I so bad want this to work. I hate computers in cars (beyond the ecu for efi and abs, that is all a car needs)
Sucks that its bezos funded but hey. Take what we can.
Battery management requires a lot of computer logic. The simple act of plugging in an EV to a charger involves a complex handshake for negotiating the amount of power to deliver, which the control unit figures out by reading the sensors in each battery cell, and routes the electric power to the appropriate cells. Same thing for discharging the battery to power the vehicle, and recharging the battery from regenerative braking while driving.
No matter how you slice it, an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle, just for the basic powertrain management.
I’m with you on user interfaces, though.
No matter how you slice it, an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle, just for the basic powertrain management.
I’ve got ECU reads with full DAMOS data (memory addresses of maps) for my two cars, one from 2001 (Bosch EDC15P) and one from 2007 (Bosch EDC16CP34). If you’re willing to download the demo version of WinOLS, I can send you the WinOLS projects if you want to see how much was going on in there even back in 2001, let alone 2007. I unfortunately don’t have an EDC17 ECU or any of the petrol ECUs physically available, but I believe can give you full bench reads of some of them since I downloaded a huge torrent that would extract into a few terabytes of data for different vehicles.
Or if you don’t want all that, let me just give you an example of one tiny sliver of functionality in an EDC 16 diesel ECU, the actual fuel being sprayed. We’ll completely ignore even very closely related things like boost pressure.
The car is running and in gear. The driver presses on the fun pedal. First off, there are multiple maps for each thing based on mode (Sport/comfort) and possibly the gear you’re in (for torque limiters). The value of this pedal is translated into a “driver’s wish” value in Newton-meters of torque based on current RPM (in different RPM ranges this is limited to a different number). Multiple things are now calculated based on RPM and driver’s wish: Among the fuel ones are: injection quantity (mg/stroke), fuel rail pressure (controlled by a valve on the rail as well as a metering valve on the pump), start of injection, duration of injection - actually those latter two may have been based on iq rather than dw, but it doesn’t matter much since those are very tightly related. You now have multiple different maps that limit either the driver’s wish or injection quantity and the lowest limiter applies: Smoke limiter (limitation map by air flow and RPM), torque limiter (limit simply by RPM and pedal position), potentially gear-specific torque limiters, though these could also come from the TCU. I think there may have been one or two others.
Now, before injection there’s actually pre-injection, this warms up the cylinder to get a better burn for the main event. The main event is usually aimed such that start of combustion (not start of injection) occurs fairly close to top dead center of a piston. Working on older cars like the EDC15 I believe Bosch said the delay is one millisecond (which you need to calculate in degrees of crankshaft rotation), but I think for the EDC16 and 17 ones it might be less than one millisecond since the pre-ignition is there to help. If your start of combustion is too far before top dead center, you raise cylinder pressures and temperatures and create more noise. If your end of injection is too far after top dead center, you waste fuel (bad for wallet), increase exhaust gas temperatures (bad for turbo) and put out black smoke (bad for everyone). The only time having a late end of injection is sensible is if you’re building a diesel for tractor pulls or drag racing and you want to get that last percent of power out of it. For how start of injection and duration are actually applied on the ECU: It takes the fuel quantity being asked after all the limiters and fuel or coolant temperature, then based on those it’ll choose a start of injection map (or rather, it interpolates between different maps) and based on the start of injection it interpolates between different duration maps. Rail pressure itself is also consulted, though I’m not yet 100% sure how since my EDC16 car is stripped down to repair a leak and I haven’t gotten into tuning it yet, I only started doing this this summer and I’ve only had time to work on my older EDC15 car which has unit injectors and thus no rail pressure to speak of.
Oh and fuel temperature also needs to affect everything because we calculate in mg/str, but the actual sensors measure fuel volume and as you know, density changes with temperature.
There’s also post-injection, but that’s irrelevant for everyday driving, that’s used to raise exhaust temperatures to initiate a regen burn in the diesel particulate filter every 200-1000 km.
Now, here are SOME of the other things that also get handled by this ECU and I won’t go into detail on how any of these work because it would take a day to write out this comment: Starting and stopping the engine, asking for a certain boost pressure based on multiple maps, asking for a certain airflow based on multiple maps (those two are of course heavily interrelated), reporting fault codes, operating exhaust-gas recirculation, operating cooling for the aforementioned exhaust-gas recirculation, operating cooling for the engine itself, creating swirl in the intake manifold to improve burn at lower RPMs.
And remember, this is just the engine controller, there’s also a transmission controller that’s also specific to ICE vehicles.
