Will the Slate Truck and Slate Accessories be financed together or can we pay separately?

[cadblu]

The ONLY thing they have committed to doing themselves so far is wraps, and even that involves sending the truck down the street to a new dedicated building currently being built just for production and installation of Slate wraps.

Your observation makes way more sense logistically than what Slate has announced. The new dedicated production facility for wraps is actually 4 hours away, it’s a 235 mile drive from Warsaw to Louisville KY, not down the street. Highly unlikely that they are sending the trucks there.

 

[ZuliMuli]

What we do know is what Slate has said so far. And that is multiple times “you can install the accessories yourself, or one of our trusted repair partners can help you”. That alone should show that they aren’t anywhere near the assembly line, nor are they adjusted in house. The ONLY thing they have committed to doing themselves so far is wraps, and even that involves sending the truck down the street to a new dedicated building currently being built just for production and installation of Slate wraps. So unless they decided to LOAD the pockets of a local shop with thousands of Slate, you will either have to cordinate those installs, or Slate will help you, it won’t be included in the price for one, because that would mean the people who want to install themselves (which I see being a large proportion, maybe not the majorty, but certainly not a small fraction) are paying for labor they aren’t getting, or Slate will have to add another price for install which would not be nothing for something like the SUV kit.

Slate isn’t following industry ways, they make one vehicle on the assembly line, and that’s it, I don’t think people fully understand that, if you buy different, the stock ones are going to be dismounted, tires and sensors swapped and rebalanced. If they started mounting the customer requested tires, that would variance, different machines for mounting different wheels and tires, and new tooling for mounting to the vehilce. This is all cost and complexity added to the vehicle and assembly Slate has built this brand on avoiding.
I highly doubt they are going to make 3-4 different ways to install parts (on the assembly line, post assembly line, direct to installer, and direct to consumer). The realistic scenario they have discussed is 1 option with 2 different shipping locations.
1.) truck ships to you and parts shipped to you (likely as a pallet).
2.) Truck ships you YOUR choose installer after an agreed upon price with them along with the parts, then you pick it up with them

Bonus) Truck will always ship to you first (I could see them wanting customers seeing the blank slate first, and test driving before anyone gets involved, then ship the parts to your installer so you get to see the before and after first hand

honestly that last one would seem like the best scenario for all. Even if you are only buying Slate for an SUV kit, I think seeing the truck first is important. This will also make the post accessory sale process, flow identical to the during sale process which again, streamlined and simple. Now I really hope they do the latter lol, it’s the best as far as customers being able to inspect the vehicle, and is better for Slate to ensure assembly line consistency and not having to point fingers with repair shops before the customer even sees the vehicle, plus I think seeing the transformation is valued for EVERYONE to see to know what the vehicle is fully capable of.

Man we got so far away from the original question of financing lol

But your right and I didn't mean to imply that Slate had all the accessories near the assembly line, and I agree that Slate will drop ship all the accessories to you or an installer.

I still think they will roll off the line with the wheel/tire option you pick on the website, that's a huge cost to not do it that way. Not to mention wasteful, if I order the 20" and they send it with the 16" I can't even reuse the tires from the 16" and it's a whole set of wheel I now need to sell to who? Every Slate owner has them and is trying to get rid of them as well. A few people might keep them for winter wheels but I only do that on my WRX, me and my wife's daily use cross climate 2s just so I don't have 3 sets of wheels in the garage.

 

[cadblu]

Yep, looks like anyone who orders the 20” wheels at the time of order will be stuck with two sets of wheels. I have a few problems with this:

• Where do we store the base wheels if we don’t have access to garage? Even with a garage, that’s going to take up valuable space.
• Will Slate credit me the cost of the base wheels towards the purchase of the larger wheels?
• Can we request a standard wheel “delete” (along with an order credit) so this doesn’t become a storage issue for new owners?

 

[IanNubbit]

Yep, looks like anyone who orders the 20” wheels at the time of order will be stuck with two sets of wheels. I have a few problems with this:

• Where do we store the base wheels if we don’t have access to garage? Even with a garage, that’s going to take up valuable space.
• Will Slate credit me the cost of the base wheels towards the purchase of the larger wheels?
• Can we request a standard wheel “delete” (along with an order credit) so this doesn’t become a storage issue for new owners?

There is some flaws with those proposed solutions

-It should not be Slate’s issue that you are unable to store your stock components when you choose to modify the vehicle
-How would that work, ship them back? That would double the shipping cost or more plus would cost time and resources for Slate to recieve, inspect, and reuse wheels and tires (would you want your brand new vehicle to have wheels that where installed on a vehicle then removed and sent back?)
-How would you get the vehicle with no wheels and tires? How would you get the vehicle on the road?

I totally understand the concern, but the accessories are just that, they are not vehicle options, you aren’t paying to have the one part in place of another, you are paying for the separate part. When you install (or have installed) these components, you are modifying the vehicle. Slate does not build an SUV, you cannot buy an SUV from them, you CAN (soon🙃) buy a truck from them, and they can also sell you an SUV accessory to have installed at home or at a shop. What you do with the “foot well cover” or the back cab wall once they are removed is up to you, not Slate’s responsibility to buy back your now used parts.

 

[KevinRS]

Wheels and tires are a different issue than other accessories, it's come up multiple times over the past year, has no one asked Slate about the logistics and gotten an answer?

