I think it's perfect! I've fantasized about getting an old Nissan Hardbody, stuffing the bed with batteries and putting 2 overvoted forklift motors under the hood.
This is basically a reliable, commercially viable version of that concept.
You are overestimating the price of EVs in the US. I was recently in the market for an EV and my budget wasn't anywhere near 70k and I found several options--way more than I had expected.
In the following when I saw "tax credit" I mean the federal $7500 tax credit. Many EV makers with models that do not qualify for the tax credit are offering an equivalent credit which I will call "tax match". For some that is a straight up $7500 off. For others it is only if you finance through them (but if you prefer to buy outright just finance and then pay it off right away).
It is this tax match that was responsible for there being way more cars in my price range than I thought there would be.
BTW, if you are leasing instead of buying the tax credit is generally available even for EVs that do not qualify when you buy them.
I'm mostly going to be giving prices and discounts as you would find them at a dealer to better reflect what you are actually looking at out of pocket.
• Nissan Leaf S for around $29k. Tax match plus some other Nissan bonuses that every dealer seems to be offering brings it to $20k.
• Nissan Leaf SV Plus for around $39k. $29k after tax match plus other common discounts from Nissan and dealers.
• Nissan Ariya $42k for FWD, $46k for AWD, or $35k and $38k after tax match.
• Chevy Equinox EV for $35k, $27.5 after tax credit. That's the FWD model and has a 319 mile range. $5k for an AWD model (which drops the range to 309). (AWD actually adds $3k, but the base AWD model has $2k of other packages that are optional on the $35k model. If you start with the $35k model and add the packages you want you will almost certain add those packages too, and so then going to AWD will just add $3k).
• Hyundai Kona SE at $33k or $26k after the tax match.
• Hyundai Kona SEL at $37k or $30k after the tax match. This is what I ended up buying.
• Kia Niro Wind for $40k (but really $42k because I think most dealers add the package that replaces resistance heating with a heat pump) or $35k after the tax match.
• Kia Niro Wave for $47k (with the heat pump package) or $39k with the tax match and other discounts I saw at most dealers.
• Toyota bZ4X for $40k FWD or $44 AWD. No tax credit and no official tax match but the dealer I visited really wanted to push it so offered about $5k in discounts and rebates and offered $3k more in trade for my 2006 Honda CR-V than anyone else did and something that I don't remember that brought the AWD down to $35k. Oh and also 0% financing.
• Chevy Blazer EV at around $49k or $42k with the tax credit. I've seen some big discounts on this. My nearest Chevy dealer has a $6500 "Discount for Everyone" on these which would bring it $36k. I currently don't see that anywhere else so it may just be that one dealer.
• Hyundai IONIQ 6 SEL at $52k or $44k after the tax match. IONIQ 5 SE is about the same.
• Subaru Soltera at $40k. No tax credit or match.
• Fiat 500e at $34k MSRP. Dealers seem to give a discount of around $2k.
• Volkswagen ID.4 is a little confusing. My nearest dealer has an 2025 ID.4 Limited for $42.5 MSRP. So do other dealers. But Volkswagen's site does not list a Limited. The lowest trim is the Pro at $45k MSRP. Anyway, no tax credit or match but it looks like there is some sort of $5k bonus going on so about $36k.
I think that might be all the current model EVs in the US that are generally available for under around $40k after widely available incentives.
There are also several between there and the $70k range you mentioned.
While I believe the commenter above was referring to electric pickup truck options, this is a very nicely laid out comment and I appreciate the effort put into it.
Yeah I was specifically referring to the pickup truck format. They all seem to hover around 80k. Of course their butteries are closer to 100-200 kWh instead of 50 or 70.
> Rather than relying on a built-in infotainment system, you'll use your phone plugged into a USB outlet
Absolutely horrible.
3-4 standard DIN slots with simple plastic covers would let users install anything they want: a 2-DIN player, a 1-DIN CB radio and a 1-DIN equalizer or amp or tachograph, or simple storage space.
I don't know, as long as I can do basic controls (pause, play, skip, previous, and maybe go ahead/back 10-20s if you're feeling nasty) this is basically my dream setup. Why futz with pairing and connecting via Bluetooth when you probably want to charge your phone anyway?
I keep an insert in my phone's USB-C port that blocks it. It would be kind of annoying to have to take it out whenever I want to connect the phone to the car and then put it back in when I leave the car.
I'm not actually sure that this is necessary with USB-C, but when I had Lightning phones I noticed that every so often they would stop charging when I plugged them in.
