Slate Marketing is making me lose interest.

[sodamo]

All this talk of alternative vehicles has me thinking of my farmer neighbors here in WNC. Our neighborhood is filled with Kei trucks. The farmers love them. A guy up the street imports them used and maintains them. They're like $10,000 to $15,000. Alas, not electric. Street legal on roads below a certain speed limit - I think 35 mph.

https://www.marsminitrucks.com/

Very popular here as well. Neighbor has a 4x4 one he loves, uses it on his coffee farm but does make limited on road trips. He is constantly tricking it out.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

his coffee farm

COFFEE?!? Any tips on how to get some of the good stuff? ☕ Green beans please, I roast my own.

 

[Doctors Do Little]

COFFEE?!? Any tips on how to get some of the good stuff? ☕ Green beans please, I roast my own.

David has made mention of trading a Day 1 reservation for a few bags of the “good stuff”? Interesting

 

[sodamo]

COFFEE?!? Any tips on how to get some of the good stuff? ☕ Green beans please, I roast my own.

https://hogheavencoffee.com/?srsltid=AfmBOooqb2eGThvNAIZLgWqFKQdRC6--zExQMl40AdFGEuXo8hzveVqc
tell Mike you know me (David)and are buying a Slate.

 

[sodamo]

David has made mention of trading a Day 1 reservation for a few bags of the “good stuff”? Interesting

Looks like my 4/24/2025 is Day 1 😄

 

[Doctors Do Little]

Looks like my 4/24/2025 is Day 1 😄

I’m on your team. Hopefully the delivery zip code doesn’t slow you down!

 

[sodamo]

I’m on your team. Hopefully the delivery zip code doesn’t slow you down!

I know
put my SIL address, near LA in my profile, but will be on look out for any clues.

 

[Driven5]

>> I have found them to be very responsive and pleasant.
Exactly the characteristic of a chatbot that has been fed a bucket of information about Slate that it is allowed to divulge. Absolutely polite and patient. My bet is an AI chatbot.

They may or may not be leveraging AI to help them respond, but I've had fringe case discussions with them that no 'AI chatbot' I've encountered could have done... Especially not the kind a resource limited manufacturing startup is most likely to end up with. Occam's razor tells tells me there is still a human somewhere behind those emails.

But I just got to thinking about ordering the off-road tires (K03's) from Slate. That option (err... customization) automatically adds the 2" suspension lift. So, how will that work? They flat pack ship me the springs, struts, and shocks, and four un-mounted K03's? Seems a bit stupid to pay for shipping tires to me when I can just buy them locally. Hopefully the struts come loaded (i.e. pre-built with springs).

Why would they ship it separately when they can just load them them in the bed before the truck is loaded on the transporter? I'm not sure if the rear will be spring spacers or replacement springs, but all signs so far point to the front lift just being strut mount spacers.

 

[JoeBlow-Kokomo]

I'll be honest, I jumped to reserve the slate as soon as I heard of what it was. It peaked my interest immediately with its highly customizable nature, keep it simple stupid design. But does anyone else feel put off by the marketing? All of the ads are some highly metro version of this little truck. I have a little homestead and am planning on getting it to commute to work as well as pick up bags of grain, hay, chicken feed, whatever else I want to put in the back. I plan on putting some grippy tires on it and making it look more offroad than a starbucks runner. All of the advertisements I see are catered towards artsy, city dwelling people. I want to see it do a little work. Get a little dirty. It's starting to feel like I'm not a part of audience.

Edit: I still plan on buying one and I have the cash set aside. But its discouraging.

stop paying attention to advertisements. THey are trying to entice who they think is their market. This is kinda a new thing.

 

[CorvusCorvax]

Not sure what city people need a pickup truck for...

Same kinds of stuff I used our pickup truck on the farm. Pick up parts, farm/yard supplies, take stuff to the dump, transport my friends in the back to the movies.

OK, that last one was from the long-ago days when we sat in the bed of a truck without seat belts like we were indestructible. But that other stuff still applies. When I want bark mulch for the flower beds, I don't want to haul it in a station wagon. When I want lumber for a yard project, I don't want to try and cram it into a station wagon, leave the lift gate open, and all the crap that comes along with mis-matched cargo to cargo hauling equipment.

I like to take bikes to the trailhead in a truck, due to ease of access. I like taking paddleboats to the lake without having to install a roof rack on a car.

I live in the suburbs, and have all sorts of real use for a pickup. I just don't need a full-sized ICE pickup like I currently have. Sure, my Slate will go off-road for a few miles on a Forest Service road, but I don't need to see an ad showing it do that to know the truck will work for driving on a dirt/gravel road.

