Yes, more of this please!
No idea why it has no stereo though. That feels like a pretty basic feature. Doesnt even need to be built in. Just iso standard head unit bay would do.
They could have put a screen in it so I can hook up my phone to it!
That’s like the one thing I care about in the car being able to use android auto!
Already tired of seeing this cool car and now I’m already seeing more “fuck car” articles and post; as well as countries wanting to limit cars on the road. Something is at foot
It’s backed by Bezos. Wouldn’t even consider it for that reason alone.
The design is bad. The front trunk is a bad use of space, and the Japanese figured this out decades ago with the Kei truck. If you want to see real utility, look at this design.
The front trunk is a safety feature called a crumple zone and is objectively safer to be in a crash with.
Hm. Interesting point.
Maybe as we move our economy away from cars, and people dont all have to be drivers, we could also move away from cars that are poorly designed specifically around bad drivers.
Kei was recently found to botch all of their safety test scores for many years. As another commenter said, any crash in that design is guaranteed life threatening without some type of buffer.
If theres anything Ive learned from the fire departments insistence to have big wide roads so that they can shave off nano seconds to their response time, sometimes theres bigger things than persieved immediate safety to the individual.
For example, if we all drove Kei trucks slowly on small roads, a collision would not be as bad as driving a big safety focused truck at 80mph.
Still, your point is well taken. Maybe there are some ways to make safe small vehicles, including trucks, that arent explored yet.
You need infrastructure to actually support an alternative, otherwise cars are a necessity for many people to get to work and the grocery store.
Yeah, it would be nice to not need cars. I feel like this is a step towards function and away from vanity. Which is a good thing, even if it’s not the end goal.
That is true, except I’m talking about utility primarily. Garbage trucks already fulfill the design I’m mentioning and are used daily in most cities already.
People in garbage trucks don’t experience the same magnitude of force in a crash of equal speed, even without crumple zones, for a few reasons:
- Sheer mass of the garbage truck means that the same amount of momentum transfer results in less force to the humans inside. A garbage truck might weigh literally 20 times as much as a kei truck, which means that an abrupt collision will transfer 1/20 as much impulse to the passengers (as most of the force goes into changing the speed of the truck). Even collisions with still objects (trees, walls, poles) result in less force on the passengers, as a lot of the energy ends up deforming or disintegrating that stationary object as a crumple zone.
- Driver/passenger height in a garbage truck is generally above where the collision/deformation occurs. The passenger compartment isn’t under as much crushing force in a garbage truck crash compared to a kei truck at normal human height.
- The height of a garbage truck gives a lot more physical structure to dissipate the forces in a crash.
So the exact same shape/proportions of vehicle can be vastly different safety when large versus small.
Are you saying that because a heavy duty, highly specialized, utility vehicle, doesn’t have a crumple zone that the Slate truck is a bad design?
In my view the Slate truck is designed as a work vehicle. It’s for people who need to both hual things, and have a place to store tools. It’s trunk is perfect for that.
The Kei, and box trucks that we have in the US (which would have been a way better example for you to use.), are great for delivery vehicles. Jobs where you load things up and come back with an empty truck.
There’s a place for both form factors. The Slate is not a bad design, it just doesn’t fit what you think the use case for a small truck is.
Front trunks save lives in collisions though. I’d 100% rather be in a vehicle with a hood between me and another car, and I say this as an avid kei-truck fan.
Counterpoint: One of the first things people buy for a truck is a container for the bed for things they don’t want to be in the weather but also not in the cab.
A front-trunk eliminates this need which also frees up bed space.
Exactly, you can usually tell someone actually needs a truck if it’s got a stainless box behind the cab. Obviously there’s still people who cosplay as truck drivers that will have them too, but there are other signs you can use to tell them apart.
Americans won’t buy a Kei truck though. Granted, the frunk is a marketing concession, but it’s a fine one, if it can help push the market away from huge and expensive SUVs.
Or, more succinctly, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Americans won’t be able to afford anything anyway pretty soon.
no touchscreen
Sounds like a dream. Or public transport. It doesn’t have touchscreen either.
Is it a networked surveillance nightmare?
Good luck, independent car manufacturers usually get bankrupted out of business directly or indirectly by a market dominated by traditional car manufacturing lobbies designed to be replete with minefields that usually go up in difficulty just before it’s supposed to reach mass production. There have been plenty of innovative EV designs that have died off because of this, and it’s telling how much power those lobbies have when its the one thing countries will unite against to keep Chinese competition off of their borders.
No stereo is fine if it has ports for me to just buy my own car stereo kit and add it afterwards. I don’t see the point of no paint, like don’t you need it to protect the metal from the environment
It’s no paint because the body is plastic. It’s not even black plastic coated grey. Just grey plastic.
I see, are there any other all plastic mass market cars out there, I’m just not sure how that material holds up in terms of wear and tear and accidents
Look up Saturn plastic body panels. The hood, roof, and top of the trunk we’re still metal.
I had one as my first car. I got rear ended once, and the plastic parts were mostly fine (a little paint chipped off), but the metal top got bent. The trunk itself worked and I never fixed the metal.
Edit to add: the car was made in 1999, I think I bought it in 2008 and had it for about ten years. I got rid of it because the electronics were getting gremlins. Neither the paint on the plastic or metal panels had issues except for the mentioned fender bender.
Saturn used to have door panels set up in their dealerships and encouraged kids to jump on them. I was one of those kids.
The msrp of this truck is $28000. For having nothing in it that is absurd. Not to mention the rebates put it at 20k but you still have to pay upfront which deters most people from getting. Overall shit truck, shit design, shit price.
See, tariffs work!
/s
We’re owning the libs now! Now we can all buy any EV we want! It’s all computer.
No stereo is the only thing I would change
It seems to be designed with that in mind.
Frugal design. I love it.
“No touchscreen” is a really great selling point imo
I fucking hate the touchscreen in my vehicle.
I am excited, this is what my husband and I have been waiting for - a regular vehicle with no bells and whistles just to raise the price
Fun fact, this isn’t $20K but that’s what it takes to get people, to share the article. The actual arrival says that it’s $20K after government rebates in the US. So it’s actually expensive without tax dollars.
I wonder how much petrol/diesel would cost if the government didn’t subsidise it. And if they were actually held liable for oil spills.
I’m at least glad it’s not yet another bigger truck. I just want a vehicle to get from A to B that can actually fit things in the bed
Yup! And hopefully starts a new thing that other makers get behind!
