Recent content by mattlach

Supposedly the plant is supposed to employ some 2,000 people, so it can't be that small. That said, if you lay out your manufacturing lines right, you don't have to have a huge plant in order to put out serious volume. One of the benefits Slate has is that every vehicle leaves the production...

Did we really need a slop thread?

This right here - if they are willing to commit to it in a legally binding document - instantly makes the Slate truck the best EV on the market, bar none.

I found this picture of the door. I wonder if that panel with four screws comes out, and it can be cut out to fit a set of 6.5" round or 6x9" speakers there. Of course, it depends on what is going on in the door cavity, and what might be behind there. One could even get a component speaker...

I agree. For me the Slate was only ever going to be an inexpensive secondary vehicle for around town errands and going to Home Depot. It would replace my aging late 90's Volvo wagon for that job, as that thing is starting to get difficult to find parts for, and all the plastic is starting...

Would you need to build some sort of airtight box behind them to make them sound right though?

Yeah, you are probably right. I just hope we are all still enthused once they are done with that exercise. One of the main reason so many people love the concept of the Slate is because of their "have it your way" approach, with a very affordable base, but I worry that there is going to be...

I saw them a couple of days ago, but I don't remember seeing them there before, so I am guessing that they only appeared recently.

Interesting. So it looks like there may be some duplication involved there with both sets of speakers having the underlying bluetooth logic to operate independently, but if you have both installed the side speakers ignore theirs and feed off of the center. I presume the additional accessory...

Interesting. So they are going to have to update the configurator, because right now you can select the side speakers without the center speaker. I still wish they offered an analogue input option into the center speaker in order to avoid relying on bluetooth.

All standard charger formats have the ability to communicate some basic data about the battery to the charger. Fort instance, on the rare occasion when we plug in our VW ID.4 or Audi A6 to public charging stations like the Electrify America network we use, the chargers screen will always...

I'll fully admit that while I am an engineer, I am not that kind of engineer. Aerodynamics are not my specialty by any stretch of the imagination, so I am more like a well read layman than an expert on this topic. That said, at speed, I suspect a tonneau cover might help. Nowhere near as much...

To be fair, a 0.39 Cd is atrocious. I mean, it is a truck, so that is kind of expected, but other vehicles I have experience with that do very well, like my Audi A6 E-Tron both has a 0.21 Cd and a smaller frontal swept area. Because of this it gets about the same range on the highway as it...

I generally prefer devices that allow me to manually grab a firmware binary blob, drop it on a USB stick, and flash it to the device, without some sort of always connected spyware. This is how I deal with my smart TV's. They are never connected to any network. On the rare occasion I decide to...

That wouldn't be a bad alternative, to use a cheap tablet that is pretty much dedicated to the car, and never connected to the internet.