A Perspective on Slate, from Someone Who Only Owns V8s

[SlatePossible2028]

Last few days, maybe last couple weeks, I've seen many posts comments on here about "oh it will fail just like (insert X electric truck here)" "oh no one will buy it, oh it will never be that price" etc.

Due to this, I want to give some perspective on why I think Slate will do very well - from the standpoint of someone who never planned on having an electric vehicle, and why I think that matters.

For reference, everything I own is a V8. A Ford V8 to be specific, 2 4.6 2Vs and a 289. F150, Grand Marq and Ford Ranchero. Ive owned other vehicles, but that's what I have at the moment and will for the foreseeable future

And yet. I have a Slate pre-ordered. Why?

Because what Slate is allows me to look past the electric part. And I think that applies to ALOT of customers. I say that coming from experience - i have a coworker and my FIL who have pre-ordered these because I showed it to them.

A Slate truck can serve my range needs (i commute 70-80 miles a day). It can serve my light utility needs. It can serve my "fun vehicle needs". It's affordable. It's modular. It looks good. My F150 can handle my serious hauling needs and my Grand Marq can pick up my kiddo if need be. The Slate can do the rest.

I think the thing that puts many people off of EVs in general is to begin with, so many are dressed up crossover egg shaped turds that cost $50k+ and have no feeling of personality or style. The only EV id ever Eyed prior to the Slate was the mid 2010s model S. Everything else was completely "I dont care". My Coworker had similar thoughts. "This is the only EV I've ever been interested in".

I think the Slate truck has an unsuspecting market out there of first time EV buyers. As long as I can get a decent payment, I will have a Slate in my driveway in 2027. I think the combination of Looks, price, and the factors I mentioned will make this a reality for alot of people.

Just some insight. Here's my design.

 

[Swinefuzz]

Same. I haven't bought a vehicle since 1998. I hate modern cars. Most have the same problems: intentionally designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to repair or even do simple regular maintenance tasks. Also, the prices are outrageous. Add in all the dumb infotainment screens and unwanted features and you've got me completely turned off.

It's not just plain old corporate greed that has the carmaker industry acting this way, it's also the enormous sizes of the big 3 American companies that makes it difficult for them to adapt to the market's needs. It takes 5-7 yrs for an American car company to develop a car before it even makes it to the assembly line. During this long process, the wants and needs and desires of the customer base can change dramatically, leading to these car makers to usually make very "safe" choices that some would call stagnation. Often, new cars debut and are instant duds and the maker has lost untold amounts of money, only reinforcing them to continue to make "safe" choices and stagnate only further.

I heard on a podcast that today's Chinese car makers are able to develop a new car in only 1.5 yrs.

How long does it take for an enormous battleship to flip a U-turn? Several minutes. How long for a speedboat? A few seconds. Apples to oranges, I know, but whatever.

Big carmakers are employing unethical tactics to maintain the huge profits they've become accustomed to. Not just making cars difficult to repair, but lobbying Congress to keep foreign competitors out of this market. They literally have to cheat to win and when cheaters are winning, everybody's losing.

The Slate Truck is the first car I've taken a close, serious look at in over 25 yrs. If I can't get my hands on one, I'm going to keep my Jeep running. The engine is still strong.

Meanwhile I truly believe that the secret to Slate's success won't be just regular folks liking the price and the vehicle's simplicity, but I predict the Slate Truck is going to be huge with companies requiring fleet vehicles. They all need cheap, simple, dependable, small, light-duty trucks. These companies don't need infotainment screens or 4 doors or heated steering wheels. They need easy repairability and maintenance and affordability and body wraps.

 

[SlatePossible2028]

Same. I haven't bought a vehicle since 1998. I hate modern cars. Most have the same problems: intentionally designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to repair or even do simple regular maintenance tasks. Also, the prices are outrageous. Add in all the dumb infotainment screens and unwanted features and you've got me completely turned off.

It's not just plain old corporate greed that has the carmaker industry acting this way, it's also the enormous sizes of the big 3 American companies that makes it difficult for them to adapt to the market's needs. It takes 5-7 yrs for an American car company to develop a car before it even makes it to the assembly line. During this long process, the wants and needs and desires of the customer base can change dramatically, leading to these car makers to usually make very "safe" choices that some would call stagnation. Often, new cars debut and are instant duds and the maker has lost untold amounts of money, only reinforcing them to continue to make "safe" choices and stagnate only further.

