I’ll be honest with you: I’m exhausted. I got on a plane early this morning, ended up in LA, and then almost immediately went to the Slate launch event. So maybe keep that in mind as I relay my somewhat stream-of-consciousness thoughts and reactions about this truck and what it is and what it means and how it fits into the greater automotive world. Remember, this company spent lots of (presumably) Jeff Bezos’ money (I heard to afford the crash testing he had to hock his saxophone) to put on a big show, and the whole point of that show was to convince me and several hundred of my close auto journalist and social-media influencer friends that what Slate is doing is something remarkable. And, dammit, I think they may have actually convinced me.
Normally, I do so much eye-rolling at these product launches I have to fill eyedroppers full of WD-40. But that’s because most product launches are about crossovers or SUVs or trucks that are described with words like “dynamic” and “premium” and “tech” and are comfortable, expensive family-haulers that somehow have more horsepower than a glue factory and can go from a Target parking spot to 60 in under five seconds. They’re cars with massive acres of touchscreens, through which you have to do absolutely everything. Even opening the glove box or adjusting the airflow.
They’re expensive and sophisticated machines and I am absolutely sick of them, all of them, all of their pompous modernity and refinement and seriousness and complexity. They’re exhausting.
But the Slate isn’t like that. And, even better, that seems to be the whole point of these vehicles, right from the get-go. The event started with the CEO of Slate (which, we were assured, was never an anagram of Tesla), Chris Barman, reminding everyone how much the average car payment is in America ($742/month), and then she noted that based on income, that average really should be more like $400. But cars are expensive right now. And no one seems to care; they just keep adding more tech and more features and the prices keep going up and up, but is the experience of having a car really getting better?
Slate doesn’t seem to think so, and they seem to have created a car – or, I guess, truck – that honestly does seem to be the opposite of what everyone else is doing. They genuinely appear to have made something deliberately simple and stripped down, everything unnecessary removed, but also with plenty of provisions to add features in a modular way, at your leisure, and that includes adding body components to transfer the single-cab pickup into an open jeep-like car or two variants of SUVs, called, in a very Volkswagen Type 3 way, the Squareback and Fastback.
We’ve gone into the details about the Slate in other posts, so I won’t re-hash all that, but I will give you some of my visceral gut impressions I had while encountering these (prototype still, not even quite pre-production) trucks in person:
The Size
The size is just perfect, I think. It feels roughly old Ford Ranger-sized. These could make fantastic replacements for all the ancient Toyota and Nissan small pickups that are still being used as gardener’s trucks in the LA neighborhoods like the Hollywood Hills or Silverlake, where a big F-150 is just too cumbersome to wind those roads.
The Exposed Fasteners
Hell yes. I’ve been craving a modern car not ashamed of the fact that it’s held together with actual fasteners instead of magic and adhesives and silly little modesty plugs. Nearly every panel had visible, accessible fasteners, which should mean that repair and replacement of parts will be vastly easier than on most cars. Which means repairing accident damage should be cheaper, too, which is extremely important.
Those Crank Windows
I suppose if the Slate has a symbol, it’s this. Just having a manual window in a car now is like an act of defiance, and I’m here for it. This crank spits in the face of the very concept of “premium,” which has been destroying the soul of the automobile for decades. Not everything needs to be powered. It’s not hard to roll down a window; in fact, I think it’s good for one’s character, and it works if the car is on or off, has no wiring or motors, and if someone gets a finger chopped off in one, it was intentional.
The Absence Of A Touchscreen
Outside of a rash in my groin, I can’t remember the last time I was so excited by the absence of something. There’s no big center-stack infotainment screen here, just a mount for your phone with USB power, because your phone has all the crap you want on a center-stack screen already: your music, your maps, your messages, your whatever.
All of the time and engineering that goes into carmaker-designed operating systems for these touchscreens must represent one of the greatest ratios of effort to not-give-a-shittery in the history of mankind. I aggressively and deliriously do not care about any carmaker’s UX for these screens, because they all sort of suck and there’s almost nothing that they do that I wouldn’t just rather do on my phone.
And, if there’s no screen, then there’s no way to put HVAC controls or glove box releases or other bullshit in some menu on the screen. And that’s a good thing.
The backup camera shows its feed on the small instrument cluster LCD screen, and that’s just fine.
Both the center and passenger side dash panels open up for storage or to house speakers. It’s great.
