Electric Vehicles

Battery management requires a lot of computer logic. The simple act of plugging in an EV to a charger involves a complex handshake for negotiating the amount of power to deliver, which the control unit figures out by reading the sensors in each battery cell, and routes the electric power to the appropriate cells. Same thing for discharging the battery to power the vehicle, and recharging the battery from regenerative braking while driving.

No matter how you slice it, an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle, just for the basic powertrain management.

I'm with you on user interfaces, though.

Them using the name is purely for marketing. Smart people that hate Bezos are going to look up that he's not the major investor. Dumb people that like Bezos are too stupid to look up anything.

Hard to find a car company not backed by a capitalist shitbag.

The problem here is that unless you pull off the most insane kickstarter in history, these type s of developments cannot be funded by anyone else than billionaires and megacorps, with the exception of states, like Mexico's pickup.

Designing a thing like this can probably be pulled off by a small team of engineers and designers, but the whole production, safety testing, distribution etc is just not doable.

Yeah I was looking into getting the truck until I found that out..

Default range is a little over 200 miles. Adding the weight of the camping stuff is likely to be what affects mileage more than the cargo shell, but I would guess it would still be over 150 miles in most conditions.

Rear wheel drive is fine in snow in a vehicle with proper weight distribution. It's not a stupid ICE pickup with all the weight over the non drive wheels.

I too would love a 4x4 option, or at least all-wheel drive.

Though having driven rear-wheel trucks in the winter, the Slate should be less terrible. The location of the battery and motor add weight over the drive tires. I expect it to not slide around as much as a rear-wheel truck with engine in the front.

I'm definitely curious about the range hit. Starting at 200 miles and raising the roof can't be great.

After seeing tons of ID Buzz cargo vans in use in Europe, though, I think it could still thrive as a fleet truck in cities.

This is partially where I'm at on it, it sounds cool in theory, no head unit, speaker is just Bluetooth, but then tell me A. Why does Bezos love it so much, B. How does it connect to the phone app that their website mentions, and C. What data does that app collect. I wish the YouTubers who were doing interviews with Slate and Telo would've asked those questions, especially considering how many articles are out there now about the other car companies tracking you. If they weren't doing any, or at least significantly less, you'd think they'd want to publicize it more heavily.

My other issue is I live in a very icy place 7 months out of the year, give me FWD or AWD options

Edit: apparently the app works by physically plugging into the car, not cellular, so not much I can argue about there.

From what I've read it looks to be the best modern option in that regard. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/slate-says-its-electric-pickup-will-never-track-you/

I think the image was rendered with AI. I don't see it on slate's website, looks like electrek made it?