To me this is all fairly simple and even at very high mileages I can keep these vehicles running well for cheap to the point that EVs are incredibly cost-prohibitive for me. Your average person, however, would have to take it to a shop if something goes wrong and if the mechanic is dishonest or just doesn’t know how things work in a modern car, a simple 1 hour fix with a cheap part can turn into hours upon hours of troubleshooting along with playing parts darts with sensors and actuators and stuff. Because there are actual mechanics out there far less knowledgeable than myself, a hobbyist.
which the control unit figures out by reading the sensors in each battery cell
Tesla Model S battery has like 7000 cells. They’re 18650s, same things that go in e-cigarettes. Trust me, there is NOT a sensor in each battery cell. There may be multiple per module, sure, but it’s still at most a few hundred and likely a few dozen sensors per battery pack.
I’m not totally sure. Even an ICe car now is insane for all the modules. Sure I can see battery management in an ev being robust but I’m sure it could still be pretty simple. Look at just injectors and cam sensors in an ice vehicle and the engine harness, its insane. Not to mention the entertainment bullshit that needs all its own modules.
Yeah, modern cars are basically engineering marvels. Even when a lot of this stuff was mechanically controlled it really was something amazing to see just how precisely every little moving part did its perfectly timed function, thousands of times per minute across all 4 (or 6 or 8 or more) cylinders, pushing power through the transmission and differential and wheels.
That said, I still think that trying to understand the physical ground truth of the electrochemical energy stored in each of the 5000+ cells by reading sensor data on voltage, current, impedance, temperature, and a log of how many times each cell has been charged or discharged, does require greater electronic complexity and more sophisticated programs to manage, than an ICE control unit does.
It is pretty amazing!
Sure I can see that. Still an ev could be very simple besides the charging computer. No other techs really needed.
an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle
Not true. Modern ICE vehicles need an ECU for fuel maps, they use throttle position mapping, sensor feedback for emissions, knock, fuel sensing. Far more subsystems and computer modules than EVs.
Even that could be minimized, a car doesn’t need to have a wiring diagram that rivals a nervous system in complexity. You could definitely get away with cutting down a modern EV or ICE computer system with minimal or no loss to functionality, hell you may even make it safer overall if you scrap worthless shite like lane assist or cruise control.
That’s not a privacy issue.
The computers are issues when they include sensors, logging, storage, and uploading your data to others.
Its not the compute, its the data collection, built in ads and driver data sold to insurance companies that is the issue.
Don’t forget about the tire pressure sensors hidden inside the tires that operate wirelessly and have been shown to be able to track the vehicle. Hopefully this van doesn’t have those, but I think it’s a federal law to use them?
Yep thanks to ford (rollover lawsuit). Ford also patented vehicle tracking and cameras inside required to start the vehicle. . Probably one of the worst vehicle companies.
Jokes on them my tire sensor batteries all died heh
Sorry the tire sensors do not track the vehicle. Other things may use the tire sensors to track the vehicle.
That was poor phrasing on my part yes. They are simply a wireless device that can be tracked. They themselves do not have some sort of like built-in GPS.
you need to be within 50 meters to read a TPMS, practically much closer.
Oh, darn. Mine broke and I replaced them with valve stems. I’ll have to rectify that soon, I guess.
and you can buy it!
it’s not for sale, how can i buy it?
egregious degree of clickbait
Bezos is not the major investor.
Them using the name is purely for marketing. Smart people that hate Bezos are going to look up that he’s not the major investor. Dumb people that like Bezos are too stupid to look up anything.
And where have you heard this? It’s a private company that doesn’t disclose investors’ holdings.
You can track all the series A and B funding with a simple search. Bezos was early in A, but Mark Walter and TWG are the major investors.
Bezos-backed Slate Auto…that’s a offput.
Hard to find a car company not backed by a capitalist shitbag.
The problem here is that unless you pull off the most insane kickstarter in history, these type s of developments cannot be funded by anyone else than billionaires and megacorps, with the exception of states, like Mexico’s pickup.
Designing a thing like this can probably be pulled off by a small team of engineers and designers, but the whole production, safety testing, distribution etc is just not doable.
Ford is coming out with an EV truck at pretty much the same price point as Slate. Idk who is going to buy a bozo mobile when they can get a Ford for the same price.
fords are dogshit lmao, they only still exist because gm is somehow worse
GM’s are repairable. The insane engineering decisions Ford has been making are negativity impacting the repairability of their vehicles and their quality issues are well documented.
