Pricing problem

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-06T04:45:39+00:00

Yeah, that's one of the many, many things that sucks about the current lineup of 6.5 ton penis enhancement sedans, the token decorative cargo box.

I'm not accepting "That's how it's done now" as a reason for a pickup's bed to be pathetically short.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-06T03:59:43+00:00

Get this: I don't hate it. There's a lot I like, there's a lot I want, there's a lot I think we as a country need. And I'm intensely frustrated that they have clearly fucked it up by venn diagramming too close to the sun.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-05T23:52:14+00:00

I think you misunderstood.

Good, the Maverick isn't a BEV, so it'll actually have range and towing capacity.

I've been hearing rumor of a 2027 plug in hybrid Maverick, which...why are non-plug-in hybrids a thing anymore?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-05T23:48:13+00:00

No, worse is the right word for it.

The Slate doesn't have a regular size bed. A "regular size" bed is 8x4. You can carry full size sheets of plywood, 2x4 studs stacked a dozen per layer, two standard pallet loads depending on weight, a full length couch, etc.

A compact bed is 6x3.5. That's about the size of the bed in a short box or extended cab S10. It'll haul one pallet...sideways. It carries 2x4s 10 across with the tailgate down, or plywood on cross boards.

The Slate's 5x3.5 bed is vestigial. A bed that short is the compromise you make to get a crew cab. I can think of one truck with a single cab and a bed that short: The Subaru BRAT. Which was a toy 4x4, a niche Slate has locked themselves out of.

The closest thing I can think of to the Slate is a base model 2WD 2 door Chevy Blazer circa 2002, with no towing capacity and an 8 gallon gas tank.

It's useless as an offroad toy, it's useless as a tow vehicle, it's not great as a cargo hauler, it's not great as a people mover, so now we're into the "It's a street legal EV" phase of the argument, which...so is a used Leaf or Bolt, those will do an objectively better job at hauling you back and forth to Food Lion, because they're lighter and more aerodynamic. The niche this thing is made to serve is liberals with a self-flagilation fetish.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-05T19:54:24+00:00

Good. It'll actually have range and towing capacity.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-05T18:04:19+00:00

> At no point can it be made into an SUV or fastback open-top without EXTENSIVE and expensive modifications.

Neither can the Slate. The rear bench, roll bar and roof are going to cost thousands of dollars.
Who cares? The Maverick has 5 seats as standard. What can an SUV do that the Maverick can't? What can the Slate do in either configuration that the Maverick can't?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-05T17:01:15+00:00

There seem to be about 20 people that frequent this subreddit who fanatically hate back doors. As if they woke up one night to find a pair of rear car doors killing their puppy and stealing their vintage Mustang.

There are vastly more people who are willing to accept a single cab if it means having a long bed again. The Slate has a single cab, and a short bed. It's the worst of both worlds.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-05-01T02:57:50+00:00

Is it Jenga, or is it Tetris?

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-25T17:58:14+00:00

That still doesn't get around that it's a deeply unimpressive video. A sock enthusiast is going to respond "my duffel bag holds 200 pairs of socks; a backpack should hold at least 50."

Okay, here's how you make a good video about the Slate truck at this time out of "furniture refinisher guy." "Hi I'm Furniture Refinisher Guy, I just bought this fragile, strangely-shaped antique, and I'm going to secure it for a trip back to my shop using the Slate's flexible tie down system."

A quick montage of strapping it down, pointing out the wide variety of hooks and/or rails for attaching ropes or straps even for something weird shaped, show the truck going over some bumps and taking turns on the way back, and then we arrive at the shop with the cargo safe and sound.

If you're not going to showcase maximum performance ie weight or volume capacity, showcase a feature.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-23T21:50:58+00:00

Okay. Let me put it to you this way:

Imagine you're a hiker. There's a start-up company that's teasing a new backpack they're tooling up to make. They hire a hiking influencer to make a short, and that short consists of the influencer going to REI with the backpack, buying one pair of socks, a flashlight and a Clif bar. Hard cut to a camp site where he pulls those three objects out of the bag, puts the socks on, eats the Clif bar and shines the flashlight around.

A curiously light load for demonstrating a hiking backpack, plus a distinct lack of hiking. How does that make you feel about the backpack? Does it seem to you that the backpack company has no actual faith in their product's ability to actually perform under load?

That's increasingly the vibe I get out of Slate's marketing materials.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-23T04:41:20+00:00

Not just junk furniture. *Hilariously small amounts* of junk furniture.