The Taillights And Other Lighting
They’re pretty good! The side markers seem to be pleasingly from some catalog, and I kind of wish the taillights were just some parts-bin something, but as they are, they’re not bad, being roughly shaped like old Ford Econoline/Bronco taillights. Some of them appeared to have a little fresnel lens inside them, like a miniature lighthouse:
Up front, the round lights give a nice, friendly look to the car’s face, though I think they could have gone even more basic and used sealed beams, but oh well.
Also cool is the fact that you can change the whole look of the indicator lights by just swapping that gridded cover with one with other designs. Just four screws! That center grille panel can be changed out as well, along with a bunch of other parts:
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The Door Handles
These things are dead ringers for old AMC handles, as used on the Pacer, Hornet, Gremlin, and so on.
What About People Who Live In Apartments?
This is going to be one of the cheapest cars on the market –with the EV incentives– certainly the cheapest electric car. This means this should be popular among people without so much money to throw around, which often means people who don’t yet own their own homes. Many of these people may live in apartments. Where are they supposed to charge these? Home charging is a huge benefit for EVs, and without it, the EV use case gets more tenuous. This needs some sort of solution.
Can This Become A Classless Vehicle?
Let me start by saying “classless” is good here. You know how certain iconic people’s cars managed to take on a certain kind of classless appeal, where they could be owned by a broke student or a bigshot celebrity? Think Paul Newman and his VW Beetle or Peter Sellers and his Mini. Well, I think the Slate has a chance to become something like that, if they play their cards right.
Is a Rivian cooler than a Slate? An F-150 Lightning? A Cybertruck? I don’t really think so. I have a feeling these minimalist machines may have their own humble cachet.
The Cargo Area And Usefulness
In pickup mode, these have a five-foot bed, enough for big sheets of plywood:
Even with the rear seat in place, there’s still a good amount of cargo area:
Plus, it has what seems to be a pretty usable frunk, which is great, because you often want some kind of secure, enclosed storage.
Okay, I Gotta Get Some Sleep
There will be much more to say about the Slate, I’m sure. It may not be as cheap as I’d like, and I’m not totally convinced a battery-electric vehicle only was the way to go here, but I’m definitely excited by the underlying ideas of this truck, and I think the industry has needed something like this for a long, long time.
Yah, I think/want/wish that it were even cheaper too, say about $22,500. MSRP, so perhaps just $15K after the federal tax credit (which let’s be honest: probably won’t exist by 2027; and those buyers without money to throw around won’t quality for the fed credit anyway, so they’ll be lucky to pay MSRP, whatever it is at the time). But that seems unlikely.
But yes Jason, I’m excited about it too, despite all the hype. 🙂 I put a deposit down and if I’m still alive a couple years from now, I can decide whether to buy one then, if and when that’s a choice to be made.
PS: you look a little bit greyer than I recall, but maybe it’s the jetlag or (camera) exposure. 😉
Hmm….
Cheap, very basic, EV, screw on body panels, highly moddable.
OTOH
2.6 miles/kWh. Probably in part from being a brick.
Toecutter! Where art thou?
Your move Toyota or other big manufacturer. It can be done, a basic truck that can get things done without setting you back 50K and it is legal in the states meeting all the safety regulations. I think if Toyota were to come out with a hybrid version or heck a gas version of something like this, I would be smacking my credit card on the desk like the kids do.
With that said, this may work for me. My commute to work is super short and this can be a great Home Depot runner. I would never consider an electric car but this may actually have me make the jump.
If it was a hybrid I’d join you. Have said it here that if the Big US-ish OEMs don’t disrupt themselves then someone else would do it for them. I didn’t think a Chinese manufacturer would work out, for every reason except actual product. My wild ass guess was Tata, but this’ll do.
I would think you’d need wholesale reengineering to turn an EV into an ICE-capable vehcile rather than the reverse, though.
Well, the Hilux Champ IS Toyota’s sub-$20K simple work truck, and it’s for sale just a couple hours from me in LA (in Mexico) but they can’t/won’t sell it here for a variety of reasons. Some say that it’s ugly, but I think it’s adorable, and would spec mine in blue or green, with the diesel engine, manual transmission, and short bed, and still probably come in under the $20K mark.
Toyota is supposedly bring us its new Stout small pickup, which is probably going to have their hybrid tech, and at a low enough price so that it won’t compete with the Tacoma, which has upmarketed itself to the point where it’s too big, fat, (truly) ugly, and expensive (all JMHO, so please don’t cow). But I don’t know exactly when that’s gonna happen, or maybe they won’t bring it here for some unfathomable reason.
