I'm also excited as this is the first car I can eat my work lunch in and have the AC on without idling the engine. I hope it's ice cold! My Fit has an undersized AC for the car and it's miserable in the summer.
That's how my '87 Ranger STX was. I had the 2-door cab version and of course the AC was sized for the Bronco II SUV. The AC frosted the windows in the summer. It was most excellent!
I think this is where it is good to be in a startup culture right from the beginning. Everyone is all in, there's no fear. So when the boss says: "Let's come up with a list of EVERYTHING that can be removed to cut costs, and don't be afraid to go out on a limb." Then you do. Then you discuss. Then you quickly remove the "stupid" things like this.
I worked in such a company environment for about 8 years, and our project (a 650-site national infrastructure implementation) was extremely successful, so I understand that mindset (which got entirely fucked when the company was "spun-off" and then eventually acquired by a competitor). But if the A/C question was more than a 15-second thought exercise I'd be surprised. Again, back to the battery conditioning requirement for EV, not including A/C would make zero sense, especially as Slate has implemented it with no automation to it (i.e. direct user control). I could see a longer discussion regarding an automated climate control system, but not including A/C simply is just a non-starter.
They're presenting it as a binary decision because the public doesn't do nuance. But there may very well have been a serious discussion about the sizing of the cooling system and whether there were savings to be had by only having enough capacity for the battery cooling needs.
The only hardware cost increase to provide A/C to the cabin would be the added evaporator and associated plumbing to get cooled air to the cabin. The air circulation, distribution, and control hardware is already in place since the Truck would have cabin heating (which is an entirely different discussion about hardware cost). Cooling a small cabin (even the SUV model) would be a minor increase to the cooling system capacity via maybe a marginally larger A/C pump(s), a bit more refrigerant volume, and slightly larger condenser to support the larger heat shed load. The sizing (change) of the hardware is minimal, as compared to it existing at all. I doubt the non-nuanced public would have even considered a Slate if it did not come standard with A/C. If there are actually "no-brainers" in life, adding (or keeping) A/C in the design would be the essential example.
Listen to the interviews with Eric Keipper where he talks about the engineering team fighting over millimeters of packaging space. I'd be willing to bet that the team actually did some quantitative analysis before coming to a decision. It was probably an easy decision at that point, but also an informed one. In engineering, "no-brainers" are often where mistakes happen.
No brainer as in m-a-r-k-e-t-i-n-g, because 98% of the A/C hardware is already in the design and more importantly, required by the architecture. No brainer because the cost to add A/C is nearly nil. No brainer because in 2026 the market would not be receptive to a vehicle without A/C.