In fact, bad news:
Ford has 153 recalls in 2025 alone, and they’re going to use AI to fix it! Yay?
They’re both dogshit bro just buy an asian car, you’ll realize owning a car doesn’t have to be so crazy difficult.
I’ve probably owned more imports than domestics, they’ve all got their quirks. My 89 GMC had manual windows and an ice cold AC and to this day remains the vehicle that gave me the least trouble out of all of them throughout the years because it was so easy to work on. I regret selling it sometimes.
GM is having to recall over a million trucks for new motors, and already the replacement motors are breaking.
Ford’s 2025 recalls affected 13 million vehicles. One year.
Ford, GM make shit. But people like to buy shit, apparently.
Ford makes reliable trucks now? Didn’t they invent plastic oil pans and EcoBoom motors?
Plastic oil pans aren’t that bad as long as you have a proper undertray. Had one in my C-class when I still had money to drive a nice car. It’s just weight savings because of emissions regulations.
I’m much less fond of plastic valve covers in most modern engines, those tend to start leaking much faster, I’ve got a car with only 415k km that already has a leak from the plastic valve cover. Not an issue I’ve had with metal ones usually.
Plastics in engine bays are not a great idea. Plastic functional parts in an ICE are a shit idea.
Yeah but then you’d have a Ford. You’ll still need a truck though
Ford has telemetry spying and insurance data selling. I’m not buying any new car with all that garbage. They also patented self driving features that will immobilize your car or drive it back to the dealer if you miss payments. Screw ford.
As an aside, Android has similar to the latter now via DeviceLockController.
Thanks to GrapheneOS I don’t have to deal with that ever, and I’m Canadian where phones are sold unlocked from carrier, locked ones have to be unlocked from carrier within 2 days of ownership
Yeah I was looking into getting the truck until I found that out…
Well that’s the deciding factor. Not for me. Edit: Someone said bezoz is not the major funder.
All electric car companies are funded by billionaires.
Take solace in the fact that they lose money in the beginning.
Camper van build when? :3c
I’m curious what those dimensions and range will be.
I’d love to have a little campervan for adventures without paying 50k+ for a gas guzzler
Default range is a little over 200 miles. Adding the weight of the camping stuff is likely to be what affects mileage more than the cargo shell, but I would guess it would still be over 150 miles in most conditions.
The shell actually is likely the bigger impact.
Electric cars are already really heavy, and they get most of their efficiency from aerodynamics.
Most of the range from aero’s, efficiency is highest with electric as the power is directly used, not lost to heat and moving parts
Yes, but the “default” range is in the truck configuration
4,000 lbs. Same as a F150, 2600 lbs less than a F150 lightning.
Electric mini-camper truck, neat. Might as well go ahead and put what few solar panels can be fit upon the roof for a little more power inside for accessories
Can the next thing they come out with be 4 wheel drive plsssssss. I want one so bad, but don’t really wana drive a rear wheel in snow
Plus AWD tends to be more effective at capturing kinetic energy from regenerative braking, and recharging the battery while slowing down, because the motors on all 4 wheels also serve as generators connected to all 4 wheels.
I too would love a 4x4 option, or at least all-wheel drive.
Though having driven rear-wheel trucks in the winter, the Slate should be less terrible. The location of the battery and motor add weight over the drive tires. I expect it to not slide around as much as a rear-wheel truck with engine in the front.
Rear wheel drive is fine in snow in a vehicle with proper weight distribution. It’s not a stupid ICE pickup with all the weight over the non drive wheels.
They are not considering a full 4WD option for a utility pickup? How is that going together? People on the countryside are not going to use it much. It’ll be a city banger only.
You all had great opinions, but I live in the mountains and have to deal with lot more snow than the average bear. If I were just driving flat I’d buy it no issue since as most of you pointed out, the weight distribution is going to be way better.
I’m not sure how the drivetrain is built on this thing but I feel like if my diesel pickup would let me to lock the rear diff without switching to 4LO first I could probably get by without 4WD for the most part. Now because of the differential, when one rear wheel slips the other does nothing effecitively making it 1 wheel drive. Not that it changes the core argument though - I’d never buy a truck without 4WD.
You just need to buy a truck with a “Limited-Slip Differential”(LSD) then.
My cousin Vinnie taught me what that is. Actually, his girlfriend did, but still.
That’s 1970s tech…most pickups are still in 1950s tech.
it has a basic physical open differential paired with a brake-actuated virtual limited-slip system.
You only need 4WD on ICE pickups because they put the drive wheels under the lightest end of the truck when it’s unloaded, which is most of time, unless you buy a rare FWD pickup like the Maverick.
