirement was all front passengers needed either an airbag or a automatic shoulder seatbelt, basically it ran along the door with a motor when the door closed.
Automatic shoulder belts were cheaper than airbags so manf usually picked that option but don't work with middle seats since they need a door/column for the rails.
3. Minor, but, additional side safety rules increased door thickness. Both sides pushed in more making it uncomfortable. Fine in rear but front, as you mentioned, is a danger to steering.
4. Smaller import cars due to gas crisis in 70s that US companies (eventually) copied that combined with reason (3) made the middle seat basically useless
Maybe in cars, but even when trucks still had a manual option, the S10/Sonoma as well as the full size GMT400 had a bench seat in the 90s/00s and a floor manual shifter, and it all worked pretty well. None of them shift like a Porsche, but especially in the full size trucks the center of the bench wasn't too bad if you weren't a large person, and they're generally pretty pleasant to drive.
European cars did have the 4 on the floor but that's dated and these didn't have an automatic for the US (afaik).
I'm looking at the period when bench seats died though. A major change in car sizes and the dominance of imports.
I’ve been in one of those. And I may or may not have been the child stuck sitting there. Mercifully only a couple times, because I was horrified. It felt like a child had the power to get us into an accident. 0/10 would not recommend.
It's also a horrible shifter experience even for regular commuter cars where performance isn't a priority. Considering how it's one of the three constantly used controls in a car it would likely hurt sales in a sedan.
Leaf sprung solid axle is great for doing things on a budget.
But it's probably impossible to put one in a new vehicle because the hiring pool of the automotive industry is too indoctrinated against that sort of stuff at this point.
I get that cars have these, but my PHEV (which I don't often charge) lost its app when Ford pulled the plug as 3G was sunsetting and I don't think I'm missing anything. If there's anything wrong with the car, it can show the check engine light (or whatever it's called when there's no engine).
> - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning.
Seems like a little early to declare this on a vaporware product? I don't think you need a screen or an app to have reasonable battery conditioning?
Anyway, I would love small trucks to return. I had a 2007 Ranger and I have a 2003 S-10, and there's nothing in the US new vehicle market that fits the small truck niche anymore. CAFE standards can't be met with a small footprint truck, so we only get large footprint trucks. But EV trucks don't have efficiency standards, so maybe we'll see the niche again. (I think you could maybe hit the CAFE standards with a single cab ranger and a hybrid drive train, but I also think automakers prefer to sell luxury trucks rather than base model trucks)
It happens with small phones (iPhone mini) to laptops and cars. There are comments throughout this thread claiming that everyone would be buying small sedans if not for CAFE regulations, but we have plenty of small sedans on the market that aren't selling well.
It always comes down to market demand. The big companies have market demand figured out better than many give them credit for, even if it's not exactly the product you want.
Now all rental cars actually have some reasonable set of features, without you having to pay for any up-sells.
At the 6 mins and 40 seconds timestamp on this video (https://youtu.be/cq1qEjwSYkw?t=400) he shows the car app that will tell you current range, etc
The truck gets OTA updates through your phone and not some LTE modem. It doesn't have one. They moved all car management including OBD-like functionality to the phone, too, which I think is awesome.
This is how I want the interior design philosophy of manual controls to be digitized – with digital control. I'd pay $10k more for physical buttons, though.
Alternatively, maybe the overall simplicity will mean that a 3rd party full computer replacement would be feasible even without any official help from the manufacturer.
And if there’s something major maybe you download it onto a thumb drive and plug it in.
I’m tired of my vehicle being changed without my consent.
As long as the fixes are a long the lines as bios updates (not required per say, but may fix bugs or edge cases) then that seems reasonable.
My 2015 car had 3g "smart" features that no longer work since 3g has been sunset in the US. Awesome to see forward thinking of a smart feature-set that can be updated with a module you'll likley already have an upgrade path for.
also, no mobile app? that is a feature.
The appeal of this vehicle is that it IS like your 1998 ranger, not: mobile app = data collection = monetized vehicle = mobile upgrades = basically all the things that are bad with technology.
Honestly, all these "monetized experience" companies forget that (like matt ridley's rational optimist says) with trust, trade is unlimited.
Ah, there's the problem. You have violated Pauli's "spouse/dog size exclusion principle". You need to either have a dog that can sleep curled up on the spouse's lap during the trip, or a dog big enough that the spouse can sleep curled up on the dog.
Bench seats also aren't a panacea, I still feel the burn of my dog's stink eye when then girlfriend was prompted to center of bench seat and dog on the side.
Then rent a suitable vehicle for the occasion.
- Your example Ford Ranger[1] seems to have towing capacity of 6,000lbs (~2700kg), and a payload capacity of 1,260lbs (~570kg).
- Compare that to the worst model Toyota Hilux[2], which has a payload of up to 1240kg, and can tow 2500kg. These can be rented for like $65 AUD per day (~$40 USD).
[1] https://www.kbb.com/ford/ranger/1998/specs/ [2] https://www.redbook.com.au/cars/details/2019-toyota-hilux-wo...
Battery expansion is a user installable option. It might not be as easy to replace the main battery, but the expansion battery will be, and will make it easier to install newer tech down the road, etc.
Would be nice if they had a protocol locally for a 3rd party to step in an offer their own offerings here.
I don't really do new cars (too expensive) but damn... if I had enough cash to not give a fuck, they'd have been well on their way to selling me one just with that ad. Really well done.
- no app - no bells - no whistles
Slate.. I will add one more thing. If you will make it spy on me like all the other new cars now, its a nogo either. I might as well just get an old car from 90s... which amusingly will still work for what I need it to do ( move some stuff around ).
(Well, a PHEV would be even better, but I can deal with pure BEV.)
That should provide basic diagnostics/stats. No need for "apps".
This truck might just steal the thunder from an EV Maverick, and Ford can't release that soon enough.
Beginning in 2026, you’ll be able to find charging stations using the upcoming Slate App.
it doesn't explicitly answer whether the app will satisfy your criteria, but there'll be something.
OVMS was originally developed for the Tesla Roadster and then adapted to the Leaf, ...
https://www.autoblog.com/news/why-the-chicken-tax-still-cont...
God, please, no. Why on Gods green earth would I want that? Stop doing this to stuff. It is an abomination. I am sure many others echoed this point but holy crap. No. I am all for technology. But I do not want some tracker in my car. Apps are anathema to my freedom.
FFS, do you want your dishwasher tethered to the cloud too?
Consumers with preferences like yours are the #2 reason (after new regulations) that modern cars are terrible
Wait, you actually want your car to upload all your data to someone else's cloud for them to sell?
Unforuntatley, this company and this project are VC expenditure "throw away projects", made to fail.
No motor vehicle satisfying NHTSA can be made in america for below 20k cost of materiels, nevermind msrp. This article and the company are pitching that this is "realistic" due to cutting costs of paint, radios. Which...are pennies on the dollar compared to what satifys US road requiremnents for EV; safety, suspension, manufacturer support, parts availability, reparability. Are they skimping there too? will this 2025 electric vehicle have LEAF springs?
20k is the pre-production estimates. When in history has that not balloned especially for car platforms made in USA? What will a made in USA replacement lead acid accessory battery cost? 3k?
Once this goes over 40k (which, is guaranteed. A mazda miata which is as bare bones as it gets, old technology, is still 32k base, and thats made in a cheaper labor market.), the funding will back off, and all the R and D money wasted.
https://www.chevrolet.com/suvs/trax?evar25=Vanity_Trax_20170...
https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/crossovers-suvs/kicks.htm...
EDIT: Yep, I'm just old. Another commenter linked to a "10 cheapest new cars" list and there seems to be a price floor of around $20K. No major manufacturer seems capable of making one cheaper!
Except with all the safety equipment, crumple zones, airbags, sensors, etc. I would expect an increase in price.
Some of those $10k cars in the 90s had more plastic in the bodies than cars today, e.g. Saturn S-series, where all body panels below the belt-line were plastic.
It isn't necessarily the cost savings one might expect though, because steel panels can also be load bearing and part of the crash structure, which is not really practical with plastic panels.
If you get a big enough dent in a door, a good body shop will offer to replace the outer skin instead of filling with bondo. They cut the weld on the inside of the door all the way around, take off the shell, and epoxy a new one on. The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.
> The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.