I determined that was from pocket lint getting into the port. Scraping the lint out with a toothpick would fix things. When I got a phone with wireless charging I switched to using that and put a cover on the Lightning port.
I kept the habit of using a port cover when I got a USB-C phone. I've not actually checked to see if pocket lint is a problem with USB-C ports.
I want a hilux champ to do odd jobs around town. It will never make it here because it doesn’t meet safety standards, I really wish the nanny state would let me make my own decisions.
Where I live you are much more likely to die getting hit by a logging truck than being harmed by a small utility truck without collision avoidance sensors.
Hell I almost died in a head on collision with a semi truck if I didn’t swerve out of the way. Commercial trucking is where safety should be emphasized, not people who just want a small utility vehicle to do jobs around town.
I suspect it’s a small minority of people that encounter a logging truck in a given year. I’m in the PNW and you don’t see logging trucks barreling through big cities.
> In an average year in B.C., large trucks are involved in less than one percent of all crashes – but they’re involved in nearly 20 percent of fatal crashes.
If you exclude motorcycle fatalities (which is usually only the motorcycle rider is seriously hurt, and that is a known risk they take) the numbers get even worse for commercial trucking.
Safety standards are not only for you, for the biggest part they are for pedestrians, other vehicles an people that happen to be in the car with you.
When Americans complain about the "nanny state" I mentally replace it with "we collectively". Because that is what a state ought to be — a expression of collective will and common sense policy. If it isn't that way in your country currently, that isn't on the state, that is on the people who are supposed to hold the power. Quite frankly, an antagonistic perspective on "the state" might even help it becoming worse.
Collective rules are not needed if anybody just would act informed and reasonable. But that is not the case and never has been the case. Without a state the next-big entity (a company, some local war lord, a gang, a king) will become the force where the buck stops. Unless you want to be at their whim collective and divided power (Rule of Law) is the way to go.
I hope you do realize that what you're saying here could also be read as: "I really wish we (collectively) would let me (individually) make bad decisions that would hurt us (collectively) if everybody (individually) did it". But the ultra-individualistic insistance to not be part of society seems to be very trendy right now, and is usally made by people who rely on society to provide everything to them in ways they aren't even aware about.
Unlike you say, my argument is completely unaffected by that premise and could be about an entirely made up hypothetical car, the core ethical argument would still be equally valid.
Why? Because the axiom that the car does not meet the safety standards was established by the poster I commented on. I do not need to proof an axiom someone else set up for the sake of discussion.
Now you could argue that safety standards are discoupled from actual accident numbers (something I have never seen evidence for), but that is a different argument and thus the burden of proof that this is in fact the case is on you.
A hilux champ without collision avoidance sensors is far from the most dangerous thing on the road.
I dont like the choice to hamstring millions of businesses and individuals who need legitimate work trucks from having a cheap and reliable option when those trucks would not be even close to the most dangerous thing on the road.
It is an interesting idea, but there is obviously a lot which can go wrong here.
Can you actually build an EV like that, conforming to all regulations, with significant cost reduction?
Do people actually want less screens or do they just say that? Is customization a road to profitability?(VWs ID.1 concept has a similar idea to lower entry price, by making several upgrades user installable, so they can be bought over time.
This is obviously a US only car and the US is very lacking in EV adoption. Will this sell in significant numbers?
Can you actually make it cheaply? Rivian is notoriously unprofitable and making cheap cars is, far, far harder than making expensive cars.
>So demanding to know beforehand feels needlessly antagonistic.
I said it was an open question and the company was betting on peoples stated preferences being identical to their revealed ones.
I never "demanded" anything. I just said that the articles you posted were irrelevant to the question, as physical buttons and large displays can exist at the same time.
It sounds like the gauge cluster will in fact be a screen, and it will probably display the federally mandated backup camera feed. I think this is a good middle ground.
That is just for the base model. There is an option for an electric window opener.
It is also not a finished product yet so wait and see what actually becomes of this. The modularity is nice along with the promise of easy to install upgrades and so forth.
Delivering on all those customizable options though may be easier said than done.
It could be if that yields more profit in the end.
For example,
It costs the company 10 dollars, and that 100 out of 110 people will purchase the upgrade for $20. That is $100 profit. Maybe the company also finds that 80 of those 110 people would also buy the same upgrade for $150 and yields like $11,200 in profit.
So it makes sense for the company, the persons running it, and the investors in the company to have the markup as high as it will maximize their profits.
> lack of profit when I said "anywhere near".
