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Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

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Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#281

Post by vablings »

freedomben wrote: post #177
bitexploder wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The body panels are some sort of composite polycarbonate plastic. They offered a number of colors in the UI for the pre-order system. It basically allows you to configure options that are available and see what it looks like. The wraps are (offered) DIY and they claim it will take two people 14-16 hours. They offer a number of colors that cost $500 right now. Pretty interesting as far as cars go. I think all of the c…

> The wraps are DIY and they claim it will take two people 14-16 hours. Oh man, that is ... a lot labor. I can't imagine many people are going to want to do it

Why not? This is an easy version of bribe your friends with a case of beer while you work on your POS project car.

I feel like this truck really appeals to the more moderate project car folks who want something both reliable and personal to them

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#282

Post by tristor »

coldpie wrote: post #37
dwa3592 wrote: post #24

It's at the second to last page where it says it's an EV. I didn't know and had to scroll down. Also there is no mention of range on one charge, which I think is a miss. The range (especially for an EV) must be on the landing page. The modular design is cool though.

Good criticism. It looks like the car's EV tech is average at best; definitely not outstanding. That's probably why they don't advertise it strongly, and also probably a big factor in why it's so cheap. They list some details on the Specs page[1]. They quote 200 miles of range, which is not great especially for a small car. They list a 20-80 charge time of 30 minutes so it's probably a 400V architecture, which is bec…

I pretty much concur with your take. I'm interested in this because I sometimes need a truck, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on an oversized gigantic vehicle I don't really need to have a truck the sometimes I need it. For me, that is mostly to go to the home store and back w/ materials, which is something I expect to do more regularly near the tail end of this summer onward as I ramp up my carpentry hobby. That 200 mile range is fine for me, because the closest home store is just 2.1 miles away from my house.

The flip side of that is over the holiday weekend I drove more than 250 miles to go visit my folks for Father's Day, which is just a couple of hours driving each direction. That's not even a long drive, that's a fairly normal weekend mini-roadtrip. It's not unusual for me to sometimes drive to the office in the next city over for meetings, and that's 116 miles from my house, where I work from home hence having significantly shorter typical driving experiences than most Americans. That next city over is a place where quite a lot of folks work and commute daily. 200 miles is definitely on the short side of acceptable range in the US.

Maybe it's just a Texas thing, but driving a hundred miles or more in a single direction is a typical behavior for many people under a variety of circumstances when you expect to return on the same day. This state also has the largest market for truck sales in the US.

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#283

Post by radpanda »

bluGill wrote: post #195
WarmWash wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fine anything-other-than-5hr+-road-trip car. Which covers 99% of people's daily driving. And frankly even if this thing was gas, it looks brutal to road trip in. A 200mi range means you can comfortably commute an hour to work each day, and then get back and "drive around town" in the evening without any worry.

People buy their vehicles with the 1% use like the 5 hour road trip in mind. The cost of renting a car is high enough that it is cheaper just buy the one you need for everything. That is before you realize that sometimes who show up to pick up your rental car and they don't have anything.

Yup. My parents bought a Jeep Cherokee back in the day as the family car rather than something like a Ford Taurus just so they could drive on the beach. That probably only happened a few days a year, but they were beloved outings and made the Jeep worthwhile to them. You could say that it would make more sense to drive a more economical car for most of the year and only rent a Jeep for the beach excursions, but how realistic is that? Most rental car places won’t guarantee much in terms of what sort of vehicle you’ll get. And most forbid offroad driving. It makes sense to a lot of people to buy vehicles for the 1% case if that 1% case is something they really value.

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#286

Post by vablings »

bluGill wrote: post #253
vel0city wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tank of gasoline that you can find all over the place I can find electricity in far more places than I can gasoline. It even comes out of my walls. Do you have gasoline piping throughout your home?

I can find 1000 watts of electric anyplace. However to get any reasonable range from that means my car has to sit there 3-4 days! This works for me because I only make the long trips on weekends (I ride my bike to work when the weather allows). For practical EV purposes there is not electric everywhere. If there isn't enough at home chargers are hard to find. Sure they are all over - but they are not advertised and n…

This is just fundamentally not true, literally every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging, the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.

Using apps like ABRP you can easily schedule your drip to have the optimal stops for route planning based on your battery technology, if you are doing a drive long enough to have multiple stops that should be part of your travel planning even with a gas car alongside a pre-trip check.

You can easily circumnavigate the entire USA with an EV that supports NACS!

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#287

Post by echoangle »

eddieroger wrote: post #228
lastofthemojito wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the dealers, at least somewhat. In the early days of the Scion brand, the idea was something like, all of the cars are shipped to the dealer as base models, customers could choose from a menu of add-ons, and the dealer would install them. Want just the basic car? Fine. Want to add keyless entry and mood lighting and a CD changer and chrome alloy wheels? They'll add those for you. But (at least in my experienc…

I vaguely remember that from the Scion days. I wonder what that does to liability? Like if it's something that impacts the safety of the vehicle - like a roll bar? - who takes on the liability if it's a dealer option?

Probably depends on who made the mistake. If the design is faulty the designer, if the part itself is faulty factory, if the installation was wrong even though the instructions were reasonable, the person doing the installation.

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#288

Post by FloatArtifact »

close04 wrote: post #27
whycome wrote: post #12

I don’t care that it’s EV. I’m just stoked that they’re making an actually modular system like this. I don’t know why it’s not possible with other cars.

The modularity is there with classic manufacturers too, just not "exposed" to the buyer. Cars use a common platform and you can still buy the classic or fastback, different styling packages, but you won't be able to self service them after the sale. I don't really know how much Slate is the Framework of the auto world, and how much it's just customization options at purchase time. Most people who buy a car would neve…

Have you tried to get an EV part independent of a dealership?

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#289

Post by MisterTea »

zamadatix wrote: post #146
MisterTea wrote: post #79

My favorite part about this vehicle is no stupid center console touch screen. Hopefully aftermarket dash kits for a DIN radio become available and we can put proper audio and control back into our vehicles and remove the tyrannical center console screens.

I love that there are physical buttons for all of the car functions (fuck trying to adjust the temperature/audio/car settings on a touchscreen while driving) but I do feel like having an optional component for a large 1st party screen which sits in the dash with Android Auto/Apple CarPlay would be nice instead of only having the phone mount option.

I have a 2022 CR-V and thankfully has knobs for the volume, and temperature controls with a few buttons. The touch screen actually crashed on me the other day while driving. I had to pull over to turn the car off and wait for the power module to kill the power to the screen as it didn't shut off (WTF happened to off being off!) I HATE these things with a passion.

Re: Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

#290

Post by tencentshill »

tedggh wrote: post #49
nathan_compton wrote: post #9

One under-appreciated value of having an EV is that you don't have to buy gas. You literally do not have to buy gas. I cannot emphasize this enough: you do not buy gasoline for these cars. Not only that, but many places let you charge them for free. That is like someone giving you free gas.

You always buy fossil fuels with an EV, not directly but you do. When you stop at the plaza for a quick super charge there’s no way to tell where is the energy sourced from, it could very well be from a diesel generator a few miles down the road. The value is in all the parts found in an ICE that need servicing or replacement that you don’t have in an EV. With an EV you basically need tires and maybe brakes once ever…

But they are also extremely efficient. So at worst its like driving a diesel truck that gets 120mpg.
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