Wayyyy much better than small-dick-energy monster trucks that are on American roads
Image caption says
High-roof Slate Auto cargo; made w/ AI
Good god, please tell me they’re not saying that this car was designed with AI?!?
I think the image was rendered with AI. I don’t see it on slate’s website, looks like electrek made it?
Bezos-backed Slate Auto…that’s a offput.
Hard to find a car company not backed by a capitalist shitbag.
Well that’s the deciding factor. Not for me. Edit: Someone said bezoz is not the major funder.
Yeah I was looking into getting the truck until I found that out…
and you can buy it!
it’s not for sale, how can i buy it?
egregious degree of clickbait
I so bad want this to work. I hate computers in cars (beyond the ecu for efi and abs, that is all a car needs)
Sucks that its bezos funded but hey. Take what we can.
Battery management requires a lot of computer logic. The simple act of plugging in an EV to a charger involves a complex handshake for negotiating the amount of power to deliver, which the control unit figures out by reading the sensors in each battery cell, and routes the electric power to the appropriate cells. Same thing for discharging the battery to power the vehicle, and recharging the battery from regenerative braking while driving.
No matter how you slice it, an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle, just for the basic powertrain management.
I’m with you on user interfaces, though.
That’s not a privacy issue.
The computers are issues when they include sensors, logging, storage, and uploading your data to others.
I’m not totally sure. Even an ICe car now is insane for all the modules. Sure I can see battery management in an ev being robust but I’m sure it could still be pretty simple. Look at just injectors and cam sensors in an ice vehicle and the engine harness, its insane. Not to mention the entertainment bullshit that needs all its own modules.
Yeah, modern cars are basically engineering marvels. Even when a lot of this stuff was mechanically controlled it really was something amazing to see just how precisely every little moving part did its perfectly timed function, thousands of times per minute across all 4 (or 6 or 8 or more) cylinders, pushing power through the transmission and differential and wheels.
That said, I still think that trying to understand the physical ground truth of the electrochemical energy stored in each of the 5000+ cells by reading sensor data on voltage, current, impedance, temperature, and a log of how many times each cell has been charged or discharged, does require greater electronic complexity and more sophisticated programs to manage, than an ICE control unit does.
It is pretty amazing!
Sure I can see that. Still an ev could be very simple besides the charging computer. No other techs really needed.
Don’t forget about the tire pressure sensors hidden inside the tires that operate wirelessly and have been shown to be able to track the vehicle. Hopefully this van doesn’t have those, but I think it’s a federal law to use them?
Yep thanks to ford (rollover lawsuit). Ford also patented vehicle tracking and cameras inside required to start the vehicle. . Probably one of the worst vehicle companies.
Jokes on them my tire sensor batteries all died heh
Oh, darn. Mine broke and I replaced them with valve stems. I’ll have to rectify that soon, I guess.
Bezos is not the major investor.
And where have you heard this? It’s a private company that doesn’t disclose investors’ holdings.
Them using the name is purely for marketing. Smart people that hate Bezos are going to look up that he’s not the major investor. Dumb people that like Bezos are too stupid to look up anything.
Why does the nose have to be so large?
It’s not appealing and you lose like 25% of cargo space for the vehicle
A few reasons. Crash safety and comfort. It’s hard to make comfortable driver and passenger seats over the wheel well. It’s also hard to make that part reinforced for side impact and behind a crumple zone for head on impact when it’s over the wheel well.
The “hood” area houses an enclosed “frunk” cargo area, the 12V battery, steering and braking gear, and the radiator.
It also allows the vehicle to strike a pose and form factor familiar to its intended market of American pickup truck drivers.
It’s not really that big in person tbh, unless you’re talking about length (which is probably to help crash safety)
I’m curious what those dimensions and range will be.
I’d love to have a little campervan for adventures without paying 50k+ for a gas guzzler
Default range is a little over 200 miles. Adding the weight of the camping stuff is likely to be what affects mileage more than the cargo shell, but I would guess it would still be over 150 miles in most conditions.
The shell actually is likely the bigger impact.
Electric cars are already really heavy, and they get most of their efficiency from aerodynamics.
Yes, but the “default” range is in the truck configuration
Can the next thing they come out with be 4 wheel drive plsssssss. I want one so bad, but don’t really wana drive a rear wheel in snow
They are not considering a full 4WD option for a utility pickup? How is that going together? People on the countryside are not going to use it much. It’ll be a city banger only.
Rear wheel drive is fine in snow in a vehicle with proper weight distribution. It’s not a stupid ICE pickup with all the weight over the non drive wheels.
I too would love a 4x4 option, or at least all-wheel drive.
Though having driven rear-wheel trucks in the winter, the Slate should be less terrible. The location of the battery and motor add weight over the drive tires. I expect it to not slide around as much as a rear-wheel truck with engine in the front.
You all had great opinions, but I live in the mountains and have to deal with lot more snow than the average bear. If I were just driving flat I’d buy it no issue since as most of you pointed out, the weight distribution is going to be way better.
I’m not sure how the drivetrain is built on this thing but I feel like if my diesel pickup would let me to lock the rear diff without switching to 4LO first I could probably get by without 4WD for the most part. Now because of the differential, when one rear wheel slips the other does nothing effecitively making it 1 wheel drive. Not that it changes the core argument though - I’d never buy a truck without 4WD.
it has a basic physical open differential paired with a brake-actuated virtual limited-slip system.
You only need 4WD on ICE pickups because they put the drive wheels under the lightest end of the truck when it’s unloaded, which is most of time, unless you buy a rare FWD pickup like the Maverick.
You just need to buy a truck with a “Limited-Slip Differential”(LSD) then.
That’s 1970s tech…most pickups are still in 1950s tech.
Electric mini-camper truck, neat. Might as well go ahead and put what few solar panels can be fit upon the roof for a little more power inside for accessories
I really want one of these myself but worried that it may contain some networking module that sends data back home about every little metric that the other advanced cars have today (not interested in being tracked). Gonna hold out until I get confirmation of that.
This is partially where I’m at on it, it sounds cool in theory, no head unit, speaker is just Bluetooth, but then tell me A. Why does Bezos love it so much, B. How does it connect to the phone app that their website mentions, and C. What data does that app collect. I wish the YouTubers who were doing interviews with Slate and Telo would’ve asked those questions, especially considering how many articles are out there now about the other car companies tracking you. If they weren’t doing any, or at least significantly less, you’d think they’d want to publicize it more heavily.
My other issue is I live in a very icy place 7 months out of the year, give me FWD or AWD options
Edit: apparently the app works by physically plugging into the car, not cellular, so not much I can argue about there.
If by “icy place” you mean Canada, don’t worry. We won’t be able to buy one any time soon, and you can’t import them under the current rules.
Besides, I’ll be fucked if I buy American again in my lifetime.
From what I’ve read it looks to be the best modern option in that regard. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/slate-says-its-electric-pickup-will-never-track-you/
The perfect vehicle to buy to maximize your profits delivering packages for Amazon.
I really hate how every clickbait headline focuses on Bezos.
He’s an investor. He doesn’t own the company or anything.
Yea as much as I want to not support him, I have to draw a line somewhere. Starting a new carcompany is insanely expensive and that money needs to come from somewhere, if it wasn’t bezos it would be someone like him. It’s easy enough to yell at people buying from evil multinational corporations, but every carcompany today falls under that category, just like every train and bus manufacturer. Not that I’m saying that we should just accept status quo but that’s sadly how the world is today.
This is the well-reasoned response that keeps billionaires rich.
Sorry to break it to you, everything we do keeps the billionaires rich. Right down to the microchips in our open source hardware keeps the billionaires rich, which is why I wrote that we have to draw a line somewhere. Unless of course you’re living completely off-grid and never use any modern and/or mass produced products, but given you’re on the interwebs that isn’t the case and you therefore aids in keeping the billionaires rich.
Your line isn’t my line. Buying new vs buying used has a substantial effect on the billionaire class. Sympathizing that a company needs capital to get off the ground regardless of where that capital comes from is quite the stance. Going further to normalize how awful companies are but we all do it is another.
But hey, what do I know. Let’s keep doing things the same way we always have and maybe things’ll change…
My intention was not to mock the idea. There’s a need for a gig worker electric small cargo vehicle and this fills that niche. Too many people go into gig work factoring in only the cost of fuel and not the vehicle depreciation. With an EV, your primary costs are only electricity and tires. This would be perfect for people doing gig work who actually want to maximize the amount of pay they retain.
The fact that this could potentially have a synergistic effect on the company of a major investor makes it both a good idea and good business.
Bezos Expeditions has a seat on the board my dude. You think he was donating those funds as a gift?
It’s an interesting sidenote that Amazon is currently deploying heavily customized Rivians for (some) new delivery vans.
Bezos owns a good chunk of Rivian.
Pretty interesting. I’d like to know the dimensions and how much it hurts the range.
I’m definitely curious about the range hit. Starting at 200 miles and raising the roof can’t be great.
After seeing tons of ID Buzz cargo vans in use in Europe, though, I think it could still thrive as a fleet truck in cities.
EVs do very well with stop/start driving, opposite of ICE. So whatever effect of aero is likely balanced with lack of highway travel.
A small delivery truck is a huge gap in the NA market.
Load it full of gear and it drops to around 100, I’d bet. That’s fine if you have a fleet of them, and you’re delivering in a city. But, no one is making a usable campervan out one of these.
depends on if the campervan is also your house.
Especially since the bed is 5 feet long.
You could attach a tent to extend the back. The whole point of this design is the CAD files are open for anyone to make third party addons. Slate encourages this.
that pop-up mockup is great.
