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Is that the same Ford that was going to have a sub-$40k BEV F150 (a.k.a. Lightning)? How did that work out?

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I feel like the SUV kit is little more than a parlor trick. It makes for a cool demo that gets press coverage, but Slate's biggest selling point it offers something that's been abandoned in the US - a small pickup. As soon as you give up the pickup...

My guess (hopefully I'm wrong) is that when you placed your reservation will have little to do with where you end up in the production queue. I think there will be a pre-order period (probably about a month long) where orders are open to all reservation holders. After that they'll open orders to...

People setting their Slate expectations way too high. My fear is that people are utterly unprepared for the corners that Slate is going to have to cut to put out the product they've promised at sub $30k. Though maybe I can help fund my own purchase by selling "I should have bought a Maverick"...

An often surprising thing about EVs is that all the electronics typically run off that crappy old 12V lead acid battery. If that gets low, you're dead in the water even with tens of kWh sitting under the floor. I keep a 12V Li jumper pack in my EV6 frunk in case that happens. The 12V charges...

Battery pack costs for MNC are running around $120/kWh. There's a 31.6 kWh difference between the two battery packs, so safe to assume about $3700 minimum price difference between the two configurations. Slate is going to have to factor in the overhead of managing the two different production...

Who it's for and who should actually buy the initial production are two different things. I think people need to accept that the 2027 Slate is very much as you describe it -- a "25k plus toy". There's a very real chance that early adopters will be left holding the bag on a vehicle that doesn't...

Cell "boosters" come in two flavors. "Passive" boosters are snake oil and generally do nothing. "Active" boosters in the $150 price range act as relays between an external antenna and an internal antenna. They aren't meant for automotive use since the two antennas need to be about 40 feet apart...

That's at threshold (the point where any additional braking will cause the tires to lose traction). That doesn't mean you can't slow down significantly by braking just the rear (as most bicycle riders know from first-hand experience). My RWD EV6 only has rear regen. It's perfectly capable of...

The pictogram on the website shows a 14-50P which is typical for a portable L2 EVSE.

Assuming the link is about 48" long and sitting at about 10 degrees (a guess from the photo), then 4 inches of compression will yield about a half inch of lateral body movement at the rear. Call me crazy, but my expectations for ride quality and handling for the Blank Slate are pretty low (and...

Why would it matter?

For any kind of long-distance travel, A Better Route Planner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com/) is a game-changer. Doubly so if you're new to EVs.

Maybe. Though I have a hunch that when the pre-installed options prices are announced, it will be a very small percentage of buyers going that route. I would not be surprised to see installation surcharges at 10 - 20% of the option list price. That's just my SWAG - I have nothing to back it up.

Has that ever been explicitly stated? They've said you can have those things installed pre-delivery, but I thought it was still unknown whether the installation would be done by the factory or by their distribution/service partners.

According to Munro, Ford’s Lightning battery pack contains two types of modules: a smaller 11.95 kWh unit (5P8S) and a larger 16.44 kWh unit (5P11S). Obviously neither of those is consistent with the calculated per-module capacity for Slate so there's no reason to assume that they're reusing the...

They need to compete in a market -- it doesn't necessarily have to be the one you want them in. I've had a single-digit employee ID number at a VC funded startup, so I know first-hand what it's like trying to get to sustainability before the VC money dries up. You don't try to match the 800lb...

Those other manufacturers have been around for 50+ years and have a diverse product portfolio, a mature supply chain, brand recognition, actual revenue, etc. No one has said that Slate won't eventually offer all kinds of drivetrain options. Slate themselves has clearly said they plan to offer...

Maybe mandatory for you, not mandatory for Slate. They have 150k reservations and most of those are from people who were fully aware that the initial offering is RWD only.

I was. And growing up in Michigan with family in the auto industry, I was probably more keenly aware of it than many. The big difference between Saturn and Slate is that Saturn was never really about the cars. GM divisions at the time were still firmly entrenched in manufacturing "the Detroit...