I heard on a podcast that today's Chinese car makers are able to develop a new car in only 1.5 yrs.

How long does it take for an enormous battleship to flip a U-turn? Several minutes. How long for a speedboat? A few seconds. Apples to oranges, I know, but whatever.

Big carmakers are employing unethical tactics to maintain the huge profits they've become accustomed to. Not just making cars difficult to repair, but lobbying Congress to keep foreign competitors out of this market. They literally have to cheat to win and when cheaters are winning, everybody's losing.

The Slate Truck is the first car I've taken a close, serious look at in over 25 yrs. If I can't get my hands on one, I'm going to keep my Jeep running. The engine is still strong.

Meanwhile I truly believe that the secret to Slate's success won't be just regular folks liking the price and the vehicle's simplicity, but I predict the Slate Truck is going to be huge with companies requiring fleet vehicles. They all need cheap, simple, dependable, small, light-duty trucks. These companies don't need infotainment screens or 4 doors or heated steering wheels. They need easy repairability and maintenance and affordability and body wraps.

Was with you but you lost me at the defense of Chinese cars and blaming congress. Keeping Chinese cars out was one of the few smart decisions they've made in recent years

 

[Swinefuzz]

Was with you but you lost me at the defense of Chinese cars and blaming congress. Keeping Chinese cars out was one of the few smart decisions they've made in recent years

Keeping Chinese cars out wasn't a thing they did to help you or protect America, dude. They did it to maintain the status quo. And the status quo sucks for regular people like me and you.

I did not wish to engage in globalism politics and/or tribalism. But, nobody forced American manufacturers to abandon America and send the work overseas. They did that due to Greed. Blaming China is F'n stupid. Blame out of control American capitalism.

I was making a point about unethical tactics used by large corporations. These big carmakers are not our friends. They do this stuff to maintain profits, not because "China=bad, 'Murica=good."

And when did I "defend" Chinese cars? I simply made a point that they are doing what American carmakers can't: Swerve. Adapt. Evolve. Grow.

Understand? Or did I lose you further?

Slate is an all-American company that's doing something similar to the Chinese. Yes? Do you see? Huh? Huh?

They're disrupting. And it's to YOUR BENEFIT.

 

[SlatePossible2028]

Keeping Chinese cars out wasn't a thing they did to help you or protect America, dude. They did it to maintain the status quo. And the status quo sucks for regular people like me and you.

I did not wish to engage in globalism politics and/or tribalism. But, nobody forced American manufacturers to abandon America and send the work overseas. They did that due to Greed. Blaming China is F'n stupid. Blame out of control American capitalism.

I was making a point about unethical tactics used by large corporations. These big carmakers are not our friends. They do this stuff to maintain profits, not because "China=bad, 'Murica=good."

And when did I "defend" Chinese cars? I simply made a point that they are doing what American carmakers can't: Swerve. Adapt. Evolve. Grow.

Understand? Or did I lose you further?

Slate is an all-American company that's doing something similar to the Chinese. Yes? Do you see? Huh? Huh?

They're disrupting. And it's to YOUR BENEFIT.

Chinese cars are built to flood markets with literal F tier garbage. They're awful. They're the worst cars in the world. But china knows if they keep them cheap they can flood literally every market.

I get that you think you're big intelligent or something for going, "wait, murica bad, china actually good!" But youre not. They're slop automobiles designed to wreck native ma

 

[Swinefuzz]

Chinese cars are built to flood markets with literal F tier garbage. They're awful. They're the worst cars in the world. But china knows if they keep them cheap they can flood literally every market.

I get that you think you're big intelligent or something for going, "wait, murica bad, china actually good!" But youre not. They're slop automobiles designed to wreck native ma

I get that YOU think that YOU'RE BIG INTELLIGENT OR SOMETHING, but if Chinese autos were as awful as you believe, then it would be in Big American Auto's best interest TO LET THEM IN AND LET AMERICANS SEE HOW AWFUL THEY WERE. It would be GOOD for selling American cars. DUH!