Often this is because the special high strength steels used in vehicles today depend on proper heat treating to attain their strength, and welding can compromise this. Many OEMs even specify panel bonding for repairing particular crash-critical parts of vehicles now because of this.
1. because UHSS is sensitive to heat, and robots are much more accurate in how they heat than Jimmy with a tig torch, and they were programmed by a process engineer, where as Jimmy welds until 'it looks good'.
2. welding may compromise anti-corrosive treatments on the inside of inaccessible cavities, which can lead to corrosion issues
e.g. https://rts.i-car.com/crn-24.html
A crappy shop will certainly just weld panels in without any regard for materials engineering, but it results in a crappy repair.
The 1996 Ferrari F355 Spider and the 2025 Hyundai Elantra N both have a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds.
You can find numerous new cars for sale in Mexico for under $15k USD.[0] Even Europe has several new cars under €20k.[1] These are the same manufacturers we have here, but lower cost models that are only sold in lower-income countries.
[0] https://compra.autofact.com.mx/blog/comprar-carro/mercado/au...
You're not even living in the past. Our 20 year old Scion xB cost us $20K out the door new (granted, that's with most of the paltry list of options added, $15K base). And that was a cheap car at the time, Toyota marketing to "the kids".
The last time $20K was "a high price" for a new car was probably before most HN folk were born.
Keep in mind this price is before the USA federal tax credit. So we're potentially talking about a $12,500 car. And consider inflation.
(Hat tip to @vaidhy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794867)
And it'll always be sold out.
No stereo, but luckily they still found space for a few DNN accelerators that will slam on the brakes randomly when getting false detections. Likely still has a 4G uplink and all the modern car cancer to make sure they can datamine their clients as much as possible and offset the subsidized purchase cost.
Worst of both worlds?
I am hoping like hell this ends up being the case. Give me power, a place to put my own stuff and some details on the CAN bus and leave me to it.
I do not want to pay a premium for your slow, locked down, buggy / seldom-updated touch screen.
No, because they knew what they were getting into when they bought this truck. And I'm sure there will be a dozen DIY ways to add a more traditional sound system.
If passengers want to DJ, you can get one of those little FM transmitter thingies that plugs into a phone/table headphone port.
A lot of Bluetooth speakers today can fill a car with a sound wall better rear speakers used to. Apple says you just need two of their Bluetooth speakers to fill a room in a house with great stereo and reasonably good surround sound. The square footage of a car is generally smaller than the supported room size.
edit to add: if Slate is successful, I wouldn't be surprised if a decently sized ecosystem pops up around easily installed custom sound systems and the tablets (possibly with headphone jacks!) to control them.
[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.
In many parts of the country (I'm Canadian, I assume the same for the US) the body and undercarriage are going to rot before the drivetrain goes.
Where are you finding a 100k mile Honda Fit for $3k? Before I bought my current daily driver, Honda Fits were on my list to look out for and in the central NJ area I never saw one in decent condition around that mileage for less than $5k. Even looking now I see people trying to part out theirs for $2k or looking for $4k for a 200k mile one. I messaged someone on FB Marketplace that had a 2013 with 65k miles on it to try and bring down their $11k asking to $8k and just got ignored.
NJ is probably on the higher end of the market but the deviation can't be that big.
To your actual question, I bought mine (2008, manual) in 2018 for $5k with 100k miles in The Bay, and it took about a month of waiting for a good deal to crop up. I've put another 100k on it without issue and plan to drive it a long time. Inflation and the chip shortage have roughly kept up with depreciation, so I'm currently seeing some good options in the $6k range and similarly expect that $5k is around the bottom of what you can pay for a nice vehicle with 100k miles on it.
Also, deviations can absolutely be that big. It's more prevalent at the top of the market, but there are big differences in Subarus and Civics, for example, in different parts of the country, even in the sub-$5k range. It's often worth a flight and driving back to purchase a car (if you value your time at $0 or have other things to do while you're there).
For my "daily" driver (I drive a few times a week and it's rarely more than 20 miles), I ended up buying an imported WRX on an auction site. Cost more than a used Honda Fit but it's a ton of fun to drive.
If I had to get a high mileage car in a hurry in upstate NY with some expectation that my acquisition + repair costs would be reason I'd go looking for a 2005 Buick. Maybe half of that is getting older, the other half is that my son drives a '96 Buick which has needed some creative maintenance but has been rock solid reliable after a flurry of work where we replaced aging parts.
Basically he's picking a very well sorted platform of a vehicle and then choosing the brand that most correlates with buyers who'll keep it in good order.
My take is that at that age you don't pay that much more for the upbadged car but you're likely to find it in good condition but you get to enjoy the bling (the '96 is ahead of its time with traction control) and Buicks of that vintage have one of the best engines GM ever made.
But, they won't necessarily be competing against other new things on the market. My wife also rides horses and we got a $5000 20 year old F250 which is very basic but has been bulletproof, and it can tow. I imagine old, basic trucks, either cheap domestic ones or kei trucks will be what this thing competes against.
I hope it does well. This is the kind of design thinking that the auto industry needs.
Also I'm increasingly convinced that the Honda fit is what peak performance looks like. But when it dies you do have options - maybe a Ford Transit Connect or a Metris.
There are rumors that they will make a cargo van based on the Maverick but they make them in Mexico, and with the tariff situation I'm not sure if they will be going through with that anymore.
All of the perfect compacts and hatchbacks are slowly disappearing, and solid work trucks have been replaced with $60k+ fake trucks that will melt their gaskets with crappy turbos and can't even fit a piece of 2x4 in the back. There is an enormous category of consumers that just want an auto that's simple, affordable, safe, fuel efficient and reasonably sized. Almost nobody is serving them right now.
This is an entirely american problem, because the small van is largely dead in the US. They're doing fine elsewhere.
The Metris is still manufactured (as the Vito, or V260 in China), and is not the smallest model which is the Citan (based on the Kangoo, with its second gen based on kangoo III in 2021).
The Promaster City (Fiat Doblo) still exists, as a rebadged Berlingo since 2022.
The NV 200 was replaced by the NV 250 (a rebadged Kangoo II) in 2019, which was then replaced by the Townstar (a rebadged Kangoo III) in late 2021. There's also the Docker / Express below that (which descends from the Logan MCV / Van).
And the Transit Connect was replaced by the Caddy (rebadged), but Ford dropped its original plans of a US release.
> There is an enormous category of consumers that just want an auto that's simple, affordable, safe, fuel efficient and reasonably sized.
Apparently not sufficiently so (or with a consistent enough need) that they can be catered to. Or at least not so that you couldn't make more money selling them pavement princesses.
Maybe Slate could offer a van version as well as the SUV.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a64351746/2025-ford-mav...
And definitely went the other way from the industry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vondelpark
The Fit, however, is really genius. It's got the utility of an SUV in the body of a compact. I can't believe Honda's excuse that it wasn't selling -- in my area it is a running gag that if you have a blue Fit somebody will park another blue Fit next to you at the supermarket or that it makes a great getaway car, if somebody catches you doing donuts in their lawn you can say it musta been somebody elese.
You're never gonna see trucks being used at the grocery store because people who are in the process of using said truck for truck stuff aren't usually stopping at the grocery store as they do it, and this is before you adjust for what kind of grocery stores HN shops at vs the kind that people who use the crap out of their trucks shop at. If you live the median "suburb to office and back" life you'll never see trucks doing anything. You need to be on the road and not in a cube during hours when "things" get done to see that. And the people who do things with their trucks mostly don't live and cross paths with the people who don't.
I could use the exact same faulty logic you're using here with slightly different parameters and come up with the conclusion that cars don't need a second row of seating.
And before anyone projects anything stupid at me, I own a minivan.
I think you missed the point of the GP post. They were noting the presence of (a lot of) trucks at the grocery store parking lot. Whether they are towing/hauling isn't really the point.
On the other hand in the suburbs of some New England towns that I'm sure are full of white collar workers you see nothing but trucks in the driveway and I laugh when I see a Ford F350 with a lift kit and commercial plates idling and see, a few minutes later, a few pencilneck geeks come out of a frat house and climb into it.
sometimes backroads aren't plowed well. or they. are plowed well and you need to scale a giant snowbank to get into your driveway.
(although my personal preference would be for the industry to make more rally-inspired high-clearance AWD sedans/wagons to fit this niche)
When you're regularly driving 2+ hours one way to a town and a random pronghorn appears in the middle of the road, at night, when you're doing 85 mph... you want to be in something that can take the impact.