Sorry, to me I interpret markup to be assumed as double the cost but would not consider that "near" cost.
If this is void of telemetry, dial-home and other fascistic crap then I would seriously consider it. It's in a similar price range of street legal UTV's but with more room assuming it stays in that range when it launches.
Commenters in another thread were suggesting that the OTA updates would be via their phone app. Which opens the possibility of simply not connecting your phone to it, one hopes.
Of course, we are talking about a car that doesn't exist yet. Who knows what the facts will be once it does.
Bed is too short to be very practical. Also too expensive for what it is. I wanted a maverick but it’s a 4.5’ bed… Ended up with a 6’ Tacoma. You can find good condition used tacomas in the low 20s
Between Slate and Telo[1] it seems like there's finally some new ideas for small electric trucks.
I totally get that some people's use-cases necessitate 300+ mile range, touchscreens, infotainment, DIN slots, four passengers plus a bunch of sheets of plywood, whatever. But why complain about the existence of a truck that doesn't meet your requirements if so many existing electric trucks already meet all of those requirements? Isn't it OK if other people want something different?
I'm the weirdo who still likes crank handles. They are actually faster at opening/closing windows. And one less set of electronics to fail.
Americans complain about the lack of affordable cars, but can't be bothered to buy anything with less than 4 doors and AWD and 20 inch wheels. So good luck to these guys.
In my experience, cranks are relatively complicated mechanical linkages, failed quite regularly and were sometimes not easy to repair.
OTOH, I've never seen an electronic opener fail since the 80's. Yes, sometimes they don't have the torque to open a window when it's iced closed, but that's an advantage, not a disadvantage -- the ability to put a lot of torque on a manual opener was the cause of many failures.
A couple of articles on the Slate have also pointed out that electric openers are cheaper than manual ones.
> Rather than remembering the exact right amount of pressure for that mode on the switch
That depends a bit on models - there are various cars you can buy that don't have various modes of pressure - there's only a single mode, and the window stops moving when you let go of the switch.
Submissions don't turn gray from getting flagged. Even [flagged][dead] submissions (if you have show dead on in your profile) show up in the same color as every other submission.
I'm very curious how they are managing "no screens".
I thought all vehicles in the U.S. were required to have rear-view cameras for safety. I'm curious how they are getting around that.
Edit: I now see that the article speculates that maybe there's a screen in the rear-view window for this. But I can't find anything concrete.
My understanding is that the regulations require a certain amount of rear visibility, either directly in the mirror or via a rear-view camera. But the former likely wouldn't be possible with the bed in the way.
The basic protocol from an AC charger to your car is, "hello, I have X amps available, don't take more or you will trip my circuit breaker". The car responds by charging at or below the current advertised.
When you charge in a context where the car unlocks the charger (i.e. Tesla Supercharger), the protocol must divulge the car's certificate, signed by the owner of the charging network (like mTLS). There would be privacy-preserving protocols for this, but they are not used in practice.
It has a reasonable profile instead of engineering based on overactive pituitary glands. A truck that doesn't make roads more dangerous feels unamerican.
I personally don't want to be left holding the bag on a used battery since I like the option traveling long distance without stopping, but obviously it's your choice.
> tesla inflates their range estimates until the battery is half empty
Yes, but I don't think it's enough to affect this comparison.
> I personally don't want to be left holding the bag on a used battery since I like the option traveling long distance without stopping, but obviously it's your choice.
The point is we're comparing against a car that has 150 miles of range brand new, 120 or less by the time you'd replace its battery. A Tesla battery at 60% is still better.
> Idle draw/phantom drain of 5-10% a day seems like a common complaint with Teslas as wel
That's a more serious problem, among many others. I'm not advocating one way or the other, just focusing on range.
I want a cheap ev with less than 150 miles of range for city use. With traffic here I'm literally never driving more than 100 miles a day, and virtually never driving more than 50 miles a day. I can charge at home, I don't care if it takes 12 hours.
But I'd want that car to be under $15k. That car doesn't exist, at least not in the US, so I'm still on an old ICE.
My current car is worth at most $5k, and I spend maybe $500/yr on gas.
The car exists, you just have to look at used. About three years ago I bought a gently used 2013 Fiat 500e for $8k. It gets ~80mi range in the summer (a little less in the winter though). Super fun, drives like a gokart. Plugs into 110 and charges overnight.
My wife uses it for commuting and it's our standard "run to town" car. We have an ICE vehicle for trips.