The truth is: China has come a very, very long way in the past 10 yrs. There are a LOT of high quality Chinese EVs in existence now. Very high quality and at very competetive prices. BYD and their closest rivals are making Fords and Teslas look like Edsels. THAT is why Big Auto has stroked and paid Congress to keep them out. Because they cannot compete.

All of America's big auto industry journalists have been to China and seen and test driven and reviewed the products and have come back here to say the same thing: America's carmakers have utterly failed. They've rested on their laurels for far too long and now they simply cannot do anything to catch up with China. It has nothing to do with politics or patriotism or racism. It's just about stupid arrogance rampant in big American companies.

GM had about 60% of the American car market around 1960. Now they have about 12% market share. Because they didn't adapt. That's got nothing to do with China. That's just due to a big corporation losing touch with the customer and maintaining the status quo. Capitalists don't care about patriotism or serving their customers.

You. Are. Red. Pilled. Brainwashed.

Previously, you were saying you wanted a Slate because of price, functionality, modularity. Big Auto won't give you that. They hate you. THEY HATE YOU. They don't want to serve you. They've had the ability to give us cheap, quality cars forever, but they withhold them for PROFIT. Now, here you are complaining about cars from another country that are more than willing to give you what you want, what you need, but you HATE THEM because of what?

I personally wouldn't buy a Chinese EV. They're China's equivalent to Teslas and I don't like Teslas.

 

[SichuanHot]

I'm coming from a similar place as you OP. All my cars have at minimum 6 cylinders because inline 6 is the best engine configuration

Really hoping Slate happens and they deliver on their claims.

 

[Benjamin Nead]

Chinese cars are built to flood markets with literal F tier garbage. They're awful. They're the worst cars in the world. But china knows if they keep them cheap they can flood literally every market.

I get that you think you're big intelligent or something for going, "wait, murica bad, china actually good!" But youre not. They're slop automobiles designed to wreck native ma

This sounds like something that would have been said about Chinese EVs a decade ago. No offense, pal, but you really haven't kept up, have you? Even Tesla isn't selling well in China now, where they were once very big. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Elon's bizarre politics. It's because any number of domestic manufacturers - BYD, Xpeng and a host of others - are now able to offer cars with the same level of performance, quality and even safety for a competitive price.

The Chinese also build extremely good entry level EVs in the same class as, say, a Chevy Bolt EUV. incidentally, did you know that the Bolt EUV is actually a joint venture collaboration engineering project between GM and China's SAIC? They are built and sold in China as the Buick Velite . . .

Biden's tariffs on Chinese EVs (actually a continuation of Trump 1.0 tariffs) kept the Chinese EVs out, but there was a concerted effort to get Detroit to really invest in EV manufacturing for the day when (not if) the Chinese d show up . . . because their shit is actually very good now and everybody (except you, apparently) knows that.

Trump 2.0 is back to his old "green new scam" methodology. He wants Detroit to abandon their EV programs and offing nothing but fossil fuel cars, Because Trump is bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. If we keep down the Trump 2.0 path, Detroit will surely crater when (not if) the Chinese show up with their EVs, because we'll have NOTHING available domestically to stop them.

Slate is very American in terms of supply chain, midwest manufacturing, etc. But the vehicle itself is VERY much in the no-frills-but-engineered-smartly category of what the Chinese would be importing here in the way of a small pickup, if they could.

 

[Dorbiman]

Yeah. It feels like we're on the precipice of what happened in the 80s with the Japanese cars. They imported cars that made massive waves for being cheap and reliable. If the Chinese brands, specifically BYD can get their foot in the door, I imagine we'll see the same thing.

 

[Benjamin Nead]

Yeah. It feels like we're on the precipice of what happened in the 80s with the Japanese cars. They imported cars that made massive waves for being cheap and reliable. If the Chinese brands, specifically BYD can get their foot in the door, I imagine we'll see the same thing.