Look at the current pickup ads. Some dude driving in the desert in a perfectly-clean, new pickup, throwing up dirt from spinning tires, all in slow motion. I live in the suburbs. I can tell that 90% of the trucks I see, even the lifted, off-road bro dozer pretender pavement princesses, never see anything more rugged than a curb at WalMart.

And let's be 100% honest. The big market for Slate is going to be urban fleet sales, including municipal customers who REALLY want to save money on acquisition and operations costs.

 

[ScooterAsheville]

>> And let's be 100% honest. The big market for Slate is going to be urban fleet sales, including municipal customers who REALLY want to save money on acquisition and operations costs.

That's a popular narrative on this site. I respectfully offer up a counter narrative.

Fleets love support and stability. I'm not that sure they're going to roll the dice on a BEV startup that might go bankrupt one or two years after purchase. Not when they can buy a Maverick hybrid, get excellent support, superior capability, known operating cost, excellent resale value, mobile service, and exceptional fleet support and financing from Ford. And, the Big Three are famous for deep discounting for fleet sales (which BTW lowers the resale value of that model when car rental fleets refresh their fleet every 12 months).

Oh, and Ford's about to offer an inexpensive BEV small truck around the same time as Slate. If I were a fleet, and I was asked to choose between a Ford BEV smallish truck for $30,000 and a Slate for $25,000, I'm going with the company that's been around for a century, has mobile service, has an established fleet management and support division, has a financing division - and oh, is offering a vastly more capable vehicle for about the same price. Oh, and offers me a Maverick too, for around the same price, in case my fleet does not have existing BEV charging stations (and I don't want to invest several hundred thousand installing them).

So that's a counter-narrative. Nobody knows which Slate fleet narrative is going to prove true in the end. Definitely not me. I'm content to watch and see (because I don't operate a fleet).

One caveat. If Slate announces a $20,000 price June 22, forget everything I said.

 

[dan419]

You know you're not wrong. I'd like to see it doing some more truck things too. I also get the feeling they're trying to market this as more of an adventure vehicle than a work/play vehicle. I see how that worked out in the Hyundai versus Ford experiment. (Santa Cruz versus Maverick). Now will it be the same thing except Slate versus Ranchero? Time will tell. Sometimes you need to sell a vehicle to a bunch of posers without coming right out and saying you guys are a bunch of posers. The Jeep Wrangler comes to mind here. They never show people going to the mall or commuting to work in that thing. It's always crawling over some giant boulder or splashing through a creek bed, top down, doors off....which about 2% of the market actually does, but the other 98% pretend/dream their doing while lining their dash with ducks, going through the touch less car wash after stopping at Starbucks, and feeling like they are an off-roader in the potholes in the Applebee's parking lot. Now don't get me wrong I like Jeeps and I love Applebee's, but marketing does matter. I would like to see the slate's capabilities hauling firewood, tying down lumber hauling a couch/refrigerator, and actually putting in the work. Not saying they don't have some videos of this, but I'm not sure this shouldn't be their primary audience or at least their image. People that are buying trucks big or small want to feel like they're buying a truck. Not a car with a bed. Like it or not it's a mental thing and that's where we are just like the Jeep. The Jeep is basically nothing but a station wagon let's be honest here but people have lined up to sell them and they've held their value insanely well because of image. The Maverick was marketed as a truck and many of the commercials showed its utility and versatility. Let's hope slate hasn't missed the mark and this thing can actually perform as an honest to God work truck. Fleets, delivery, and families as a second vehicle they need to haul with are where I see this thing really having a win.

 

[E90400K]

They may or may not be leveraging AI to help them respond, but I've had fringe case discussions with them that no 'AI chatbot' I've encountered could have done... Especially not the kind a resource limited manufacturing startup is most likely to end up with. Occam's razor tells tells me there is still a human somewhere behind those emails.


Why would they ship it separately when they can just load them them in the bed before the truck is loaded on the transporter? I'm not sure if the rear will be spring spacers or replacement springs, but all signs so far point to the front lift just being strut mount spacers.

I'm not sure if shipping materials in the bed of the Slate has been worked out with the established automotive logistics industry.

2" spacers on top of the strut mounts and 2" spacers on the rear springs would probably make the suspension unstable. Lengthening the rear springs would necessitate longer stroke rear shocks, which is why I think the suspension geometry would be affected and become unstable.

And I can have tires shipped from The Tire Rack far easier than strapped down in the bed of the truck. And probably at a lower price.

 

[E90400K]

Okay, I hope everyone understands my comment about city people was sarcasm. Lol.

 

[Doctors Do Little]

Okay, I hope everyone understands my comment about city people was sarcasm. Lol.

No way, dude. We are recording every comment with the contempt that is due from keyboard warriors. Game on.