Slate says your truck will never track you!
Slate Auto gets serious about privacy for its bare-bones EV pickup
ARSTECHNICA Jonathan M. Gitlin – Jun 2, 2026 10:49 AM
Slate Auto may be one of the most interesting companies in the American automotive industry right now. Based in Warsaw...
Why bother tracking someone through their car when you’ve already got their phone? I mean even if the slate truck doesn’t have a modem or anything they’ll see you using the slate app on your phone and that’s all they’re going to need to know isn’t it.
It’s like that one company that promised to be able to listen to conversations of people while their phone was off - that turned out to be a scam and the simple reason why they don’t actually do that is because they just don’t need to.
Here’s a thought: the slate truck explicitly not having an entertainment center and relying on you bringing your own phone to act as one means that the slate truck will probably have a higher proportion of phone use while driving compared to another vehicle. So I guess what I’m saying is if you want to keep yours completely off the internet you’ll need a CD player.
Why bother tracking someone through their car when you’ve already got their phone? I mean even if the slate truck doesn’t have a modem or anything they’ll see you using the slate app on your phone and that’s all they’re going to need to know isn’t it.
It’s like that one company that promised to be able to listen to conversations of people while their phone was off - that turned out to be a scam and the simple reason why they don’t actually do that is because they just don’t need to.
Here’s a thought: the slate truck explicitly not having an entertainment center and relying on you bringing your own phone to act as one means that the slate truck will probably have a higher proportion of phone use while driving compared to another vehicle. So I guess what I’m saying is if you want to keep yours completely off the internet you’ll need a CD player.
Or just a speaker that can play off a USB stick.