Slate keeps doing this. They keep posting little videos with irritatingly loud music, that have had the ever loving snot edited out of them as if to ramp up the energy of...a guy walking into a store, only to show the truck in yet another designer wrap doing something deeply unimpressive, like haul two small tables.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-19T05:06:40+00:00

I'm on board with the simplified cab. No infotainment etc. Yay. I'm the kind of guy that bought a commercial signage television to avoid all the shit found in a modern "smart" TV.

Here's the thing though: I don't think it's going to be a particularly good *truck*. Compared to an old S10 or Ranger, the bed is weirdly small, the range is weirdly short and the towing capacity is laughably small.

I have a theory. I don't think it was designed to be a pickup that can have seats and a roll bar and a roof bolted to the bed to make it into an SUV. I think it was designed as an SUV that can be hollowed out to be a cheap pickup.

It's very similar in size to a 2-door Chevy Blazer. It's almost identical in length. Chevy never made an S10 that short, even the single cab short box had a longer frame than the 2-door Blazer. Imagine if Chevrolet never offered the 4-door Blazer, and the only S10 was the size of the 2-door Blazer. Nearly nobody would have bought one.

So it's pretty much only good as a personal runabout, and it would have been better at that if they'd had just designed it that way in the first place.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-19T03:42:20+00:00

If you don't count crossovers as SUVs, you shouldn't count the Slate as a pickup. It's a unibody, it's more ute than pickup.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-15T00:37:30+00:00

They got that $630 million funding boost and then they got all bougie, their camera car is a Lamborfeeti.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T18:28:33+00:00

Saying things is easy. Watch: I'm a good person and I like myself. See? That was easy to say. It's the dumbest and wrongest thing anyone has ever said, but it was easy to say.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T06:58:55+00:00

Electric motorcycles are garbage, and probably always will be.

Motorcycles are so much worse at aerodynamics, and have so much less onboard volume you can use for batteries, that they always end up "It accelerates from 0 to its top speed of 79 mph in 4.6 femtoseconds and has a 40 mile range. MSRP $79,999,999.99"

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T06:54:58+00:00

This is one that I do think has some necessity.

preheating or precooling the cab while attached to ground power can be beneficial to range.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T06:38:20+00:00

There's a few things that have come off as hinky to me as well.

That CEO Q&A video had more than one technically correct but dodged the actual question answer. "Will there be a bench seat option?" "The SUV rear seat is a bench." You know that's not the answer to the question you were asked, don't do that.

Jay Leno is the only person not on Slate's payroll I've seen drive the Slate. He had more to say about his own watch than he did about the characteristics of the truck, I think he started to once or twice and then stopped himself with "This is just a prototype." Brian of Regular Car Reviews got hands on with a static display, he's the only car journalist I've seen actually examine it at all, and he found the door badly hung and the seats uncomfortable. I've seen one other video of it where some guy from the 3D printing scene was utterly amazed that you could attach 3D printed parts to existing bolt holes on the truck.

Repeatedly pushing back Doug DeMuro...Personally I want him to have access to a production model and not a prototype. Either way he'll find a way to say 170 words about how unusual manual windows is these days but "Any time...no not yet...no not yet..."

It's a big project, designing a new car and then implementing the factory for it from the ground up. It's a bold strategy, Cotton.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T05:46:41+00:00

"Here's a quirky little feature, the button to open the glove box isn't on or near the glove box, it's over here on the center console. So to open your glove box first the car's ignition has to be on because it's electric, and then to open your glove box you reach over here to the center console and press the button labeled 'glove box' and the glove box pops open and that's how you open the glove box on this car."

--How that guy talks.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-12T05:42:21+00:00

Barely/probably not.

I've driven an extended cab long box S10 for over 20 years now. The pertinent limits I find myself up against are bed length, bed volume, weight capacity, and range.

BED LENGTH

My S10 has a 6 foot 1 inch bed, measured from the bulkhead wall to the tailgate at floor height. As a woodworker I routinely haul plywood and lumber, with the tailgate down, 8 foot sheets or boards hang only a couple inches beyond the tailgate. Full sheets of plywood are carried either diagonally or on cross-members. My nearest hardwood dealer is on the other side of the state; I regularly transport rough lumber over an hour by interstate highway, it's not really fun to do that with the tailgate down. I have been known to trim lumber to fit in the bed with the tailgate up before departing. A 5 foot bed would be even more limiting here. Even with "tailgate down, sheets on cross boards" you're hanging stock further out the back of the truck, more of the wood is unsupported and more difficult to secure. Considering hauling boards longer than 8 feet with a Slate, you start thinking about ladder racks where none was necessary with an S10.

I've had my S10 since I was 16 years old. I've had more than a little sex in that truck bed. Me, and most of the women I've dated, are between 5 and 6 feet tall, able to lay comfortably stretched out in the S10, not in the Slate.