Pretty interesting. I’d like to know the dimensions and how much it hurts the range.
I’m definitely curious about the range hit. Starting at 200 miles and raising the roof can’t be great.
After seeing tons of ID Buzz cargo vans in use in Europe, though, I think it could still thrive as a fleet truck in cities.
EVs do very well with stop/start driving, opposite of ICE. So whatever effect of aero is likely balanced with lack of highway travel.
A small delivery truck is a huge gap in the NA market.
Load it full of gear and it drops to around 100, I’d bet. That’s fine if you have a fleet of them, and you’re delivering in a city. But, no one is making a usable campervan out one of these.
EDIT: I was imagining taking one into backcountry, not driving to a commercial “campsite” and plugging in. If all you plan to do is drive between parking lots, then yeah, it would work.
depends on if the campervan is also your house.
For short trips, the higher load will also regen more energy.
Especially since the bed is 5 feet long.
You could attach a tent to extend the back. The whole point of this design is the CAD files are open for anyone to make third party addons. Slate encourages this.
was unaware they had CAD models open to the public. How did you get them? I don’t see them published on their site.
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/slate-truck-ev-2027-3d-model-3d-model-2427761
They were on their website but they were removed.
that pop-up mockup is great.
The second one slides out in a nested design. The more they sell, the bigger the aftermarket.
Image caption says
High-roof Slate Auto cargo; made w/ AI
Good god, please tell me they’re not saying that this car was designed with AI?!?
I think the image was rendered with AI. I don’t see it on slate’s website, looks like electrek made it?
The car was made by Jeff Bezos so even worse
I mean, it’s not. Bezos doesn’t make anything.
He owns the means of production.
I really want one of these myself but worried that it may contain some networking module that sends data back home about every little metric that the other advanced cars have today (not interested in being tracked). Gonna hold out until I get confirmation of that.
From what I’ve read it looks to be the best modern option in that regard. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/slate-says-its-electric-pickup-will-never-track-you/
Wayyyy much better than small-dick-energy monster trucks that are on American roads
Ford has came out with the “Ford Fathom” for a base price point of $28.4k… No one is buying a Slate with less features for the same price.
I would, because slate comes without all the ford telemetry and insurance spying stuff. Slate has a phone holder and Bluetooth speaker type setup.
Are you in the market for a cargo van? Because I suspect most will be bought by companies where they see one vehicle with a larger spec sheet versus another with a smaller one and both have the same price
I think its aimed at utility, and folks that care about simplicity and not gimmicks.
Currently I’ve moved myself out of the market. We were due for a new car, but side bar: For work travel I rent vehicles often* and get to see lots of makes and models and the enshitification that’s happened. Especially with SaaS for using Navigation, and seat heaters, etc. But the phone home data gleaning that the company gather and sells is to me a violation of owning a product.
Dealerships want 180-220 per hour for repairs here.
So we found an early 2000s Toyota with an excellent service history, and downgraded our vehicle by 10 years. We then got an aftermarket touch display and replaced the ancient AMFM radio. So we now have Navigation and modern hands free experience.
Because it is a simpler car with mostly physical/mechanical connected parts I can do all repairs myself and control my private data.
- rant: one rental I booked an economy car, and they only had a new Mercedes available. They acted like it was an amazing upgrade. It was the shittiest vehicle I have driven in a long time.
Seats were hard and flat like a park bench (compared to a civic or Toyota seat that is cupped to your body).
On days when the temperature went below zero C the infotainment unit would boot loop and become unusable. When it came online hours later the nav was unavailable.
The driver assist algorithm that should detect a sleepy driver was messed up. Fully awake morning drives, with supersmooth pedal modulation and smoothest steering input into curves would trigger “take a coffee break” logo over the info center making it unusable.
Then a few days later the car said it couldn’t recognize the key. And said place in the designated spot for reconnection with chip. I read the user manual instructions on it, but they left out where to place the key to be recognized. I had to YouTube it where somebody showed it was the passenger cupholder.
Thankfully this happened when car was unlocked. Had it been locked when key code was messed up I’d have been locked out since there wasn’t a physical lock to open the car.
Like who wants all those problems?
That’s the MSRP, but you know by the time dealerships get ahold of it it will be $40k.
Does Slate have plans to avoid dealers? I guess they could just list them on Amazon lol
Slate isnt using dealers, they are taking direct orders from their website. Default option is delivery to your nearest logistics center they can contract with, you can get it to your driveway for extra.
