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Yep. Seen this schtick a hundred times.
Now that the seal is broken on price hikes, it'll climb more and more. About the time it reaches double, the project will be canceled. Investors will be screwed, and some slimeball will run off with the cash just like he always planned to.
Just like all the other ones.
I'm not very familiar with this stuff, but it sounds terrible. When has this happened in the past?
Well there you are it really is as crap as they promised.
That build quality would embarrass an Indian auto worker.
Slightly more than $24,950, so likely less than $30,000
Yeah, leaving the destination charge unknown for this announcement leaves a lot of uncertainty.
I don't know where they're getting the "slightly more" from, but no.
The range is now 205 miles, from a 63-kWh battery.
That's... Not that great. For comparison, the 2022 Chevy Bolt has a similar sized battery (65kWh) but about 260 miles of range. The weight's a little less than the slate at 3,600 lbs though it still wouldn't be enough to gap the difference in performance. There's either some heavy drag introduced by the truck or some drive system inefficiencies.
I would say probably the boxy front and truck bed. They have to do the range tests on the base model so I wonder if it would improve the range with the SUV mod
Pickups have better aero without a bed cap.
I remember watching that Mythbusters episode and being convinced. But it still doesn't fit neatly into my intuition of the thing.
Aerodynamics. The Bolt is a slick little running shoe. The Slate is a slab.
no screens!? I'm sold. would be perfect for me to have a little around town truck like this. but it will be $80,000 by the time I can actually buy one. and I'm sure it tracks everything you do and everywhere you go.
Ford's $30,000 EV truck is supposed to be here fairly soon as well, although it looks like that will only be available as a crew cab, sadly.
Unlike Slate, Ford has access to their vast trove of sales information over the past 8 decades from their truck division. I am pretty sure they figured out that a truck at a 30k price point needs to be a crew cab or larger to sell in the volume they need to make it work for them financially.
Unlike Slate, Ford is a business that needs to be profitable in what they do. They can't start-up style burn through a bunch of investor money to see if a market exists for bare-bones single cab trucks.
As a result I think both may well have a place in the market, and I am excited to see affordability overall coming back into the picture.
Ford screwed up royally, the Lighting was way to overpriced, over complicated, and soiled the market. Ford’s dealers are also heavily to blame, asking well above msrp prices due to initial interest.
But it will be a real vehicle made by a real company with things like a ‘radio’
I put a deposit down on one when they were first announced. But that was when its price was competitive with cheap used EVs. Then accepting the stripped down bare bones truck made sense. This is too close to new EV pricing. Bolt, Leaf, Ford EV are all within range of this, especially with an option or two to make it livable. Plus at $25k you’re now competing with very clean used examples of the Hyundai triplets and mustang Mach e.
Best of luck, Slate, but to me the truck doesn’t justify its price.
But it will be a real vehicle made by a real company with things like a ‘radio’
That's a bad thing, because "radio" these days implies "spying and enshittification."
Slate is the only EV on the entire market that isn't fucked with that deal-breaker.
None of your comparators are a truck though, if just looking for an EV I agree with you.
A truck is not needed by a lot of people, but when you need one, you need one.
Im planning on waiting 5 years to see if it will become a thing and be well supported. Ive been burned by experimental tech before. But I hope to see more of these kind of projects pop up in the future.
