| ▲ | Animats a day ago |
| This seems to fill a useful niche, but may be too downscale. Remember the Tata Nano.[1] Tata built a basic car with a price below 1 lahk, but it didn't sell. In the US, there's Slate, which claims to be making a small electric pickup truck.
"Preorders will start on June 24, 2026. First deliveries are slated for late 2026." [2] Price in the US$20K range, they claim. Claimed range is 150m with the base model battery. A larger battery is available. It's America's answer to the kei car. If it ships and keeps shipping. Detroit got way too much into the "more car per car" thing. Chevrolet once had the slogan "basic transportation". They lost sight of that market. The giant pickups are just silly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano [2] https://www.slate.auto/en |
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| ▲ | kelseyfrog a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Claimed range is 150m with the base model battery. Surely 150km |
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| ▲ | 1234letshaveatw a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Are we just ignoring data now? Giant pickups have silly sales- silly in the crazy high sense of the word. I love my EV but I have never wished for less range. The Slate is a toy for the wealthy, like kitted up Jeeps that have snorkels |
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| ▲ | toast0 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | If it shows up in the suggested price range, it's going to one of the least expensive new vehicles on the market. Yes, it has less utility than many other vehicles in many ways, but the bed length (5 ft) is longer than a lot of trucks I see on the road which enables carrying certain kinds of loads that aren't easy in cars or trucks with very short beds as seems fashionable now. 150 miles isn't a ton of range, but it's 50% more than a first generation Leaf and those sold. The Slate clearly isn't trying to check all the boxes, but every vehicle doesn't need to try to do everything. | | |
| ▲ | travisb a day ago | parent [-] | | Bed length is a silly metric to use. It's single dimensional and doesn't capture any of the other important metrics. Such as width, air-volume, cubed-volume, or weight capacity. Slate's 5 foot bed is on the shorter end of common bed sizes. Certainly shorter and worse on every other metric than the F-150/Silverado/1500 'short bed' so commonly seen hauling air in the US. |
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| ▲ | yellowapple a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Giant pickups have silly sales because pickups in general have silly sales and there are basically zero non-giant options in the US market (thanks, Chicken Tax, very cool). The Slate would be the absolute perfect truck for me if it had a 4WD option. Being RWD-only is the only thing making me unwilling to replace my Tacoma with it. | | |
| ▲ | Animats 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | How often do you off-road and need 4WD? I have a Jeep Wrangler, and in winter I have to go up a muddy hill with about a 15% grade to a back pasture at a stable.
I sometimes engage 4WD (high) for that, but I don't really have to. Very few of the giant pickups I see have mud on them. | | |
| ▲ | yellowapple 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > How often do you off-road and need 4WD? These are two separate questions. I off-road an average of once a month, specifically to reach my usual shooting spot on BLM-maintained land. I don't necessarily need 4WD for that, but it's a good excuse to turn it on anyway. I “need” 4WD when it snows, since 4WD/AWD + snow tires = not being required to chain up when chain controls are in effect, and because 4WD > AWD > FWD > RWD when it comes to snow driving (especially here in Reno/Tahoe, where the snow/ice happens on hills and having more drive wheels is a strict improvement over fewer). |
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