Close. A bit of work on the rear hatch dimensions so that you could get 4'x8' sheet goods in there, as was possible on the 1980s Honda Civic.
Also, just a teensy-weensy bit more power, please. Ours struggles even on moderate hills here on the edge of the Sangres de Cristo (southern Rockies).
Otherwise, all hail the Fit/Jazz, car of the future past.
The closest Honda offerings are probably the Civic Hatchback (lower roof, but the seats still fold down) and the HR-V, which is basically a Fit on stilts with more weight and slightly less room.
I went with a hatchback Civic Sport Touring to replace my Fit (which has 210K miles on it and is still reliable, though I'm passing it on to someone else) and my girlfriend is about to try the HR-V to replace her (newer) Fit that was just lost in an accident, since she needs more roof height for dog crates.
We also have our eye on this truck, but with less urgency since our van does everything we could want.
The Telo MT1 also has us eyeing it…
TBH, I think a minivan would make it even easier.
I bought reasonably used, spent about 30k instead of 50k+ for a comparable pickup truck which lacks the ability to haul 7-8 passengers when needed.
Also has the benefit of being one of the most “Made in America” vehicles out there, #3 IIRC.
The dream is a Pacifica minivan - they make a hybrid version.
The farmers I associate with care a lot about their animals and I expect them to take the same care with mine. As a rural person I judge people based on relationships and reputation and not on how much insurance they have. I'd trust any of these people to haul a horse in a big-ass trailer than I would trust myself or my wife.
Judging by the number of horses my wife hauls, most horse owners don't have their own truck/trailer. Which makes sense: for most people, the trailer won't be used very often, and hay is usually delivered by the farmer, so don't need a truck for that.
How did we get so far OT?
personal farms don't need to haul, there's no disagreement about that, but op suggested that you can run a horse business this way. it took me a while to realize that he has a vanity farm that's funded by his tech money, so you know he can gradually grow, he doesn't need to board, or train, or any of those other things people in the business diversify their income sources with.
i don't think we're OT at all. in horse business and generally farming you have two types of vehicles relevant to this conversation, trucks and gators. you absolutely need both. your truck can act as a gator, but your gator can't act a truck. you can use pretty much anything as a gator, i've got an old cherokee, an atv with a hitch and an actual gator doing the gator business. op uses a ford focus. the electric pickup from original post is probably a solid gator. kei trucks can be used as gators. but none of this stuff replaces a truck, which you still have to pay shit ton of money for.
usually in conversations like this it's horse people who come in and say "nah we need a truck to haul", but this time op suggested that you can in fact run a horse business with a gator, which prompted some questions from me
I hope that the noise isolation and intended speaker mounting locations are good!
Their FAQs even state: > Built-in infotainment systems raise a car’s price, and they become outdated quickly and have high failure rates.
It seems unlikely that a company saying this will throw in a $4,000 infotainment system in a $20,000 vehicle.
In fact, I would be rather surprised if you could buy $4,000 worth of stereo equipment for this car, given their promo materials seem to include a $100 bluetooth speaker below an iPhone.
The price point is assuming the R&D is already paid off, the factory is built, the supply lines are optimized, and they're building a million of these things every year. History has shown that you can't start off with a cheap mass produced car as your only product because mass production requires way too much startup capital. The success stories started with hand built extremely expensive cars that were used to pay down R&D costs and keep the company afloat while they built the factory for the mass production model.
About the only way I see this happening is if Bezos goes all in and dumps an outrageous amount of money into getting the production line running knowing that he won't see a return for at least a decade or more, and I don't think he's quite that generous. Also this assumes that cheap lightweight powerful batteries become widely available in the next couple of years.
https://insideevs.com/news/757237/slate-ev-spotted-los-angel...
https://insideevs.com/news/757649/slate-auto-truck-suv-revea...
- "This doesn't seem to be a working vehicle. The Autopian's David Tracy climbed underneath and didn't see any powertrain or proper suspension components, indicating this is a non-functional show car."
(That said, I'd love a stereo - even if it was just a built in bluetooth speaker/aux-in, which feels like a perfect compromise!)
> A Bluetooth speaker holder that fits under the climate knobs is available, but there is also a soundbar that can be installed in the dashboard storage compartment.
https://americancarsandracing.com/2025/04/25/best-accessorie...
It’s a shame they didn’t add a DIN head unit slot and throw a plastic cover over it, preinstall install speaker wires. Anyone could then DIY a real stereo for less than they are probably selling the Bluetooth speaker/soundbar.
no speakers and low range are the only two things I'd quibble about. and maybe the price, seems too high for what you're getting.
That SL2 went from California to Maine, down to Georgia and back to California. It never had any dings and had only a few scratches in the paint. My Civics seem to get dinged if you look at them wrong.
I wish I could have said the same about the Saturn's stickshift, though. That actually fractured when I was in Gilroy. I mean, the shaft literally snapped.
>“Seventy percent of repeat warranty claims are based on infotainment currently because there’s so much tech in the car that it’s created a very unstable environment in the vehicle,” Snyder says.
I'm totally cool with them not having an infotainment screen or even a stereo itself. But speaker management might be a pain.
I really hope they decide to either include speakers to which you connect to your own infotainment system or at the very least, have the space or brackets where you can bring your own speakers and install them without cutting.
Having a bluetooth speaker take care of all the sound is just too bulky and cumbersome for those of us who need to live with constant music in the car. Plus, I don't want to leave a $150 bluetooth speaker in my car all the time and encourage break-ins.
Indeed: https://www.reddit.com/r/Toyota/comments/1bt8ck8/loved_dropp...
I'm hoping that they go with a lot of "off-the-shelf" electronics and mechanical parts. Standards are a blessing.
It feels like they're going with a different business model to traditional car manufacturers. AFAIK most manufacturers make a lot of their money via servicing. I'd love to take a look at what their long-term business strategy is.
There are $20k cars with infotainment, bodypaint and probably a lot more creature comforts than this thing. Also this thing has a 150 mile range (less probably IRL), which is not practical.
Looking at the basic shape, the drag looks horrible, and probably the efficiencys bad too, considering they only manage 150k with an 52kWh battery.
Euros have already tried this, they put out abominable shitboxes where they tried to save money everywhere but the battery and charger, and the result were poverty cars which barely cost less than a Model 3.
Once you spend the money on a 400 mile battery and a fast enough charger to be practical, you're most of the way in terms of BOM to a 300HP electric upmarket road monster. Tesla understood this, and are dominating the market.
BYD also knows this, and there's a reason their C-segment EVs cost more than their D-segment plug-ins, despite the latter having tons of electric range.
Also doesn't cost $20k from the factory, it costs $20k with tax credit.
Although electric can't be 100% analog, I miss the old days when a car has no software updates, no telemetry, no privacy issues, no mandatory subscription for features.
And TPMS. And key-fob remote lock/unlock. And BTLE for BYO music / calls.
> but I'd really rather they didn't have internet connectivity.
This is the one big thing that has me leaning towards "used, 2015 or older" for my next car. With an EV, you really do want a way to specify how much power / when should be used for charging though; some "discounted" electric utility plans require being able to shed / schedule big loads on demand, too.
If this vehicle doesn't have any screen, you need to use a phone or similar to configure all this. Yes, schedule data can be done over BTLE, but something big like an OTA update can not be (at least, practically).
There's also a lot of value (for some people) in being able to change/monitor charge capacity from distances further away than what BTLE would support.
If the modem could be toggled and there was a USB port for software updates, I'd be _thrilled_.
[1]: They also have control pins to tell the car the maximum amperage they're allowed to draw, but that's not relevant to the feature of "disable the charger when I don't want it charging"
The car makes all the decisions about how much power to draw and when to do it. Excluding the DC super/fast chargers, the hardware on the wall is pretty "dumb".
It's been pointed out elsewhere, but remote notifications are useful so you know it's time to get out of the public charger and let somebody else in (or to go back out and check on why it's suddenly stopped charging)
* It would be impossible to pass modern car emissions standards without electronic engine control.
* Backup cameras are mandatory, so you need an electronic pixel display somewhere.
* Lane keeping is required in Europe as of 2022, so that's a suite of sensors and computer-steering as a requirement.
* AEB will be required as of 2029 in the US, so that's a full electronic braking system (some form of pressure accumulator/source, solenoids/valves) and forward looking sensors (radar, lidar, visual, etc.).
