Slate Auto Plans for Basic, Made in USA EV Pickup
April 25th, 2025This is a long way from actually happening, but at least someone is trying…
Website: slate.auto
Via: Motortrend:
It’s news to no one that new cars are expensive. Years of rival automakers locked in tit-for-tat battles for higher power, longer range, bigger screens, and just more has led to a steady rise in prices. Even new cars with a low starting MSRP can be hard to find as those that arrive at dealer lots are often stuffed with cost-adding options and accessories.
Slate is here to kick that trend. Its first product will be a small truck that’s shockingly bare-bones. Among the few features within its plastic body are manually adjustable cloth seats, a tiny screen, and—get this—crank windows. Designed and built in the United States with a focus on American-sourced parts, Slate is targeting a starting price of under $20,000 after federal incentives.
More: The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen
No internet connection for remote control? That would be fantastic!
It appears to have no persistent network connection. To update the vehicle’s software, one would have to connect a mobile phone to it.
Mobile network modem adds unnecessary costs. Since most people carry such a device around with them (in the form of a mobile phone), they can use that to update the vehicle’s software when/if necessary.
It’s great that it’s optional.
From another site:
“The Department of Transportation said Thursday it will ease safety regulations for the development of self-driving vehicles in a move designed to maintain U.S. global dominance in the industry.
“The program will exempt U.S. automakers from safety regulations for automated vehicles, or AVs, intended for research or demonstration purposes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) letter.”
So you get a remote-controlled auto without crash protections? Sounds like Michael Hastings, 2013, was among other things a successful demo. Buy your Slate before it’s too late; fed law will soon require that all autos have remote control?
If I were an engineer, I’d buy one and take it apart to see if it can be remotely hacked or not. I’m betting it can be.
The Slate pickup is explicitly marketed as NOT having any self-driving features. It has no built in way of sending telemetry. This would be the least “connected” newly manufactured street legal vehicle available, and by a very large margin.
If it has any sort of undocumented radio, that will be found very quickly.
The way it looks now, any surveillance related to the vehicle’s internal systems would need to be done via the driver’s mobile phone, which is not required to operate the vehicle.
Keep in mind: Paranoia about vehicle location information is almost pointless at this stage, as license plate surveillance was pervasive a decade ago. I’m not suggesting that people should give up, or think it’s ok. It isn’t. Just realize that a vehicle surveillance dragnet was operational a decade ago in the U.S.
Europe is probably worse.
Surveillance is one issue. Taking control from the driver and taking him wherever is another. Consider the numbers of people who still don’t believe that voting machines can be hacked, despite the Dutchman taking one apart electronically and proving they can on camera almost 20 years ago. Some people, whether paranoid or forward-looking, wrap their cell phones in foil before driving; others simply don’t have one. We’ll see, in another 10 years, where this tech has taken us.