The Stout is a lot less ‘third world looking’ than the Hilux Champ, but it’ll surely cost $10K more in base form. Which will still be less than the Tacoma, probably by about $10K.
A small Toyota hybrid truck would be neat, but not as lovable as one with a diesel and stick. 🙂
make it 20% cheaper still, put on a crossover bodystyle and export it to every country in the world, see how it becomes the new mini/beetle/fiat500/suzukialto equivalent
Finally. Love it or hate it (I am definitely in the former category with a box of roses and a bouquet of chocolates) it’s about time a company realized that there is a big demand for basic, functional, work vehicles and the fact that they are going out of their way to make it DIY reparable/upgradable is a huge bonus. Ford had a chance with the Lightning to offer a bare bones work truck to start but completely blew it which is weird considering that’s exactly how they built their truck empire to begin with.
And they should come up with an off road conversion and call it the Bryce Truck. Named after the canyon and definitely not an anagram of Cyber Truck.
I have to say, one of the only things i don’t love about this site is the punny headlines, but this one is good. This is The Good Headline. I love it. It’s catchy and funny, but also 40 times funnier when you know both the tone of the site and especially the deepest thoughts and predilections of its author. There’s a lot of subtext immediately read there. Good job. I’m going to go read the article now.
I have a 3 week old Audi Q6 and I can tell you that I have great appreciation for Slate’s simply executed user interface.
I would venture to say Slate and Audi have similar onboard computers running the show….the difference is that the Slate understands driving should be front and center not a distracting Audi Wurlitzer jukebox of useless information.
Audi choaked the chicken on the Q6 dash visuals. It’s nearly impossible to find the time and temperature….but yeah…tell me with a thousand little icons that you have a computer and LOTS of data to share…of which nearly NONE is useful to the drive and ALL of it is distracting. Other than that…the Q6 drives like silk.
I am rooting for Slate…and hope the concept works.
I was about to throw my $50 at it, then I reconsidered. I love the bulldog looks and the philosophy behind the design. I’m also happy for everyone enamored with it, I get it. It’s a great second vehicle. Very logical, too logical, Mr. Spock? Right now I’m driving a very logical CUV with a lot of bells and whistles that my wife absolutely adores. It’s a keeper for her and it does its job very smartly. When I drive it I’m so bored I want to aim it at a tree just to spark a little emotion. The Slate will do its job well and I wish all its future owners happiness. I see no spark of joy and it’s not calling my name. That’s on me and I’m not trying to wet on anyones charcoal. I see people talking about the accessories they’re going to buy. Sorry, salad and veggies don’t come with the entree. If the tax incentives don’t hold up, I’m afraid it’s a wash. They probably will hold up because Jeff and his stepbrother Elon have contributed their thirty pieces of silver to the cause. You’re known by the company you keep.
I think loaded and barebones vehicles both have their time & place (and customer), but in cases like yours and MANY others, it sounds like the Slate would make for an outstanding second vehicle.
Gimme.
My favorite bit is hearing adulation coming from the same people who would complain about Android/CarPlay not being wireless or having to flip their day/night mirror with a lever. I like it a lot.
Spec mine with the Bang & Olufsen 10 speakers and subwoofer, heated and cooled seats, rear wiper, lift kit, wait I’m back to a $50k vehicle. <s>
One thing I wish they included was a single din or double din opening and wiring, for those looking to add their own infotainment.
I do like concept of keeping it as simple as possible, easy to upgrade. Reminds me a lot of the original charm of Jeeps, back when they were still affordable, and you could build it up to suit your tastes.
It looks like there’s a spot for something between the speakers in that opening, I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts selling ok if some Atoto type companies start coming out with some big screen android stereos that would fit in there that have carplay and android auto. As customizable as this is I can see some audiophiles going crazy on it.
I live comfortably enough, and I’m astonished by today’s average car payments. My highest never exceeded $350 on a single car, if that. When your car payment is near half of your mortgage payment, something might be wrong. How do these “average” people do it?
I don’t think you have seen the average mortgage payment recently.
A $360K home with 10% down @ 6% for 30 years is $2,500 per month.
I saw the byline and, based on what I saw on Instagram, I was expecting a lot more about the taillights. Also:
I have no idea what the official name for those things is, but this is perfect.
I just noticed the four (count ’em – Four!) cupholders in the tailgate.
Give mine a dark green wrap w/ the square back, beefed up bumpers, no back seat, and a mount for my El-cheapo Bluetooth speaker.
I’ll spray paint the steel wheels white, put in some Hibiscus-print seat covers, a small portable cooler between the seats, and a big dog bed in back.