I wonder if regulations would allow for a sort of periscope system.
(Not that it would be practical.)
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/part-571/section-571.1...
Nor practical but an analog system could probably meet the standard.
---
Rearview image means a visual image, detected by means of a single source, of the area directly behind a vehicle that is provided in a single location to the vehicle operator and by means of indirect vision.
Rear visibility system means the set of devices or components which together perform the function of producing the rearview image as required under this standard.
---
5.5 just says it needs to meet certain testing standards, start displaying within 2 seconds of backing up, and stop displaying when driving forward.
The vast vast majority of backup cameras ARE analog, including all the little one inch cubes you see poorly mounted on the back of sedans, and including the ones VW/Audi uses.
You could in fact plug their signal into a tube TV from the 50s. You might lose some overlay features.
If you want any one of:
Smooth running. Reliable start. Smooth Throttle application and resistance to all the problems we had with carbs. Airbags. Automatic management of cold weather performance.
Then you REQUIRE electronic actuators, sensors, and microcontrollers.
How many people know what a "Choke" is anymore?
Obviously it is too limiting for modern cars so it will get mostly dropped. It clearly is a great protocol though.
Video for a backup camera is mandatory on new cars in the US and Europe, so it makes sense to use the same bus.
However I wonder about the overlap between people that need a truck and this particular truck. I have only owned trucks when I needed to go out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a payload, in places with poor access to electricity. If I need to go in bumfuck nowhere without payload then there is no need for the truck, and if I need a payload in the city it's just way way cheaper to have it delivered when you factor in depreciation of even a cheap truck.
Would really love to see something like this with a simple 4 cylinder motor. Like the old s-10 / ranger. Until then the solution I have found is to just tag a trailer on small passenger vehicle, since it is now impossible to find a compact gas truck.
That being said, I really wish we had a small ICE truck in the USA, or an equivalent to the s-10/ranger. Even the ford maverick is exceptionally tall and it doesn't come with a bed that is big enough to conveniently move building materials. The maverick bed is only 54" or 4.5ft and older model rangers and S10s can be had with up to a 6ft bed.
https://www.motor1.com/news/698055/toyota-13000-dollar-hilux...
I have had no issues moving construction materials with the Maverick. I've moved around 12ft boards and stacks of drywall. The only real difference I noticed is I can't lazily hang things off the tailgate, which tailgate latches aren't specced to do anyways.
It's also definitely possible to haul all those things with almost any truck. Hell, you could even buy a rack for a maverick that makes full 8ft by 4ft sheets of drywall/plywood super easy to carry around, but being able to really easily load up stuff and not have to do some complicated strapping/securing of the payload is a big win with a bigger bed. I personally haul motorcycles a lot, and being able to have two motorcycles in the bed with tailgate up is a huge plus for me.
edit: misunderstood your first comment. What year Ranger are you talking about? The difference between an 80's/90's small truck and an early 2000s can be very considerable.
There's a whole different conversation and argument about the general size of vehicles in the US that is essentially circular and leads to bigger and bigger vehicles in the name of "safety".
https://www.mavericktruckclub.com/forum/threads/2022-maveric...
There's plenty of pictures of them parked side by side.
How rural are these areas? No roads?
To give you an idea: It's 413 miles between Colorado Springs and Wichita[1], leaving a very narrow area to be over 200 miles from either. Grand Island, Nebraska is 402 miles from Denver.
Pretty much all the land is over 200 miles away from a city of at least 50k population is in the great basin. To give you an idea, there are 3 cities in North Dakota (a 200x200 mile rectangle) that have a population of at least 50k, and with Bismarck relatively near the center, that rules out much of the state alone.
1: Dodge City is technically a city, but at much less than 50k population I'll omit it. If you allow anything called a city to count you could probably fit the list of people on a single piece of paper. Using the 50k cutoff you still have 3 cities in North Dakota, a 300x200 mile rectangle.
It's possible to use a normal motorcycle fully submerged as well [1], but designing for that is way harder due to the exposed engine, you need a ton of things and not just a snorkel.
Some uses are, impulse Craigslist and local furniture purchases, outdoor sports equipment, home garden projects.
My sedan is trashed from ocean related stuff I'm always putting in it. I was in a rush the other day, accidently left something wet in the car all day and have a mildew smell now to deal with. Dumb stuff like that seems avoidable.
Why would you buy a pickup for any of these activities? It'd be quite terrible? A van is a perfect solution.
I find it hilarious that it's a limited-edition M Theory model. It has a badge glued to the dash that says "1926 of 5000." For a Toyota econobox.
We're thinking of buying a newer car at some point, but between interest rates and, now, tariffs, we're not in any hurry.
Not really the point of the article, but, does it? This[0] says the bed is 60 inches long and 43 wide, and plywood is 96x48 inches. Is it like, any vehicle fits plywood if you cut it to the size of the truck or stack it on top?
[0] https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-slate-truck-is-two-feet-sh...
But I agree, I would expect it to be able to fully contain a standard sheet of plywood if it made that claim.
That said, the article you linked appears to list the bed width at the wheel wells. They say the Maverick's bed is 42.6" wide but above the wheel wells it 53" wide or so. You can find plenty of pictures of people hauling plywood with one. I suspect the Slate is similar.
Can you actually build an EV like that, conforming to all regulations, with significant cost reduction? VW is currently trying to build a 20k EV, which seem extremely difficult in Europe and US labor costs are probably higher. The Dacia EVs (which seem closest in concept to a pickup) suffer from many downsides, to make low prices happen.
Do people actually want less screens or do they just say that?
Is customization a road to profitability? VWs ID.1 concept has a similar idea to lower entry price, by making several upgrades user installable, so they can be bought over time.
This is obviously a US only car and the US is very lacking in EV adoption. Will this sell in significant numbers?
Can you actually make it cheaply? Rivian is notoriously unprofitable and making cheap cars is, far, far harder than making expensive cars.
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/personal-informa...
Is that confirmed? I would buy one *today* if this was known to be true... but I am 80% sure that they don't have any in production; all I see are renders.
There will almost certainly be a WiFi radio (for at home OTA updates) but there will likely be a modem, too, for people that like to remotely manage charge. The modem may be an optional extra and the WiFi traffic is something I can block/inspect as needed.
My 2024 EV doesnt have WiFi or Cellular radios.
I get that it's a bargain price, so that's the tradeoff. But a pretty bad one.
The truck will come with a choice of two battery packs: a 57.2 kWh battery pack with rear-wheel drive and a target range of 150 miles and an 84.3 kWh battery pack with a target of 240 miles (386 km).
I recently visited America after a couple of years away, and spent a couple of weeks in California, driving from SF to LA. The thing which I found the most striking was the sheer insanity of the pickup trucks that were absolutely everywhere. These things were true Idiocracy-class monster trucks, which are clearly lethal to operate in any environment which includes pedestrians. In some cases, my five-year-old's head barely reached the bumper, and my wife's head didn't clear the hood. And these were highly-polished, un-dented behemoths that had clearly never seen a dirt road in their lives. The whole thing is clearly all about aesthetics and identity politics. Absolutely revolting.
(If you haven't visited the US recently, I think it's almost impossible to appreciate how obscene the phenomena is. 10 years ago, trucks were far more restrained, but could still do everything they needed to do. 30 years ago, trucks were fully half the size, but could still carry the same-size loads and do honest work. There's honestly no possible justification for their corpulent growth.)
Anyhow, this thing looks like it can do honest work without killing everyone who crosses its path. I really appreciate that. I hope it starts a trend.
The real cost savings came a tiny, 150 mile battery. It could easily be <100 miles loaded up after a few years of use, which means there are very few use cases for this truck, and it certainly doesn’t make sense without the tax credit. Cool idea, but there’s no getting around the price of batteries
Or I could plug in my car every night in my garage. Where I already park and exit my car every day.
There's no competition to be had here. It's a choice between going to the gas station occasionally or not at all.
The 100 mile EV doesn't go beyond 100 miles, but that's not what it's for and not why I need it. I need a puddle jumper to get beat up and rode hard in big city traffic for 20-40 minutes a day and that's it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/07/07/...
> According to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, 95.1 percent of trips taken in personal vehicles are less than 31 miles; almost 60 percent of all trips are less than 6 miles. In total, the average U.S. driver only covers about 37 miles per day.