Exactly. I was a teenage high school auto shop kid with a learner's permit in the early 1970s. American cars were terrible back then. The Japanese cleaned our clock with affordable vehicles that were well designed, weren't proportioned like an ocean liner, got good gas mileage because they were small, didn't instantly turn into an accordion when crashed into a wall at 5mph and (in Pennsylvania, where they poured salt on the roads every winter,) didn't rust away after one year of ownership. Yet there were still detractors who had their heads stuck in the sand. This is when, as Swinefuzz mentioned, GM went from 50% to 12% market share.

 

[Swinefuzz]

Exactly. I was a teenage high school auto shop kid with a learner's permit in the early 1970s. American cars were terrible back then. The Japanese cleaned our clock with affordable vehicles that were well designed, weren't proportioned like an ocean liner, got good gas mileage because they were small, didn't instantly turn into an accordion when crashed into a wall at 5mph and (in Pennsylvania, where they poured salt on the roads every winter,) didn't rust away after one year of ownership. Yet there were still detractors who had their heads stuck in the sand. This is when, as Swinefuzz mentioned, GM went from 50% to 12% market share.

Yeah, it's crazy how far cars have come since when I was a kid, safety-wise. Crash testing was a thing in the American automotive industry since the 30s, believe it or not, but they weren't PUBLISHED until the 70s (according to Google AI). I was a little kid in the 70s and remember all the talk on TV about crash test ratings being made public and how different makes and models compared and how it was affecting the public's buying decisions. And those amazing (and scary (and funny)) videos of crash test dummies suffering horrific slo-mo injuries before our very eyes, sometimes saved by these strange new inventions called "air bags". It really made people think about car safety. Baby car seats and seat belts became mandatory. I'm just old enough to remember when we didn't wear seat belts. In fact, my parents REMOVED THEM from our '73 Blazer because they were "annoying" only to put them back in when it became socially taboo (illegal) not to have them.

Also, pre-80s cars were built of 1/2" thick sheet metal (I exaggerate, but only slightly) and you could walk all over them, even jump on them, and have 3 or 4 people lay on the hood during a drive-in movie. They were truly built like tanks, but ironically were terrible in crash testing. The secret to car safety wasn't thick pody panels, but skeletal frame structure.

Size didn't matter, but what you did with it.

And I remember all the talk about rice burners destroying the American way of life. People who bought Japanese cars were traitors. I heard the rhetoric my whole childhood. The 2 Toyotas I had in my 20s were damn great automobiles, just indestructable. And my attitude was always, "if American carmakers would just make better cars, I'd buy them."

My next car was American. A 1998 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 4.0L and it's been great. I've had little interest in the later generations of Wranglers because I keep hearing bad things about their engines and transmissions and their interiors are fugly as can be. Oh, and Stellantis, Stellantis, Stellantis.

I hope Slate turns out to be the real deal.

 

[Luxrage]

Also, pre-80s cars were built of 1/2" thick sheet metal (I exaggerate, but only slightly) and you could walk all over them, even jump on them, and have 3 or 4 people lay on the hood during a drive-in movie. They were truly built like tanks, but ironically were terrible in crash testing. The secret to car safety wasn't thick pody panels, but skeletal frame structure.

LOL, back in 2019-or-so, I sold my '87 LTD to a teenager and his mechanic grandfather. Stood on the hood to show him how thick it was. Ford had advertised in the brochure it was made rolling five layers of steel together.

It is amazing the leaps and bounds even in the last 30 years car safety has come. I pulled parts from an 84 LTD that had been in a driver's side front end crash and the floor pan and steering column were pushed in and upwards into what would have been the driver's shins and groin. In the same vein I pull parts from Honda Fits that have been totaled in nasty front end crashes, and despite the stubby little van-style hoods you can still open the doors just fine.

I can't wait to see the first crash test footage of Slates. I was having a debate with one of the members of the car club I'm in about them thinking the 'composite body panels' being a debris hazard in a crash. I don't remember Fiero and Saturn owners getting sliced Final Destination style from jagged plastic bits flying around. 90s Pontiacs would have had a 100% kill-rate if so LOL.

 

[metroshot]

Should be very interesting if the Slate survives the onslaught of Chinese made EVs.

I just hope that going with a new brand won't leave me high and dry like my 2 co-workers who reserved, spent a lot of money and time to own the Ocean Fisher One (first edition) and now have unsupported EVs that are garage queens from a bankrupt Australian EV maker: