So… this vehicle isn’t for you.
Unlike a Tesla Cybertruck, where there are no bolts involved. You just need this:
I never said it was. Read back up, someone was kind enough to offer me their old transistor radio when I pointed out a thumb drive full of MP3s was useless without a radio to play them.
Yes, I was assuming that one would install an after-market stereo, which has CarPlay and a USB reader.
ETA: Like this:
You can get an electric ‘beetle’ in China for about the same price.
I wonder if the Slate even has a double din cut out with wiring to attach such an aftermarket item. According to the FAQ from the manufacturer, I’m doubtful.
The Slate uses the tech you already know and love, with easy mounting and charging included for your phone. An accessory bracket fits a large tablet if you want a big screen in your Slate. There’s also a smartly designed holder for a portable Bluetooth speaker. Or, if you want to go all out, you can turn the dash into a sound bar with our accessory speakers. Built-in infotainment systems raise a car’s price, and they become outdated quickly and have high failure rates.
And…
With a Slate, you use your phone to wirelessly connect to your own portable speakers (like Bluetooth speakers) or accessory audio. If it works with your phone, it works in a Slate. There’s also an accessory steering wheel controller that lets you control the connected devices.
Also, according to the FAQ, you don’t “need” CarPlay or Android Auto.
Man, if Spotify hadn’t killed the Car Thing, it would have a real use case here. For those unfamiliar, it was a little LED display and touch controls with Bluetooth connectivity between your phone and a radio or just speakers. Was kind of pointless in an era with most cards connecting to your phone natively but here it could have actually been useful.
With no engine up front, it’s got trunk space there (~7 cubic feet).
The Smart ForTwo was $12k-$14k in 2007. The Mini Cooper was $20k+.
Also, older models powered the windshield washer (not the wipers, the washer spray) with the air pressure from the spare tire in the front trunk so they wouldn’t have to install a pump. And the puny air-cooled engine couldn’t produce enough heat to warm the cabin in northern climates, so they had gas heaters (which I’m pretty sure were optional extras).
But VW Beetles were nevertheless very popular because, as I said earlier, they had great build quality and were very reliable, but at the same time they were dirt-cheap compared to most American cars. The Beeetle was also the beneficiary of inspired advertising campaigns created by the famed Doyle Dane Bernbach agency.
There’s no indication yet that Slate is up to meeting these considerable challenges – actually delivering high quality at low cost, and gaining broad appeal.
This seems ideal for fleet sales to localized businesses or to individual contractors as a work truck. It seems like most people in this thread are judging it for consideration as a daily driver. Which is something hardly anybody would have done prior to Detroit’s exploitation of the “light truck loophole” 30 years ago.
That’s a good point. A contractor would only care about basic utility and low cost, and most regular pickups are definitely not cheap. The top-selling Ford F-150 starts at about twice the price of the basic Slate, and the highest end model is a staggering four times the price!
Right, the Mini Cooper was another high priced small car. According to Edmunds, there were 10 car models in 2007 at or under $14k MSRP, 4 models under $12k, with 1 model under $10k.
Let’s talk the under $10k car, the Chevy Aveo. That’s a 4 door sedan that seats 5. The Toyota Yaris also seats 5, and started at $12k. All these models are larger cars with more room, more storage and bigger engines than the Smart ForTwo, for the same price or less.
If you want to no-frills super-econobox me, I want a noticeably lower price.
You misspelled frunk space, LOL.
And a 2007 Chevrolet Aveo had three different trim lines of $12,010 or less. A 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback baseline was $10,415.
The success of the VW beetle in the 1950s & early 1960s makes sense in light of the overall economic tenor of the times. At least in the US there was a lot of booming in income, but wealth = assets was still small. And middle-aged people were thoroughly conditioned to prefer frugality. The situation in other Western countries was much more dire as they tried to rebuild from the death and destruction and economic dislocation of WWII.
The Beetle was a mass market success. The Slate might well be a niche market success. But until we somehow bring back Depression-era attitudes in the public at large, it’s gonna remain a niche product.
In the 1950s, there was no great reservoir of fully functional 5 to 20 year old used cars for the masses to buy cheaply. Here in the mid-late 2020s there is. One hell of a lot of people get a new car every 1 or 3 years and willingly jettison a car that still has 20 years of life left in it. Meaning every single new car buyer/owner like that leaves a “wake” of anywhere between 6 and 25 older cars for other folks to buy, drive awhile, and resell down the ladder.
Right now new EVs of whatever type (plain sedan, SUV, crossover, performance sedan, truck) do not have that long tail of used vehicles to compete with. So if you gotta have EV, it damn near needs to be new, or at least new-ish. Which in one sense helps sell new EVs. But only to the people who can swing the price of new EVs.
For everyone else, they’re priced out of the EV market until the used market gets filled with 10-15 year old well-worn EVs that still drive OK. And eventually 20 year old beater EVs that drive real cheap.
One thing I would be interested to know is the conversion time from base pickup to SUV configuration with no rear seats (which is how I would want the SUV to be configured) and back. Like, whether it would ever be worth it to switch back and forth. I expect not, but it might be a useful feature.
Video I watched had a crew from Slate do it in under an hour. Unfortunately it didn’t show the actual install, just talked about it. From what they said, most of the time was spent installing the roll bar, which bolts into the bed. Installing the roof is only takes a few minutes, and latches to the roll cage with quick release handles.
The rear window of the pickup moves to the back and becomes the rear window of the SUV. (I think, they didn’t go into depth.)
If the roll cage can be left in place with the rear window and the piece below it in pickup configuration, then it probably will be reasonably easy to move between pickup and SUV shapes. The SUV can be used with the roof (and side windows) off, so it is a convertible.
There might be better videos out there showing the conversion, this is just the one I happened to watch.
There are still people who get a new car every three years or so? I suppose if you’re still into leasing cars, you might do that but aside from that, no one I know does that.
Two of us, at least! But be real - no true Rho Dislander would consider Woonsocket to Westerly as a day trip - it’s just too fa…