My guess would be it's going to be up to you what to do with them. Keep them, sell them to the installer? Wheels and tires are usually installed on a vehicle before it reaches the end of the line, and it rolls the rest of the way down the line on them.

How do other manufacturers handle wheel choices? Some are part of trim packages, and others I think are dealer installed options, I think the dealer then keeps the factory wheels.

 

[IanNubbit]

Wheels and tires are a different issue than other accessories, it's come up multiple times over the past year, has no one asked Slate about the logistics and gotten an answer?

My guess would be it's going to be up to you what to do with them. Keep them, sell them to the installer? Wheels and tires are usually installed on a vehicle before it reaches the end of the line, and it rolls the rest of the way down the line on them.

How do other manufacturers handle wheel choices? Some are part of trim packages, and others I think are dealer installed options, I think the dealer then keeps the factory wheels.

GM when they ship some of the large 22s and 24s, they send the vehicle on donuts, and during the PDI, the dealer has to send those donuts back.

 

[phidauex]

There is some flaws with those proposed solutions

-It should not be Slate’s issue that you are unable to store your stock components when you choose to modify the vehicle
-How would that work, ship them back? That would double the shipping cost or more plus would cost time and resources for Slate to recieve, inspect, and reuse wheels and tires (would you want your brand new vehicle to have wheels that where installed on a vehicle then removed and sent back?)
-How would you get the vehicle with no wheels and tires? How would you get the vehicle on the road?

I totally understand the concern, but the accessories are just that, they are not vehicle options, you aren’t paying to have the one part in place of another, you are paying for the separate part. When you install (or have installed) these components, you are modifying the vehicle. Slate does not build an SUV, you cannot buy an SUV from them, you CAN (soon🙃) buy a truck from them, and they can also sell you an SUV accessory to have installed at home or at a shop. What you do with the “foot well cover” or the back cab wall once they are removed is up to you, not Slate’s responsibility to buy back your now used parts.

This gets at the whole reason that a lot of manufacturing moved to JIT or mass customization methods. "We just make one thing and it is 100% identical every time" sounds great on paper, but if you expect to sell a lot of accessories out of the gate, then you are also committing to a lot of waste.

If 20% of buyers upgrade the wheels, do you actually want to commit your business to buying and trashing 20% more wheels? That is a lot of wasted logistics effort, wasted purchasing, wasted storage, etc.

I know they want to keep the line simple, but that ideological purity will quickly run into someone saying "well we could reduce the effective price of the truck by $900 if we just put the correct wheel on during the manufacturing line...".

If I were them I'd consider running, say, 3 days a week for Blank Slates only, and 2 days for semi-custom builds, where you identify some major accessories (wheels, SUV kit, bumpers?) and assemble for those directly. If you are taking the orders in advance you know everything you need to know to do that. I just don't see how you avoid it without a lot of waste and frustration.

EDIT: Really the parts you'd want to do that for are things where the "accessory" is not additive, but is an either/or. No one needs two front bumpers, for instance. Things that are just an add-on like grille covers, the wrap, etc. would not need to be done at the factory.

 

[IanNubbit]

This gets at the whole reason that a lot of manufacturing moved to JIT or mass customization methods. "We just make one thing and it is 100% identical every time" sounds great on paper, but if you expect to sell a lot of accessories out of the gate, then you are also committing to a lot of waste.

If 20% of buyers upgrade the wheels, do you actually want to commit your business to buying and trashing 20% more wheels? That is a lot of wasted logistics effort, wasted purchasing, wasted storage, etc.

I know they want to keep the line simple, but that ideological purity will quickly run into someone saying "well we could reduce the effective price of the truck by $900 if we just put the correct wheel on during the manufacturing line...".

If I were them I'd consider running, say, 3 days a week for Blank Slates only, and 2 days for semi-custom builds, where you identify some major accessories (wheels, SUV kit, bumpers?) and assemble for those directly. If you are taking the orders in advance you know everything you need to know to do that. I just don't see how you avoid it without a lot of waste and frustration.

I definitely think they SHOULD and eventually will do something, really wheels is the only thing I see as being needed to do this. It’s similar enough to the battery to where (with the exception of snow tires) you have no use for the part once it’s removed. Wheels could be towards the very end of the line, and in the grand scheme of assembly, not that complicated to change that one part. (They are already going to have to have infrastructure for the mounting and balancing if the 3 different wheels and 3 different tire sizes.
I totally agree eventually they should be doing this, but I’m not so sure it will be part if initial production

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This whole thread reads like incoherent AI generated ramblings, like so many other threads here. Why not use some patience and see what Slate has to say?

 

[smack daddy]

Just an idle thought. It would be cool if somebody eventually starts an online "Slate parts and accessories swap" site. Just not me - I'm far too lazy.

Could be part of a "Slate Club of America". As an old Miata owner (3 of them), I was part of the Miata Club of America, which had all kinds of cool features like that. Miata owners are super cool. People will physically help you modify or repair your Miata and not ask for a penny. Just because it's a huge family (more than a million Miatas have been built and sold over three decades).

If the Slate catches on and thrives, it would be cool if something similar happens.

The site is called slate swap shop.com it is going to be place for people that have extra parts laying around they need to get rid of

 

[Orley]

In my state, vehicle registration fees are based in part on purchase price. If you separate the accessories from the base price, you could save a little money on your annual vehicle registration fee.