431–440 of 524 posts
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And then they pick black or white.
Wraps are nice because they're not permanent and don't affect resale value. Having a car without a wrap might soon be as unusual as a phone without a case.
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Downgrade in ride quality for sure, but that’s the first I’ve heard of it being a performance downgrade. Will check out the video later to learn more.
Maybe just due to lift. Thinner wheels and lower car is better aerodynamics
That means, for a given spindle height, the car ride height is the same regardless of wheel diameter.
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How many people have an iPhone Air?
That’s exactly why I added “or any other premium.” Why buy a sleek phone made of premium materials just to bury it in the cheapest, ugliest, chunkiest plastic case you can find?
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That sounds a bit like one of Saturn's (1985-2010) original ideas from the 80s. The plastic paneling was easy to take off so that people could DIY change the colors or add their own panels (and Saturn engineers could quickly revise styles). I am not sure very many people ever did, however. Or even if the cars were all that customizable in the end.
Notably truck people love customizing their trucks. Less so for economy sedan people.
The color options are a much bigger deal than I think many people realize. It's been too many years since I saw the studies so I have no hope of being able to cite it, but in a marketing class in college I remember reading about how much people value picking a color they really like, that they feel matches their personality. It increases satisfaction, significantly reduces the cognitive dissonance (aka "buyers remors…
I agree, this is a very smart move. I just wish they had also released a smaller body, so you could build something close to a regular hatchback (like a Golf or Mazda 3)
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Slate does not wrap the vehicle at manufacturing time. You do it or a service center does it for you.
Untrue. Slate can wrap before delivery. > It will operate as the central shop where the modular two-door, two-passenger pickups will be wrapped in custom colors and finishes chosen by customers, with more than 100 color options available. https://news.dealershipguy.com/p/slate-auto-bets-on-customiz... https://www.courier-journal.com/story/money/companies/2026/0...
I'm also not entirely sure about this facility. Some places are saying this is a facility to produce wraps, as in they manufacture the wraps for others to install. Others suggest this will be a place to get the car wrapped. Is it both? Who knows. I haven't seen any official correspondence from the company directly clearing up what all this facility will actually do.
According to the filing they did with The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA), the facility is to be a "vinyl wrap kit manufacturing and fulfillment facility." Usually a "fulfillment facility" is a logistics hub. It sounds more like a place where they'll manufacture the wraps and ship them out than a place where it'll be installed, but it isn't completely clear either way. See page 94-95 of the first PDF and page 14 of the second:
https://cedky.com/cdn/140_KEDFA_Board_Book-_Mar_26_26.pdf?4-...
https://cedky.com/cdn/140__Mar_26_2026_KEDFA_Min.pdf
Maybe there was more said in the meeting, I don't know. But if they said it was for installation as well, it wasn't reflected in the meeting minutes. It would probably really change the scale of the operation though. About forty people for manufacturing, logistics, and installation of wraps for tons of cars? And you're going to need a facility to get a lot of cars through, quite a bit larger than some commercial printers and packaging machines. It would also seem strange to me to build the cars, ship them 200 miles, then wrap them, then ship them out to customers. Why not just wrap them in the Warsaw Indiana facility? Maybe they will eventually wrap them in the Indiana facility, who knows.
But as it stands right now, if you order one of these Slates with a wrap, you better be ready to install it yourself or hire someone to do it. That's Slate's official stance on it currently.
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FWIW, my 10+ year spreadsheet of the maintenance costs on my last ICE lined up pretty well with that - about 1/3 of the costs were ICE-specific issues, 2/3 were for parts that would have been common to an EV. > In reality you can probably bring your EV to the dealer once every 4 years or so. Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations.
>Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations. Are you somewhere where you actually need dedicated winter tires or have you just convinced yourself that rocking all weathers all year isn't feasible?
So, living in Alberta, and spending significant time in the AB/BC rockies in the winter, I still think all weathers would be feasible, but I'm more comfortable with dedicated winters. (For that matter, when I'm buying winters, I'm always borderline on whether I should get studded or not.) (And as a parallel effect, with dedicated winters I can also run higher performance all-season tires during the summer.)
And if I ran all-weathers with my driving patterns, I'd still want to be rotating them yearly, so that would cut my dealer visits by half, but definitely not to once every 4 years.
And tying back to my last ICE vehicle - for the first 4 years of its life it would have been okay without a dealer visit if you took tires/oil changes out of the equation, but not for any 4-year period after that. There are just too many random little things that break down in cars over time. (e.g. after 12 years or so the cruise control buttons were getting really mushy - I replaced them myself for the cost of the $65 part, but YMMV on whether you feel a service visit is warranted when removing your steering wheel air bag.)
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> I don't think I've ever gone shopping for a car and had the dealer present me with the exact same trim options but color selection was only going to change the MSRP by $800 at most... Am I misunderstanding here? I bought a new vehicle last year, and for a given trim there were a half-dozen colour options available at no extra cost, with the upscale options either a $600 or $800 upcharge.
Toyota runs dealers on allocation. Subaru allow you to order a car to spec. They make the "twins", gr86 and brz. You cannot order the Toyota. You have to try to find what you want being built or on a lot already and contact the targeted dealer to buy it. You can order the Subaru and wait 6 months for it to be built to spec.
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FWIW, my 10+ year spreadsheet of the maintenance costs on my last ICE lined up pretty well with that - about 1/3 of the costs were ICE-specific issues, 2/3 were for parts that would have been common to an EV. > In reality you can probably bring your EV to the dealer once every 4 years or so. Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations.
>Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations. Are you somewhere where you actually need dedicated winter tires or have you just convinced yourself that rocking all weathers all year isn't feasible?
Also rotating tires every 10-20k miles is good because most cars run higher camber in the rear (inner shoulder wear) than front and the fronts wear the outside shoulder more because of turning. Swapping them extends tire life by spreading the wear.
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I see lots of tradesmen in Ford Mavericks or Transit Connects. The Slate could work well for some of them - basic truck model, with the ladder rack for long stuff (like ladders or pieces of wood). Saves them some money up front, and gas and maintenance (in theory).
Yes and no. I'd think residential plumber or HVAC service tech can easily drive more than the stated range just going from job to job during a day. They're going to want to be sure that they don't have to stop to charge between jobs; time is money for those guys, and especially if the fast charging infrastructure is not well built out in their area it could be a showstopper.