I think people overestimate the importance of range. It is important, but not in the way most people probably think.
Consider for example a very long road trip, such as a drive from Los Angeles to New York which is around 2800 miles. Suppose Alice has a 200 mile range EV and Bob has a 300 mile range EV. Assume their cars both charge at 300 miles/hour.
What effects will the range difference have on their trips?
• If DC EV charging stations are too far apart the trip might not be feasible for Alice.
• Assuming DC EV stations are not too far apart for Alice, then she will have to stop to charge more often.
• Assuming both start fully charged, and during the trip they drive until 10% and then charge to 80% then Alice will drive 180 miles until her first recharge, and then recharge every 140 miles. Bob will drive 270 miles until his first recharge, and then recharge every 210 miles.
• Alice will have to recharge 20 times. Bob will have to recharge 13 times. That works out to be a stop about every 2 hours of driving for Alice and a stop every 3 hours of driving for Bob.
OK, that is a lot more stops for Alice. But lets look at the time spent stopped rather than the number of stops.
• Alice first stops with 2620 miles left to go. Her car recharges at 300 miles/hour, which means she needs 8h 44m of total charge time.
• Bob first stops with 2530 miles left to go. His car recharging at 300 miles/hour needs a total charge time of 8h 26m.
Let's assume the each charge stop adds 5 minutes of delay beyond the actual charging time. Alice stops 7 times more than Bob so has 35 more minutes of delay. Add that to the 18 minutes more Alice spends actually charging and we have Bob gets to New York 53 minutes ahead of Alice.
Suppose Alice's car could charge faster than Bob's? Say 500 miles/hour? Then she would only spend 5h 15m charging. That's 3h 11m less charging time than Bob. She'd still have 35 minutes of delay from more frequent charging but even with that she'd beat Bob to New York by 2h 36m.
This suggests that for long road trips charging rate may be more more important than range, as long as range is sufficient to let you reach DC charging stations.
I regret spending the money on the long range Model 3. It’s something I charge every day because I can at home. Sure I could charge it once a week for my commute, but I just charge it up to 80%. I would love this Slate as my commuter car. I miss my Ford Ranger with a manual transmission. Hopefully this thing has an efficient motor.
There is a nonprofit near me that has some trucks they use for hauling trash, weeds, and some misc equipment on occasion (they do habitat restoration). They rarely go more than 20 miles in a day. This would fit their needs perfectly, assuming they could cheaply charge it. They probably could figure something out, they already have a van with an RV style charger hooked up.
That calculation does not work at all. 300 miles (presumably WLTP) range has nothing to with 300 miles of actual driving.
Additionally range dictates how often you have to charge. This does not matter if you can easily charge at home, but when you have to do it at public infrastructure it is obviously a hassle, which is increased with lack of range.
This truck only offers 150 miles in the base model. That's the problem. If you consider the round trip distance, unless you have a chance to charge it at your destination or reliably on your route it gives you about a 60-70 mile practical range from home. And that's if you do a there-and-back with no detours.
GP is pointing out that anything less than 300 is not practical, and they're not wrong. 150 miles, in particular, is just too low to be used for anything other than a basic commuter vehicle. It's useless on highways (try driving I-70 through KS in this thing) and if you change job sites more than once, you're likely to run out of range in one work day. Traveling between cities is going to be unreliable if you're not able to stop and charge at your destination. Live in Colorado Springs and want to go to Denver? You probably have to stop and charge before coming home.
That's 2x the average daily distance driven, 4x if you do it back and forth. This is more like a cheap utility truck for day to day things, not a thing you want to travel in for hours at 65mph
aye was my thought. lifting things will drain it faster.
we're also talking in raw miles, straight line, no hills, decent weather. I'm in a hilly city that gets to -30C on the regular, and these factors could turn 150 miles in to 75 pretty fast.
The average US citizen drives 37 miles per day. A vehicle like this would satisfy the needs of the majority of the populace for the majority of their activities. With lower prices renting specialty vehicles for road trips or whatever makes a hell of a lot more sense.
>A small affordable truck works great as a commuter
Not if it has two seats and you want to carry more than two people.
>picking up supplies from a hardware store for home improvement.
I don't remember where I heard it. But it was something like "most people buy cars for reasons least likely to happen". If you aren't using your bed daily you bought the wrong car. Buy a trailer if you need to go to a hardware store once a month.
> A tiny minority of Americans are so often at a home supply store that choosing a pickup over a trailer would make any sense.
