Definitely something I would consider if they can make it happen.
> 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.
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.
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.
I thought so too, but apparently they make an extended cab one that is like 31k for the base model.
Reminds me of Bollinger prototypes. Whatever happened to those?
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.
Video for a backup camera is mandatory on new cars in the US and Europe, so it makes sense to use the same bus.
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_.
* 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.
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!
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.
Except with all the safety equipment, crumple zones, airbags, sensors, etc. I would expect an increase in price.
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.
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.
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.
And it'll always be sold out.
Now there's the real price.
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.
[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.
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…
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a64351746/2025-ford-mav...
And definitely went the other way from the industry.
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) was replaced by a rebadged Berlingo in 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 more unusable pavement princesses.
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.
TBH, I think a minivan would make it even easier.
The dream is a Pacifica minivan - they make a hybrid version.
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.
[Edit: Got that number not from the original article, but from the Ars article another person posted in this thread.]
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-new-c...
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.
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.
Slate is an anagram of Tesla. Coincidence?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ARE WE THERE YET? ... ARE WE THERE YET? ... ARE WE THERE YET?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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)
That should provide basic diagnostics/stats. No need for "apps".
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.
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.
Would be nice if they had a protocol locally for a 3rd party to step in an offer their own offerings here.
- 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 ).
Wait, you actually want your car to upload all your data to someone else's cloud for them to sell?
(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!)
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).
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.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think most Americans would go for a 15k Toyota Hilux Champ with similar design ethos, but chickentax.
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.
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.
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.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.)
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.
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.
It’s the anti-cybertruck but aimed at people who actually could get by with a nice trailer.
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.
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.
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...
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because you can't sell a car for 10k in the US without losing money.
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.
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!
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.
Then it isn't < $20000. It is a pitch.
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.
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).
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.
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."
Deal breaker. Plastic gets brittle with age.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
TFW just want cheap Hilux Champ.
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".
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
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.
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?
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.
"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 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.
Later they made a one off version for Goodwood that has a V8 stuffed under the hood.
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.
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
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".
Even a very aerodynamic Model 3 loses half of range at highway speeds.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/vkz0SOnR45Gved9B-q9n...
You mean this?
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-first-pickup-truck-is-a-diy-...
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.
I hope they sell millions.
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