cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/electricvehicles/p/2162853/usa-slate-s-new-electric-truck-will-cost-slightly-more-than-24950
Range is said to be 205 mi (330 km), higher than the original estimate. This price is for the basic truck. The SUV configuration is expected to be $5000 more.
The payload is actually pretty damn good for a truck of its size. Compare it to an S10, most are rated for 999 pounds in the bed. In which I have hauled cow shit, half a ton at a time, from one end of the county to the other. Thing is…I don’t think the Slate can carry 1500 pounds of cow shit, the bed is too small.
Towing capacity is better than they initially said, earlier they quoted 1400, 2000 is lawnmower trailer territory. Compare that to the 5600 pound towing capacity of my S10.
And how often do you use the 5,600 pound towing capacity?
Personally? Never have. I know folks with similar trucks who do so daily.
Here’s my thing though: It’s got weirdly high onboard payload capacity, but a small bed. So…how do you load it that heavy? At the same time, it has a low towing capacity, so it’s not great for a contractor pulling a trailer. It’s almost backwards in a way.
Its not for contractors any more than its for people who think they need to tow four tons of cow shit to texas twice a week.
Contractors have trucks. People who want to traffic feces to texas have trucks. This truck isnt for them. Its for the person who just needs to grab stuff from the garden center or haul a couple of bikes to the lake without buying a $70,000 land yacht.
They venn diagrammed too close to the sun. They tried to make a single vehicle appeal to as many people as they could, meaning it’s for basically no one. It sucks at everything.
It’s a pickup truck that has a weirdly high cargo weight rating for the tiny bed you’d have to haul it in. Ideal for those who must move very dense cargo very short distances, like our nation’s many millions of short-haul plutonium deliverymen. I’m sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drug store.
It’s a 2-door 5-seat SUV in a market that already has three 2-door 2-row SUVs: The Jeep Wrangler, the Ford Bronco and the Land Rover Defender. All three of those are pretty serious 4WD offroad machines, all three are available as more normie-fied 4-door variants, and all three sell WAY more 4-doors than 2-doors. Because what the 2020’s American public needs is a full-size sedan, but they want to look rugged and outdoorsy, because if they actually drove a sedan or minivan, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson: “That says 'I’ve had my children and now I’m waiting to die.”
It’s an EV with the frame weight and aerodynamics of a pickup truck. So for it’s battery capacity, it’s got awful range.
It’s an EV that’s also cheap. So it’s got 400V architecture, no Vehicle-To-Load or Vehicle-To-Home, no 110VAC outlet, relatively slow charging despite its relatively small battery, and no heat pump.
So much of its fundamental design is in conflict with itself that it really only appeals to people who have no cargo, no passengers, and nowhere to go. It’ll probably carry home some Stouffer’s and White Claws from the Food Lion every week.
Shame too; I kinda like the eschewing of dashboard tech, the a la carte options list, prominent whatever-the-owner-wants mounting rails everywhere.