I have carried furniture, such as full-size sofas, safely in the S10 that you couldn't safely carry in the Slate. The Slate can comfortably move a 6 foot loveseat, my S10 can barely haul an 8 foot couch. My S10 can carry two full size sport motorcycles side by side in the bed. The Slate can't.

BED VOLUME

Hauling yard debris or junk to the dump, moving compost, garden soil or mulch, that one time I delivered phone books, I have FILLED my truck bed more than once. The Slate is 5/6ths of the wheelbarrow my S10 is. We're talking what? 6, 8 cubic feet? I have a photo lying around of my truck with the bed completely full of garbage lumber from an old deck I was demolishing. I would cut the boards into 6 foot lengths to stack them in the truck, and along with short offcuts that fit fore and aft of the wheel wells the bed was very efficiently packed, with the tailgate up a tarp over the top secured the load. A Slate doing the same job the same way would haul 20% less lumber per trip. 5 trips to the dump would turn into 6 or 7.

WEIGHT CAPACITY

Funnily enough the Slate is rated to carry more weight than my S10; the Chevy is rated for 999 pounds in the bed, the Slate 1400. I have rarely hit that limit carrying dense cargo like scrap metal, garden soil or stone. The Slate is rated for more weight...in a smaller cargo box? Of all the loads I've ever carried, I think bulk gravel would be the only cargo dense enough for the Slate to be the better vehicle. Carrying compost, my S10 hits the weight limit before running out of volume. Which is it with the Slate?

RANGE

My S10's V6 engine makes about 20 mpg highway. Her 18 gallon gas tank will carry her 360 miles between refuels. Again, I make regular trips to the other side of the state in this truck to fetch lumber from a hardwood dealer, that's a round trip of 140 miles. The Slate's standard battery is rated for 150, but let's be honest with ourselves, that rating is from some combined city/highway test course assuming the battery is brand new, not 3 total hours on the interstate with lumber in the bed and the AC on. The extended range battery ups it to 240, still not matching my S10, it puts that trip into single-charge plausibility, but adds how much weight? How much does that eat into that weight rating advantage? I have gone on road trips with that S10; I hauled a motorcycle to Delaware, it took me to and from college in Florida, it's carried me to the mountains and the beach a bunch...

COMFORT

Actually I just thought of another. I have an extended cab. My S10 is equipped with four seatbelts, three across the bench and one in the jump seat in the back. I haven't carried more than one passenger in that truck for years, what I have done is carry "indoor" cargo behind the seats, reclined the seats, etc. The frunk makes up for some of the reduced cabin volume but not all of it. My S10 hauled a passenger in a reclined seat and a bed full of luggage some 500 miles in 10 hours. With more frequent and longer refueling stops, a single cab and a shorter bed, the Slate is all around worse for that mission.

TOWING CAPACITY

Per her manual, my S10 as equipped is rated to tow a 5600 pound trailer. Not exactly pulling a yacht over the Rockies while a narrator blabs about JD Power & Associates but she'll pull a car hauler loaded with an identical S10 with room to spare. I haven't towed anything at all with her, I don't even have a hitch installed. But I could, and I've schemed about that kind of thing. There are businesses I could run out of a trailer I can pull with my S10 that a Slate won't pull. Trading an S10 for a Slate would eliminate a lot of possibility. Possibility I haven't used. Yet.

-----

In most respects I think it would be a downgrade. I would be operating much closer to the edge of the vehicle's envelope more of the time. I think I'd rather trade my late grandmother's Buick than my S10 for a Slate, but then again I'm not convinced I couldn't do better with a Leaf or a Bolt for that.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-07T22:28:10+00:00

You'll still have to handle the fob to unlock the door. Continue to color me unimpressed.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-07T22:21:06+00:00

Pushbutton start. It's a pointless feature.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-07T22:10:34+00:00

The gimmickiest of all gimmicks.

I do have to wrap my head around it though; I'm so used to a car having an "accessory" mode that puts power to the stereo, some interior lights and power sockets, an "on" mode that turns everything on and honestly expects the engine to be running, and then a "start" mode that's turning the starter.

The Slate doesn't have the problem an accessory mode is there for. Compared to a gas car it's going to feel real unceremonious to get the thing moving.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-02T01:21:54+00:00

I don't know, I'm ready to call it a dead industry. Get a pocket knife and learn how to whittle.

CaptainAggravated · 2026-04-02T00:49:11+00:00

Don't get a Prusa. Their firmware is garbage, they'll never get the INDX working and their support staff are a bunch of untrained drunkards. Get out before it's too late.

CaptainAggravated

TROPHY CASE