Simplicity!

[E90400K]

Yes, I know those cheap ICEs exist, but I am in the market for a simple affordable 2 door pickup truck.
The Slate gets bonus points because it will be easy for me to reconfigure it as I wish.

Understood, so am I, but the sustainability of Slate is dependent upon the market acceptance of the Slate's idea to more than us here on the forum.

 

[Imhotep]

Yeah. So, is the 9-peice-part door a 1-part assembly or in the 600-part count? And compared to say a Ranger, with a 20-piece part count door assembly...?

I would say it depends on how (if?) it arrives from the supplier. Everything pre-assembled counts as one. That’s how it works at the factory I work at, but I will not claim to be an expert in the automotive industry.

 

[Sparkie]

Understood, so am I, but the sustainability of Slate is dependent upon the market acceptance of the Slate's idea to more than us here on the forum.

Yup.
I balance my minor concerns regarding Slate's long term sales and production over a naive hope in 3 possibilities:

1. Slate's fleet sales will overshadow individual sales to consumers like me
2. Some non-EV auto maker will purchase Slate as a new division to their existing ICE portfolio (a company like Mazda)
3. That a simplified EV pickup DIY niche market can somehow continue despite low volume -- similar to how we still have motorcycle makers surviving today.

I wonder what I will think of myself when I re-read my post 3 years from now.

 

[cadblu]

It all looked great on paper. But now "production hell" is upon them. I'm cheering for Slate to triumph, because who wouldn't? But I'm cheering with the same confidence as NY Jets fans.

Folks, it really doesn’t matter much if it’s 600 parts or 6000…. If key suppliers don‘t deliver the ONE crippling part on time, production will come to a screeching halt. Yes, I’ve lived through production hell, and yes, you can only build short with so many workarounds until …the SHTF stage.

I wonder if Chris, Erik, and Tisha are preparing to sleep on the shop floor as Elon routinely did in the early factory startup days.

 

[KevinRS]

From how it's been talked about in the interviews, it may be less 600 assemblies than 600 part numbers.
The left and right tail lights: the same part numbers, it's symmetrical and just flipped over. The door armrest, same part both sides, and also same part on the console option.
Round headlights, same on both sides.
I'm sure they are counting a wheel bearing as one part, and not counting each bearing in it, that's not something that is reasonably going to be disassembled and an individual bearing swapped out.
The instrument panel was designed down from 27 parts to 7, so they obviously aren't counting every diode and resistor. Take apart a dashboard on most cars, and you have dozens to maybe a hundred parts. Slate looks to maybe have around 1 dozen parts total, not counting those 7 in the electronic instrument panel, maybe 2 dozen if you count all the buttons and controls, and multiple are duplicates.

 

[E90400K]

This is an excerpt from an SAE article I found on the subject of the Slate's part count.

While smaller than a traditional automotive factory, the footprint of the Warsaw, Indiana, factory seems to be perfect for Slate's plans. The vehicle's gray molded exterior panels negate the need for an expensive and space-intensive paint shop. There is no need for large casting machines. Barman noted that a typical pickup is built from 5,000 to 6,000 parts.

"The Blank Slate has just over 600 parts and one configuration," Barman told the audience. “Let that sink in for a moment, just 10% of the parts of its typical truck to build upon. We're retooling the factory in such a way that truly allows for manufacturing simplicity and rapid scaling.”

That dedication to simplicity has a snowball effect on cost savings. In addition to not having to buy the parts, there are inventory savings, the factory line moves quicker because there are fewer items to put into the vehicle, and quality control becomes less intensive because again, fewer items.

"We removed everything that is in our car to improve reliability and efficiency and deliver the value customers want over time. Removing the unnecessary content gets back to the basics and allows customers to enjoy a simple and pure, thriving experience," Barman said.

So, the CEO of Slate says they can build their vehicle with just 10% of the parts a typical manufacturer uses to build it's pickup trucks (600 parts vs. 6,000 parts). That statement needs to be clarified because that is some serious innovation in the automotive industry that no other manufacturer has ever contrived, not even Toyota.

The truck part count is not being reduced to just 10% of the typical pickup truck by using the same parts for the door arm rests and center console arm rest and the same taillights and head lights and door handles, and manual roll up windows.

The best I can determine for the 54kWh battery pack assembly it will use 288 pouch cells in addition to the battery case, wiring, cooling, and electrical connectors. The battery alone, which Slate says they are building in house from supplier-sourced cells, is nearly 300 parts just by itself. The rest of the truck is built with just 300 parts?

In my earlier post regarding the suspension and drive components of 199 parts, I did include the individual component parts that make up a wheel bearing just as an exercise as to determine what level of part count Barman is speaking to. For all four bearing assemblies the part out I came up with was 88. Take the sealed wheel bearings as 4 LAU (lowest assembly unit) parts and my estimate drops to 115.