> In a study published in 2016, researchers at MIT found that a car with a 73-mile range (like an early version of the Nissan Leaf), charged only at night, could satisfy 87 percent of all driving days in the United States.
Makes me wonder if, once "normal" features are added, cost and reliability will be a problem?
In contrast, I could see this really helping the dealer model work because dealers could compete with different customizations.
That being said: At least when it comes to the battery, efficiencies come from a single large battery instead of a modular battery. I suspect they'll need to offer a larger battery at the factory.
Definitely something I would consider if they can make it happen.
I do see this being great for short utility trips (think running errands, picking something up, etc), and as a utility vehicle (would be nice to be able to have an 8ft bed).
It would be really interesting to me to see a fleet of vehicles like this that are ultra-rentable; think a Bird/Lime scooter, but a utility truck.
Japan and the rest of the world figured this out decades ago. They're called kei trucks. You can buy pre-2000 imported ones in the US from like $5-15k depending on the miles/condition/year/transmission. I have a 1990 Suzuki Carry that is solely used for trips to Home Depot and picking up random furniture from FB Marketplace that I got for $6k.
And it's great that the US is (seemingly, somewhat) catching up.
This might well go the same way.
Where do you get any of this from? Especially EVs are not something you can easily tinker with as the risk of killing yourself is pretty high. In general they are also more integrated and less maintainable and it seems unlikely that this won't be the case here. Maintainability costs money and to make a 20k car happen every cent needs to be saved.
As for reliability it is obviously one of the first things to sacrifice to make low costs happen. We have seen nothing of this car, I doubt the engineering is even far along.
Nobody should be allowed to buy a car without these functions. You aren't a good enough driver.
Tariffs (the "chicken tax") are directly responsible for US trucks being so expensive. They have no foreign competition in the US.
Environmental regulation loopholes cause US trucks to be so big, which is a related problem.
It's probably possible for US manufacturing to compete directly with foreign manufacturers, but they have no incentive to do so now that Trump extended the chicken-tax to all imported cars.
>CAFE has separate standards for "passenger cars" and "light trucks" even if the majority of "light trucks" are being used as passenger vehicles. The market share of "light trucks" grew steadily from 9.7% in 1979 to 47% in 2001, remained in 50% numbers up to 2011.[7] More than 500,000 vehicles in the 1999 model year exceeded the 8,500 lb (3,900 kg) GVWR cutoff and were thus omitted from CAFE calculations.[10] More recently, coverage of medium duty trucks has been added to the CAFE regulations starting in 2012, and heavy duty commercial trucks starting in 2014.
Would you prefer our roads flooded with cheap Chinese EVs that are the automotive equivalent of Shein hauls? Protectionism has its place in certain areas, and I would say building a thriving domestic EV industry that isn't beholden to a single weirdo is one of them.
Your perception of Chinese auto manufacturing is very out of date. This makes as much sense as calling Japanese or Korean cars cheap and low quality.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
A lack of import restrictions in no way prevents safety regulations. You could also subsidize the domestic automobile industry without having tariffs, so that we protect our domestic industrial base. These things take no imagination.
The Munroe Live episode on it should disavow people of these biases. He ends it with a strong warning about people's weird biases about Chinese manufacturing.
That's the killer feature for me, if this actually comes out the after market mods are going to be amazing, having a test bed for creating your own self driving rigs is going to be a complete game changer.
It's so hackable (in a good way) that this platform could foster a whole knew segment of the population getting into EV manufacturing and dramatically increase the talent pool the same way the VW beetle and the Lisa Computer did, hobbyist hackers are the greatest pool for technical founders.
Not to mention replacing the exterior panels with custom displays and other amazing "Art Car" opportunities.
It's a cool concept... looks good to my eye, small trucks are neat, etc. But, I'd want push-button windows, up-to-date charge controller/battery tech, and the normal EV integrated app. Maybe if it was really a $20k truck (they're advertising the price after incentives, many of which are either going away or vanish for higher income earners).
Don't they already have Cybertrucks for that ;)
And it's barely a truck, 1000-lb towing capacity. A VW Golf can tow twice as much.
I love the concept, but at $20.000USD it's to much. My guess is that they'd need to hit 15.000USD for the extend range version. Two minor thing I would chance, as others pointed out: Bench seat, and the second: Just make the holes/mounting options for an after market stereo.
Hopefully this is successful and will push other manufacturers to create similar options. I saw an old Morris parked outside the gym the other day, it took up maybe 2/3 of a parking space, it was perfectly size for my grandparents, it perfectly sized for my needs. I get that the car grows a bit in size, once all the modern safety features are added, but I don't see why that would amount to much more than the size of say an Opel Kadett D or E, or a Volvo for the 1980s.
Tell me you haven't purchased a vehicle in the current millennium, without telling me?
>15.000USD for the extend range version
Buy a used one in 2035 with 80k miles?
https://usa.nissannews.com/en-US/releases/nissan-group-repor...
If it was a legit $20k truck/SUV, it would make a fine replacement for my wife's current car (at least by usage requirements, but not even close by style/luxury demands).
I have, and I think they are way to expensive for the use I get. My issue is that $20.000 quickly becomes $30.000 once my government is done with adding taxes. I drive a 12 year old car, original price was ~25.000USD. It's going to be around 30.000USD to replace it, once it dies. The price difference between getting an extremely bare bones car vs. one from a known brand, in colour, with better range going to be negligible I fear.
Lots of people? Much harder to say. Has to be either "first car" kind of thing for someone young, or "second car" in a family where it's OK to have a 2-seater with limited range be used for commuting/errands. (Or "third car" for people with money to spare.)
"third car" for people with money to spare.
Yeah, but the same ~$20k - $30k buys you a heck of a lot more ICE. A new Maverick XLT starts in that range. Or a Lariat trim at $34k. And if this is just a toy, that same money gets you in a new base or very high-spec used Miata.
...or have a spouse and many driving age children. I'm currently in the market for car for the fifth driver in the family.
I'd be very interested in buying one of these as my first EV.
Something tells me though, that if such a company got successful, it wouldn't be long before the features started creeping back in, to justify an increase in price.
I do expect a steep price jump when they realize that all this customization (especially post-purchase) makes crash testing really difficult and expensive, $20k is not going to happen but hopefully it will be under $30k MSRP and under $40k with typical options, at least targeting a different market than Rivian.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secr...
[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/91322801/bezos-backed-slate-auto...
Either way, I'm rooting for their success. The low end car market is pretty much non-existent. I've heard people blame the cash for clunkers program that got rid of a ton of low end supply in 2009, but haven't looked into it too much.
This is too bad. I'm not buying anything from people who showed up January 20th. It hasn't been difficult. And luckily there is plenty of competition in the electric car space.
If they get somebody else at the helm (not Elon), I'll root for them like crazy.
Charge $1k for paint. Even if 95% of people don’t do that, 5% of orders just increased their revenue by 5%. Paint doesn’t take engineering time.. just spend $500 and let some other company do it. This is why trims exist, having a single low price point means people who want to spend more either produce lower revenue than possible, or are disappointed.
IMO this one trim, one price is almost certainly a prelaunch marketing gimmick as from a business perspective there is literally no benefit.
Are you sure you read the article? The is explicitly addressed.
[1] https://www.gemcar.com/gem-el-xd/
[2] https://electriccarsalesandservice.com/products/2024-gem-el-...
(That's before any "later adjustments" to the price, not to mention the effects of uncertain tariff policy.)
I do think they should keep in mind that people will want to do this and at least design the dash to easily accept a tablet mount (vesa standard), amp mount (plug and play Pyle 120v?), speaker wire, and speakers (6x9 or 6.5”). That’s an easy hour install if everything is standardized, accessible, and doesn’t require drilling.
Would also love seating for 5.
Not sure if the article covers it (I read Ars Technica's, not Verge) but the Slate site shows that they do have support for tablets, bluetooth speaker mounts, 3-seat back row, etc.)
While speaker wiring might be nice... I sense that's less likely to be readily supported. Mounts + wireless + USB port for charging is probably the limit there.
Of course, used truck buyers tend to be happy to run some wiring for things like CB, radar, extra lighting, etc. Doesn't matter if the wiring is showing!
Even a very aerodynamic Model 3 loses half of range at highway speeds.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/vkz0SOnR45Gved9B-q9n...
