Is anyone following Slate auto? They claim to be making a suburban pickup in the Ford Ranger size for ~20k. I've been cautiously optimistic about my reservation.
They apparently optimized for cost and molecularity, most notably by removing the infotainment system, which apparently is the biggest warranty / "feature" cost center.
It's a pretty car but I feel like they are mostly just selling a story about cost savings. Third party carplay screens can be bought for $150 so that just can't be very meaningful. The real cost savings is that it's a cheaply built EV with a small battery. Plus it's hard to get excited talking about the price a startup is claiming to sell cars at, before any have made it to consumers.
That being said the car looks sweet. I hope we have more startups making retro-vibe electric cars since the barrier to entry is much lower than with combustion engines.
Apparently (and I'm paraphrasing), the cost of the screen is not much. There's the cost of controls integration, at least, but also feature segmentation and warranty servicing. Apparently that's a lot of work to provide / cover and infotainment is one of the top warranty items. So it makes it a lot cheaper to just add a rack for your off the shelf bluetooth speaker.
They apparently optimized for cost and molecularity, most notably by removing the infotainment system, which apparently is the biggest warranty / "feature" cost center.