Bezos was one of a few large investors, but isn’t the owner. I don’t imagine they’ll want to be associated with Amazon any closer than they already are.
Why does the nose have to be so large?
It’s not appealing and you lose like 25% of cargo space for the vehicle
The nose IS cargo space.
Slate is a good concept but I seriously doubt they will survive. They are barricaded on a tariff island and Americans have proven they hate EVs. All EV companies are fighting for a sliver of market share in the US.
Failure to go global is what will kill Slate. Wrong government to start an EV company with. If they even get a sniff of sales, China will just copy it and sell better, cheaper. It’s very fast to develop EVs.
A few reasons. Crash safety and comfort. It’s hard to make comfortable driver and passenger seats over the wheel well. It’s also hard to make that part reinforced for side impact and behind a crumple zone for head on impact when it’s over the wheel well.
The “hood” area houses an enclosed “frunk” cargo area, the 12V battery, steering and braking gear, and the radiator.
It also allows the vehicle to strike a pose and form factor familiar to its intended market of American pickup truck drivers.
I drove past a 70s era pickup someone obviously took great care of. It was striking how small, low it was compared with modern trucks just designed to look bigger for no engineering purposes.
Those two trucks will be late 80s early 90s and late 90s early 2000s vingate, respectively.
The Slate is actualyl even smaller than those trucks. The bed is shorter. The thing with the Slate is, it’s designed to be an SUV. Slate set out to make a 5-seat SUV and realized that they could offer a lower starting price if half the roof and three of the seats were optional.
They’re either going to have to come out with an uprange model with AWD and proper offroad capabilities to angle toward the Subaru BRAT/Geo Tracker market, the cute little offroad toy market, OR they’re going to have to stretch it a bit to, say, exactly the size of that silver Tacoma. Add another foot of bed behind the axle.
I could also see an XL version that’s the size of a 1992 Chevy Silverado. I want a full size truck that isn’t the equivalent of a watermelon in a jock strap. A real truck for real men with real jobs to do.
Slate’s employees, the ones allowed to talk to cameras anyway, have been carefully trained to mention how “fun” the truck is and how “proud” owners will be to have it. They’re very careful to NOT depict it achieving anything. They want you to imagine driving it to parties, not to the lumber yard.
It’s not really that big in person tbh, unless you’re talking about length (which is probably to help crash safety)
The perfect vehicle to buy to maximize your profits delivering packages for Amazon.
I really hate how every clickbait headline focuses on Bezos.
He’s an investor. He doesn’t own the company or anything.
Yea as much as I want to not support him, I have to draw a line somewhere. Starting a new carcompany is insanely expensive and that money needs to come from somewhere, if it wasn’t bezos it would be someone like him. It’s easy enough to yell at people buying from evil multinational corporations, but every carcompany today falls under that category, just like every train and bus manufacturer. Not that I’m saying that we should just accept status quo but that’s sadly how the world is today.
How dare he invest in a US startup leading to US manufacturing and US jobs.
This is the well-reasoned response that keeps billionaires rich.
Sorry to break it to you, everything we do keeps the billionaires rich. Right down to the microchips in our open source hardware keeps the billionaires rich, which is why I wrote that we have to draw a line somewhere. Unless of course you’re living completely off-grid and never use any modern and/or mass produced products, but given you’re on the interwebs that isn’t the case and you therefore aids in keeping the billionaires rich.
Your line isn’t my line. Buying new vs buying used has a substantial effect on the billionaire class. Sympathizing that a company needs capital to get off the ground regardless of where that capital comes from is quite the stance. Going further to normalize how awful companies are but we all do it is another.
But hey, what do I know. Let’s keep doing things the same way we always have and maybe things’ll change…
I’m not disagreeing with you but please show me a viable alternative that isn’t a used diesel Toyota Hilux and has some amount of active and passive safety build in, because I sure as hell want ICE vehicles out of the cities.
My intention was not to mock the idea. There’s a need for a gig worker electric small cargo vehicle and this fills that niche. Too many people go into gig work factoring in only the cost of fuel and not the vehicle depreciation. With an EV, your primary costs are only electricity and tires. This would be perfect for people doing gig work who actually want to maximize the amount of pay they retain.
The fact that this could potentially have a synergistic effect on the company of a major investor makes it both a good idea and good business.
Bezos Expeditions has a seat on the board my dude. You think he was donating those funds as a gift?
It’s an interesting sidenote that Amazon is currently deploying heavily customized Rivians for (some) new delivery vans.
Bezos owns a good chunk of Rivian.