Efficient vehicles spend less energy on other stuff besides moving the car (e.g. by having heat pumps, induction motors that can be turned off without any drag, etc), so tests conducted at a lower speed will appear to have a better range than tests at a higher speed. Meanwhile, less efficient vehicles that waste energy at low speeds will appear to have more similar range at both low and high speeds.
Yes, they do, compared to 25 mph. I even gave you the chart.
As the chart shows, the reverse would be true: if they’re advertising a 150 mile range you would be able to beat that considerably if you drove at 30mph.
Yes, because it's true. But who drives at 30 mph? Grandmas maybe. Not exactly target audience for a truck.
The peak efficiency is actually at 25 mph, not 30.
Why not make a physical connection (power/network) and define a form factor for entertainment system with or without screen and speakers and let other companies design something to fit the space available. I don't understand why no one does this instead of selling cars full of crappy software that can't be upgraded.
Also, when is the last time an economy car/truck looked this good? The slate is beautiful.
I think it has a real shot if it arrives as promised, but we know how these things go.
If it were 4x4 it would be literally exactly what I want.
I hope they sell millions.
This could be very popular with companies that need small fleets of pickup trucks. The ones that have company logos on the side.
"We moved all the complicated parts outside the factory"
What does that really mean? You can paint it yourself, well ok, people may like that. Making it easy to service is great.
If I want electric windows is that adaptable? (It may come with electric windows) When I want to put in a stereo A navigation system? AC? (Might come with it)
It would be cool if the car was a abit "framework" so it has an open well thought out way to add and integrate features a person may want.
THe compnay and 3rd parties could offer up all sorts of cool stuff.
An EV that's designed to be user-serviceable, has modular upgrades, and isn't full of surveillance technology? This checks all the boxes for me. Can't wait to play with it.
[Edit: Got that number not from the original article, but from the Ars article another person posted in this thread.]
Then it isn't < $20000. It is a pitch.
That said, I think you raise a bigger issue - I'd like to see MORE things like Framework, Fairphone or Slate - user serviceable, customizable - maybe low initial cost.
To me, this feels futuristic, exciting, optimistic and positive.. we need more like this, so how can we make these kinds of businesses more likely to succeed, resilient, etc?
Will folks revealed preference continue to be big and expensive?
I think you're misremembering. The streets were flooded with Rangers and S10s back in the day. Full sized pickups have been the most popular class of vehicle for decades but that number is grossly inflated by the amount that are bought as fleet vehicles or work vehicles.
F series Fords definitely outsold it, but is also a larger product line.
No, it is because emissions regulations. A small truck can’t be built on our emissions policies, not that there isn’t a market for one.
Does it have air conditioning?
Sad to say but if the thing was made in Mexico and was priced at $15,000 it would be a huge hit. By the time you accounted for the $7500 federal tax credit it would be priced at around a quarter the price of a gas 4 cylinder powered pickup. An entire industry of add-ons and wraps would spring up around it.
Just checked with ChatGPT and it confirmed while there have been women involved with EV and battery startups there hasn't ever been an all female founder led car company. Now that Mary Barra became the CEO of GM it was wildly heralded that there was no longer a glass ceiling in the auto world. But I'd posit actually starting a company, raising money from investors like Jeff Bezos is taking it to another level.
The good news is that I don't think its the last new car company that will get started. I personally know of a guy in Ohio who wants to manufacture a car he built using a diesel engine that gets over 100 mpg and can beat both a Dodge Viper and a Tesla Model 3 to 60 mph.
My ignorance is going to shine through here, but isn't the rear axle the one you'd want driven if you had to choose?
Sure, both is "better" but if I need cheap, rear is the better choice?
I see a ton of discussion on social media from people who want to buy simpler vehicles with less features at a better price point (e.g. the Japanese Kei trucks). I'm not convinced Americans will actually buy such a vehicle because we are used to our modern conveniences in new vehicles. You can even see that trend in this thread where people are asking for more features, or things that were phased out decades ago due to safety (e.g. bench seats). Perhaps Slate has figured that out with their options packaging? I'm rooting for them regardless.
My town is FULL of workers doing hauling, painting, gardening, construction, etc., and they're all driving old worn rusting pickups that barely seem held together. There's definitely a market for minimal trucks designed to just get the job done without the "modern conveniences".
And if it does and I'm completely wrong, this concept is probably doomed anyways, as it is swinging far too far to the other side away from fancy tech and right into uselessly bare. I'm sure a few people are excited by this, but realistically it will have a tiny real market. Nearly no one wants manual windows and leaving them out isn't saving huge amount of money.
Make it comparable to a decent conventional vehicle, but electric, and you may do well. This though is more useless and non-functional than my old Jeep, which has a trip computer and bluetooth as the biggest "tech features".
The bed being plastic doesn’t give me much confidence either. The payload may be similar to a mini truck, but a mini truck’s metal bed will take a significant beating over plastic.
This is very, very close to what I want, but I worry that those two things may prevent me from actually pulling the trigger. While all of the modular features are cool and neat, I don’t really consider them very useful for what I would actually use this truck for.
The purpose of this seems to be a fleet or Personal utility truck, but I still feel like I would be leaning towards a used old Ford Ranger or similar.
"Tisha Johnson, head of design at Slate and who formerly spent a decade at Volvo."
Ye. This is a Volvo station wagon, that Volvo themself discontinued in 2016 becouse it was too popular.
She's not wrong, though I'm not at a point where I want THIS much minimalism (or lack of range). What a great product though.
Now, the Ineos Grenadier? That thing speaks right to my soul.
1/3 of the price including tax credit. Too maximalist?
Not this one. It's the premiumization that drove me away from every EV product out there.
Plus, load up the back with more batteries and you've got great range!
I've thought about importing a Kei, but I don't think it's for me. When I think "American kei truck" I at least think something in the ballpark range cost of a Kei, which is quite a bit less, at least half as expensive for the best options like 4WD, even less if you can compromise. It also has charm unlike this. The range is just ridiculous, too. My little ranger isn't exactly great, I don't push it much more than 300 miles on a tank, but having half that (new! let alone after a few years) is such a deal breaker. Last time I took my truck camping it was around 60 miles each way, and that was a nearby spot.
> Unlike most vehicles sold in the United States, the Slate Truck is not expected to have any Internet connectivity
Well that's certainly a sentence. It wasn't true just 20 years ago. It makes me wonder about the world we've grown into with deeply intertwined apps becoming not only the norm but expected.
The idea is there but I'm wondering about the execution. Here's hoping it takes off.
A buddy of mine who creates shaped interactive art panels with oleds for disney and other groups interactive events texted me about this, installing video panels on this is going to be a breeze.
I'm more excited about this as a platform than even as a car, this is going to be like browser JS, the Lisa and VW Bug for creating an EV tech skill pipeline.
It’s the anti-cybertruck but aimed at people who actually could get by with a nice trailer.
But this could easily handle a mild commute and nearby errand running. Most "truck" stuff is like buying 5 bags of mulch from the Home Depot that's 10 minutes away. This will handle that perfectly well.
But yes, 20-80% battery usage makes the base model daily range 90 miles, unladen.
Such as? Seems like it meets a lot of use cases.
Of course, it's a truck, so it can move light + bulky stuff, like appliances and furniture.
Personally, I'd want to pay another $5-10K and get one that can also handle heavy loads. This, but for $30K ($37.5K pre incentives) with no truck-related caveats would be amazing. I'm guessing it wouldn't cost $10K for them to upgrade the suspension + drivetrain.
I have a homemade trailer with greater bed capacity than this pick-up that I got for $800 and use it for a myriad of things – from hauling lumber to launching small boats. I've driven it hundreds of miles to the closest Ikea.
When I'm not using it, it's not attached to my low-end SUV. But with the seats down, there isn't a whole lot my low-end SUV can't do as well as this toy pick-up, without range anxiety.
However, with the SUV package and lift kit, this is actually useful. It's basically the same size (and payload and towing capacity) of the 2nd gen Scion xB. A boxy, roomy, small, cheap car. Absolutely useful and great. (Unlike a tiny truck.)
2. No guarantee of delivery date
3. No right to purchase
4. No guarantee of purchase price
5. No assignment of purchase to other parties
I've got some lunar real estate to sell you if you think this product will ever exist
Reminds me of Bollinger prototypes. Whatever happened to those?
Scroll down. The launch event photos look like real prototypes. A bit closer than the marketing photos.
This will be a couple hundred k more attainable.
Also, though I think using tablets and detachable speakers is cost effective, it may promote car break-ins?