Your scenario here makes even less sense because most cars do not come with a trailer hitch (trucks on other hand...), you're buying another thing (which lowers that this is supposed to be an "affordable" EV), you have to renew registration for the trailer, and have a place on top of your vehicle to store it.
A truck bed is nice to have sometimes. You can quickly throw things in it (like plywood, a new large flat screen, bicycles, fishing gear, a dead deer, etc). You don't have to hookup a trailer or fiddle with wiggling things between doors and so forth.
I bet the lack of screens makes it a no-go for a lot of truck drivers. Without a screen, and backup cameras, pickup truck drivers will find it much, much harder to back into parking spots, especially the narrower parking spots in urban parking lots.
Yes. A parking camera / screen is a straight up improvement compared to relying on windows and skill.
People who complain about screens are usually not complaining about that but rather about common functionality that used to be a single physical button now is buried deep inside a buggy menu system.
> Yes. A parking camera / screen is a straight up improvement compared to relying on windows and skill.
Car screens and I don't get on. At all. For backing up, what works for me is a full check first and directly viewing while backing up, augmenting with mirrors.
For me, backing up precisely and not running over things are two different skills. I'll check the screen for obstacles, but find it much easier to use windows/mirrors for actually getting into the spot.
This particular truck pictured appears to have a footprint about the size of a Toyota Camry, but with far greater rear visibility due to the additional headroom and no rear seat.
It's much more common to park a truck backed in than a car, in order to load the bed e.g. from a loading ramp or dock. The backup camera is great for lining the bed right up to where you are rolling on the cargo.
You _can_ do it without a camera, but the camera saves a ton of time.
There's a niche here given the prevalance of smart phones.
The last tow truck I took a ride on (modern, tilt tray, full lifts, etc) was operated by the driver who happily and easily juggled two phones ... he had one in a cradle, the other hand held, used the cradle one to look up routes, bid for jobs, and general map operations.
At lights or when refueling he was talking on the free phone while cross referencing via text and map searches on the cradle phone.
Additionally the truck console had screens for reversing, etc.
Point being .. we live in a world where it reasonable to have physical control, screen free, relative "dumb" vehicle that still has a diagnostics bus and rear cameras and distance sensors that can accessed via the drivers phone or tablet.
With cable | wifi and auth or some kind the operators smart device can upload music to the cars sound system and the vehicle can return infomation and visuals from sensors .. perhaps.
Article mentions backup cam is required now. Still, can't think of a reason I'd back into a space in a parking lot. Don't think I ever have. If I needed to for some reason, I'd lower the tailgate.
>Still, can't think of a reason I'd back into a space in a parking lot
I back into spaces almost exclusively. reason: I see that I can do it when I arrive, and realize that exiting forward will be a breeze regardless of the future conditions (you are backing into an empty space, and forwarding into a space with other moving cars that are out of your control).
it's one forward lap and one backward lap, same difference, in addition to which I find steerability/maneuverability is much better with the "steering" wheels in the back, because after you get the forward aligned to enter the slot, you can simply steer away after that.
You can get into a smaller space by reversing in. In the UK there are parking lots where I would never attempt driving in forwards because it would take multiple back-forward movements to achieve it due to the width of the space.
> Still, can't think of a reason I'd back into a space in a parking lot.
Safety. Several organizations that have automotive fleets recommend it for that. Pulling in backwards is safer because everybody can see everybody while that is occurring. Pulling out forwards is safer because you have much wider field of view and you have to do less maneuvering.
Liability. If you are pulling out forward and someone doing 50 in the parking lot hits you, you have a much better chance of them being at fault. If you get hit backing up, it is almost always considered your fault irrespective of how stupid the other driver is being.
The majority of pickups I see in Denver and NoCo parking spots are backed in. This behavior seemed to come on very suddenly, maybe 3 years ago. I rarely saw it, and then suddenly, 3 out of 4 pickups are backed in. Puzzled me until I realized that a rearview camera with the green/yellow/red markings on the image made all the difference.
I kind of like it, but re-use is the way to go, Problem is you get Tax credits for buying new EV but just a shit tonne of regulations and no money to convert your old truck; that was New Zealand five years ago. I really hope other countries have it easier as most older gas trucks are easy to convert to EV's at the end of their lives by a decent amateur.
I have a 1990 Hilux pickup working just fine as my daily driver, but it cost about US$20K to convert and with only 100KM range it is only effective as a second vehicle. Good news though is with a couple of future battery swaps it will only get better and should outlive me.
This is basically a reliable, commercially viable version of that concept.
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