You mean this?
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-first-pickup-truck-is-a-diy-...
> Rather than relying on a built-in infotainment system, you'll use your phone plugged into a USB outlet or a dedicated tablet inside the cabin for your entertainment and navigation needs.
How is a "dedicated tablet" different than an infotainment system, other than not having vehicle telematics and controls? Also, a regular tablet UX would be dangerous while driving, and typically they don't have their own mobile data connections.
1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/amazon-backed-startup-w...
Highly technical people tend to come in two varieties when it comes to electronics in their personal life:
1. Absolutely nothing smart that's not under their direct (or highly configurable) control.
2. Sure just take all my data I don't care. I'll pay subscriptions fees too.
Modern cars mostly do #2... to the point we potentially faced a subscription being required to enable seat warmers [0]. There's basically no cars on the market that do #1 anymore.
And with #2, you're bound by what the vehicle manufacturer decides. They are ending up like forced cable boxes - minimum viable product quality. They can be slow to change pages/views and finicky in touch responses... which I think are actually more dangerous... but this is our only option if this is the car we pick... and almost no one decides on a car for it's infotainment, so it's not a feature that gets much love or attention.
Additionally, technology moves too fast. My first car had a tape deck. The next one had a CD Player.. then I had to get an mp3-player-to-radio dongle, then I replaced my infotainment system with a bluetooth supporting one... and so on.. Even Android Auto (early versions) integrated directly into the infotainment system and needed potentially proprietary cables (USB-to-proprietary connector), and the systems did not look designed to be upgraded/replaced.
This model here allows you to upgrade your infotainment system every time you upgrade your phone (or dedicated tablet)... or simply by changing apps.
Also, Android Auto has mostly solved that UX issue (It's the same UX on a tablet as on an equivalent built-in infotainment system).. Though iPads probably (?) don't have a similar feature.
So I think the 'bring your own infotainment' idea is awesome.
> It's exactly what I think a lot of techies want.
> Highly technical people tend to come in two varieties when it comes to electronics in their personal life:
I get it, I'm one of them. But using a tablet while driving is fundamentally dangerous to other people on the road, drivers or pedestrians. Android Auto and CarPlay are barely constrained enough to allow for distraction free driving.
I've lost hope that we're going back to days of people actually paying attention to the task of driving (even I take phone calls and play media while driving), but normalizing distraction by encouraging use of a tablet or phone seems like a public safety mistake, even if it appeals to the techie crowd.
which would suit me just fine.
Android Auto and CarPlay solve that problem for navigation/communication/entertainment. The automakers aren't going to provide an open API to the vehicle control systems, for both competitive and safety reasons.
What would be nice is the old fashioned DIN interface, where you could install an aftermarket AA/CarPlay unit like this:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pioneer-10-1-hd-screen-luminous...
I can definitely see a day where Apple or Google decide to discontinue support on vehicles older than 201x that lack some new hardware specification.
I think it's still possible to run the Android Auto app (with its purpose-built interface) on a regular tablet.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/android-auto-for-phones-i...
Also, these days AA can connect to the car's systems to do range estimations for its route suggestions and suggest charging on the routes. I'd hope whatever connectivity they do here includes sharing that data with the device in the cabin.
A passenger could operate it.
The question is whether a car maker should be encouraging or enabling a generic touch screen tablet to be installed on the dashboard versus an infotainment device with constrained functionality like AA/CP designed to minimize driver distraction.
I would be happy with a built-in screen that did nothing but AA/CP while the car was driving, and then reverted to a normal tablet interface when the car is parked.
Climate control, etc should be physical knobs and buttons. Anything critical to driving should be on or near the steering wheel.
I know you don't believe me but it's true.
Automotive sales numbers are public information. Every single time a VIN is stamped into some metal, that record is public. The gradual decline in the sale of small, simple, cheap trucks is well documented.
People want full-sized trucks.
People say they love manual transmissions, too. They walk right past the manual Tacomas and Jeeps and buy an automatic.
People say they love station wagons. Then they go to the Volvo dealership and walk right past the V60 and buy an XC60.
People say they want a cheap car. Then they walk right past the base model Corolla and throw down $50k on a Rav4 Limited.
Only enthusiasts and weirdos like me will buy one of these.
A company whose audience is enthusiasts and weirdos must charge a shit-ton to stay in business. $20k isn't a shit-ton and if their strategy is to make up the difference on upgrades, they're not selling cheap trucks anymore.
I know what Americans, in aggregate, want. They want a big-ass SUV with heated and cooled seats with a screen that stretches across the entire god damned dash, 360 degree cameras, RGB mood lighting, 47 speakers, and second-row captain's chairs that make getting to the third row easy.
I own 3 cars, a Fiat 124 (MANUAL) Spider, a Volvo V70, and an Alfa Romeo Giulia.
But I am a weirdo, and because of this those companies are about to go extinct (in the US, at least).
I'm the guy that ran OS/2 and BeOS until the bitter end. I prefer writing software in Ada. I had a Saab.
I am literally and actually a subject matter expert on this shit.
I know what normal people want, and this ain't it. I know this because I want it.
They are very explicit about not offering upgrades, and the benefit that has on simplifying manufacturing.
The auto companies' argument about what consumers "want" is mostly nonsense.
https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/25/byd-sealion-05-ev-launhe...
It’s like if you could buy an old Nokia for $200, or a new Android smartphone for $160. The old Nokia certainly has nostalgic qualities and some concrete practical benefits like all-week battery life, but overall it’s not a great deal.
And this is why you have >100% tariffs on Chinese cars — American manufacturers know they can’t compete.
https://www.autoblog.com/news/why-the-chicken-tax-still-cont...
And it's a pickup truck that is an actual pickup truck.
Which is its ultimate downfall, unfortunately. It being an actual pickup truck means that for all practical purposes you will also need a car, with all the additional headaches of owning more wheels to go along with it, and at its price point plus the price of a car you may as well buy one car with some truck-like features (i.e. the pretend pickup trucks that have become so popular).
Buried the lede, didn't we?
This has launch event photos that claim to be of prototypes.
Who will be buying all of these pickup trucks?
but, MMW, i think they will sell every single unit made
basic truck + freedom of customization will be very popular in the USA
Was that more of a problem on older cars?
What could save money is not needing to run any wiring whatsoever into the door - if the doors can be made with no speakers, lighting, crash sensors, switches, power locks, or power windows, then the assembly becomes significantly simpler and therefore cheaper since there's no wiring harness to fish (usually a manual production step), no holes and grommets, etc.
But if power windows are going to be an option, I'm not sure how this plays out. Do the power windows come with a wiring harness that requires the user disassemble the interior and fish the wiring? If it comes pre-wired, then the choice for manual windows is actually quite strange and possibly more expensive.
Electric windows have been a luxury item for generations.
Traditionally, with an F-150, they were just much slower, prone to failure and expensive to replace.
Especially if you often go in & out from a gated area where you have to roll your window down every time and use your pass or talk to the guard :\
Or roll them all down whenever it has been parked in the hot sun, to quickly let out the overheated air before the air conditioner can become very effective. If you have A/C, or even use it at all :)
Window motors may not last much longer than a set of tires then, and cost as much to replace, often without warning. You're supposed to be able to afford it anyway.
However in the late 1990's the manual knob was moved to a stupid place, and it became impossible to lower the window in one quick second any more.
I can only imagine that the automotive engineers were constantly being bathed in the luxury of their environment and never even put enough test vehicles having no options through any kind of ergonomic comparison.
For the longest time these kind of things were built to provide an extreme amount of comfort for someone having a similar stature to Henry Ford. Almost lasted the entire 20th century before there was such great discontinuity.
Engineers probably didn't test drive any having manual seat adjustment, on long trips either. Otherwise they would have done better than to have an adjustment bar blocking the entire area under the driver's seat in such a way that about 25% of the footroom was lost, which was formerly available as you occasionally adjust your posture for endurance.
It was like expensive sportscar people started designing trucks. You don't sit upright in a sports car so the space is not wasted there. No more twin I-beam front suspension either, you didn't really want a truck that tough any more in the 21st century did you?
They didn't know any better. At least they once did.
And who doesn't like luxury?
Automatic locks is another one, once very seldom seen except in things like Cadillacs. That's why people envied them so much for decades, and when they finally came within reach of the mainstream they flew off the shelf.
Seriously, who wants to be in a modern car without music, and who wants to travel without Google maps.
No mention of crash testing or crash-worthiness/safety. Airbags? ABS braking? Collision avoidance (brakes engage based on distance and speed to cars or objects ahead), etc.
Before the hounds say "it is refreshing..." remember that lots of safety features are there because so many people died before they were instituted.
How safe is this plastic body from lateral impact by an F150 or SUV?
One of the reasons for which I do not like or buy old vehicles is the lack of safety features that are common today. All it takes is to land a loved one in the hospital (or worse) to quickly regret the choice to buy a cheap car or an old unsafe car. Years ago my father was t-boned by a full size SUV at a neighborhood intersection, launching his car diagonally across the intersection and onto the front yard of the corner house...through a couple of trees. He walked away from that one because the safety engineering of the vehicle he was driving save his life.
Another note: To me, while this is interesting, it is also a sad commentary on the state of manufacturing in the US. The ONLY WAY to make a $20K car in the US is to strip it down to bare metal...err...not even use metal...or paint...or electronics...or comfortable seats...and have HALF the range of other EV's...and even take out the speakers, etc. And then, you sell not having all those things as a FEATURE! Yup. Brilliant. What's the least we can do to build a car and get away with it?
My prediction is that this thing will die a pretty rapid death or they will have to pivot into making real cars for this market. There's a reason nearly three million conventional trucks were sold in the US last year. Plastic bodies, 150 mile range and barren interiors did not fit the description of a single one of them.
A mandatory part of today’s safety features is a digital rear-view camera. Typically, this view pops up on a modern car’s central infotainment screen, but the Slate doesn’t have one of those. It makes do with just a small display behind the steering wheel as a gauge cluster, which is where that rearview camera will feed.
https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-new-c...
I do think Tesla has lost sight of their original plan, though. They should have kept going through one more generation of significant cost reduction/increased volume after Model 3/Y. They are intentionally leaving this part of the market to competitors as they focus on self driving, and I think it's a mistake that will cost them in the near term.
Obviously a very big "if" making it at that price point will be extremely challenging.
Exact same car 2 decades ago would have cost a hell of a lot more. At which point the lack of bells and whistles would have been a huge problem.
Slate is an anagram of Tesla. Coincidence?
If they deliver i would absolutely buy one for when my oldest starts driving in 3 years.
There were a bunch of minimal 2 seaters that were affordable.
And young people move residences a lot. Having a small truck that can hold a mattress was ideal.
The modern luxury behemoth truck is an abomination...
I assume there's still a lot of vaporware here, but if they can make it reliable and avoid the teething issues of new cars, I'd probably impulse-purchase one. I would also love to see options for AWD and a full-length bed.
It is cartoon villain tier to compromise the visual range of the driver at the safety expense of everyone outside the vehicle, who is not shielded by 2 tons of mass.
Much of what is wrong with automobiles is a severe inability to think in higher order terms.
https://www.fordpro.com/en-us/fleet-vehicles/f150-lightning/
The Ford comes standard with the same range as the upgraded Slate, though. The slate can tow 1000lbs, and hold 1,433 lbs, vs the Ford's standard 5000 / 2235, respectively (you can upgrade the range and towing capacity on the ford):
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64564869/2027-slate-truck...
Not including a bluetooth capable am/fm radio / speakerphone on a fleet vehicle seems dumb. This cut what, $100?
I can easily see Ford cutting $10K off the cost of the Pro. It looks like it has power windows, and it definitely has an infotainment system. Also, the two row cab adds lots of weight + cost and makes the bed smaller.
Anyway, competition is good. Hopefully slate will make something with an upgraded suspension / power train for $10K more, and maybe eventually a larger one with ford-compatible conversion mounts (for custom work trucks, etc.)
I don't think you can actually buy one for that. They were tacking on an extra 10k as soon as they came out and eventually just moved the price up by like $5k and they still generally sell for higher than that.
No, that's the point, it's filling a niche that basically nothing else does right now. The closest alternative would be a small electric car paired with a small utility trailer. Something like a Nissan Leaf and one of those $500 trailers from harbor freight. Which added up and with discounts probably costs fairly similar to this.
But no stereo at all is not something that anyone wants. A simple radio is as much a basic expectation as "windows that go down".
Aside, why a pickup body? Aren't sedans wildly more popular?
I'm talking specifically about the no stereo/screen
No, it's not. This American consumer says bring on the simplicity. Also like that this is not some monster sized thing.
Lots of people say it's because offroading got popular but I think it's also because that car was "dumb" compared to more recent offerings. And personally as an owner of a 4th generation 4Runner, one of the things I like most about is that it's "dumb".
Deal breaker. Plastic gets brittle with age.
But once it starts selling like hotcakes they'll jack up the price to "Whatever the Market will Bear" relative to how many they're able to produce.
With most people struggling to get by nowadays (economically) we'll love the "less gadgetry" option because all that advanced technology stuff (and I do mean even power windows!) is, as my father always said, "Just something else that's going to eventually break, and was designed so it must be replaced not repaired."
> Got a road trip planned? These trips are all doable on a single charge of our standard battery. If you want to go even farther, our extended range battery increases the range to a projected 240 miles from a projected 150 miles. [0]
[0] - https://www.slate.auto/en/charging
[1] - https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...
Edit: The average pickup truck purchaser's has a household income of around $110,000 and 75% live outside cities [0]. When they are purchasing a pickup, it is meant to be both a daily driver and an errand vehicle.
Spending $20,000 on a 2 seater bench pickup with 150mi range is ludicrous when you can buy a used 5 seater Honda Fit or Toyota Tacoma for $0-7k more.
This is most likely targeted at fleet usecases like a factory or local deliveries, but this won't make a dent in the primary demographic that purchases pickups, and being overly defensive is doing no favors in thinking about HOW to build a true killer app EV for the American market.
Not really. The average pickup truck purchaser's has a household income of around $110,000 and 75% live outside cities [0]. When they are purchasing a pickup, it is meant to be both a daily driver and an errand vehicle.
Not have 4 seats AND having a lower range makes it a niche vehicle from a consumer sales perspective.
This is most likely being targeted at fleets, which tend to have a local presence and don't have the consumer usecase attached.
> I would absolutely, 100% get this to have an errand vehicle that never leaves the metro area.
You're a software engineer in the Bay Area. You were never the target demographic for pickup truck sales, but you would in fact be a target demo for a product like a Slate Truck.
[0] - https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographi...
> Not really.
The person you're replying to shares their perspective about why they think your complaints are irrelevant to them. You can't "not really" someone's lived experience. Well you can, but it sounds smug and out of touch.
The base model only has two seats. The article explicitly states there will be an SUV conversion kit that you can purchase and install at home. There will also be an extended battery available. It's a very customizable vehicle.
In the Bay Area alone, that's huge. A cheap electric 2-seater that can get you into the HOV lanes? Yes please! Who cares if it happens to be truck-shaped. Squint and pretend it's an Electric Camino.
> You're a software engineer in the Bay Area.
...who grew up in the Midwest, learned to drive in a 1970 Chevy Custom with 3-on-the-tree, spent many adult years on the Great Plains, and who happens to live in the Bay Area now.
I am no stranger to trucks.
There are a million things I could use a pickup for today, especially for that price.
What am I missing here? Charge at home and you’ll easily do those 42 miles every day surely?
Especially since your other point said these would be aimed at those outside of cities and those people will presumably have parking/charging at their home.
Can't basically every other brand use those now? Between the compatible Tesla chargers and all the other ones through Charge America and charging overnight at home, there is no concern from a daily driving, or even moderately ranged trip, standpoint. The downside to long trips is the 30+ minute wait at each charging stop, not the lack of chargers.
Sure but everyone with an EV has an app that tells them where they are and helps with route planning.
>You can't just drive until the light goes on and then stop at the next exit like a gas car.
You nearly can. Most ICE cars turn the light on at 50 miles. Other than maybe the middle of the desert, there is going to be a charger within 50 miles.
This will be real when you can go to some place, pay $20k and drive out with such thing.
If you're into car CGI, this is a much more enjoyable resource [1]!
a used car for 10k does more, costs less, and has a lower carbon footprint.
No it doesn't. An electric vehicle takes < 18 months to become carbon negative. Nobody buys a used car expecting it to last than 18 months. If it does, replacing your car every 18 months is not carbon friendly.
Because you can't sell a car for 10k in the US without losing money.
