The modular design is cool though.
They list some details on the Specs page[1]. They quote 200 miles of range, which is not great especially for a small car. They list a 20-80 charge time of 30 minutes so it's probably a 400V architecture, which is becoming outdated as 800V architectures and chargers exist now.
Seems like a fine about-town car, but probably not a great one for road trips. I think that probably aligns with the NVH[2] expectations you should have for a car of this price.
[1] https://www.slate.auto/en/specs
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise,_vibration,_and_harshnes...
The flip side of that is over the holiday weekend I drove more than 250 miles to go visit my folks for Father's Day, which is just a couple of hours driving each direction. That's not even a long drive, that's a fairly normal weekend mini-roadtrip. It's not unusual for me to sometimes drive to the office in the next city over for meetings, and that's 116 miles from my house, where I work from home hence having significantly shorter typical driving experiences than most Americans. That next city over is a place where quite a lot of folks work and commute daily. 200 miles is definitely on the short side of acceptable range in the US.
Maybe it's just a Texas thing, but driving a hundred miles or more in a single direction is a typical behavior for many people under a variety of circumstances when you expect to return on the same day. This state also has the largest market for truck sales in the US.
I've decided to just buy my own vehicle rather than deal with the hassle.
A 200mi range means you can comfortably commute an hour to work each day, and then get back and "drive around town" in the evening without any worry.
Most people don’t have to pick an everything vehicle. We all benefit when we focus on maximizing our division of labor.
Maybe it's because I'm a dad but I can't imagine telling the family, "Roadtrip time! Let's all pack into the smaller car!". When we're taking the long family road trip to the beach or whatever, we always end up with the big car full of boogie boards and pool toys and cooler and beach umbrella, etc. Bigger cars with longer wheelbases tend to be more comfortable on the highway as well.
The folks I know who do the ICE/EV split household like you've mentioned tend to do the opposite. Dad has a small EV for a cheap and easy commute to work and Mom has an ICE (or hybrid) SUV or minivan that gets used for the long road trips as well as daily errands (but Mom doesn't rack up enough miles for the cost of gas to be much of a worry). There also seems to be less willingness from women (at least in the US) to make the switch to full EVs.
A practical plan is a diversion of labor that maximizes the best and most frequent use cases.
Preferences are driven by culture in the short run and by practicality in the long run.
Once we're at the point where a single vehicle and, say, an ebike are acceptable transit options, then America will have already exceeded it's climate goals. To achieve that, we'd likely need density near that of San Francisco (about 1.10 vehicles per household) or Chicago (about 1.12). Even bike friendly cities that are fairly dense, like Portland, have about 1.5 cars per household.
Again, though, the savings from that would be exceedingly obvious for anyone who chooses this path.
For example, my boss, who has a 1.5 hour driving commute, refuses to get an EV because he drives a 750mi road trip once a year. In order to avoid spending an extra 3 hours for this road trip, he shoulders all the additional gas costs (and many more than 3 hours spent driving to and sitting at gas stations annually) and then service costs of owning a gas car on top.
The guy is trading $2500+ a year and 20 hours a year fueling, to save 3 hrs on a single road trip. Totally illogical.
And with lots and lots of typical road trip hotels (your Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express) now with L2 chargers, there's even a good chance that my only charge for the day is the lunch charge, and overnight I fill up for free. A few years ago they'd sometimes be broken, or there'd only be two, or whatever, but it's just steadily getting better.
Good luck getting 800V mode to kick on half of the time if you ask most US drivers of 800V architecture EV's. Most of the networks I see with 800V capabilities are also the most expensive per KW of electricity by 10-20 cents a KW.
I'd much rather stick to 400V platforms for the next decade before we get serious expansion of modern charging networks in the US.
Not so fine if you go by Silverado EV experiences where they fail to ever go into 800V mode reliably and cause months of dealership woes with zero fixes. [1]
In my opinion its just another failure point that makes me prefer 400V EV's.
200mi is definitely acceptable in the US, but it's on the low end of the acceptable spectrum.
People often really overestimate their driving habits.
Some Americans would absolutely be heavily impacted by a vehicle with a vehicle with 200mi range on a good day. A ton of Americans would never really be affected.
200 miles in perfect conditions is the minimum anyone should accept. Just like in winter I never let my gas tank go below 1/4 tank - in case I get stuck and need to run the engine for heat while waiting for help. You should plan to only run between 20% and 80% battery, which means your 200 mile range is already 120 miles of useful range in perfect conditions.
I take my E-Transit down to single digits because I gotta make this 130 miles of range work for me. I max out around 80 miles between stops during winter road tripping.
The EV life is just getting used to planning ahead of time like the old days again. I always pull up the route on ABRP app, and check its suggestions on plugshare for recent issues if I'm driving somewhere I haven't before.
Not everyone lives in the rural parts of the North though. In fact, most of the country doesn't.
Range doesn't matter for ICE vehicles because of the speed of refueling and ubiquity of gas stations. And you know this.
I've gone on several 1,200mi each way road trips in cars like a Honda Accord and a Ford Focus hatch. A couple of those in that Focus hatch even carried four adults in the car. I just put a little luggage rack on the back.
It's not like you need a giant SUV to drive a few hundred miles. I can assure you smaller cars can make that drive as well!
Range doesn't really matter past a certain point for a ton of people. Few vehicles even go on massive road trips these days. Traveling with my little kids these days, we end up stopping just about as much in our ICE as we do on in our EV on road trips.
As I've mentioned here many times, the amount of time I spend "charging" my ICE dwarfs the amount of time I spend charging my EV, and my EV gets significantly more miles. Even with road trips factored in.
More proof people massively overestimate their vehicle needs. Thinking you need an SUV to go on a road trip, that a Prius just can't possibly be enough.
I have a pickup and a car, I'll be trading both of them in to help cut the cost of this down, and if I'm going on a road trip I'll just rent a car. It's no big deal.
I never claimed that.
> People often really overestimate their driving habits.
I agree, and like I said I think 200mi is acceptable. But people do like driving in the US. I used to go up to Brainerd from the Twin Cities regularly; that's 135 miles each way. This is not uncommon, lots of people here like to do short road trips up north on holiday weekends. Sometimes I even did both directions in a single day. My 300mi Ioniq 5 could probably do that whole trip on a single charge, maybe with a short stop to bump it up, which will be fast thanks to the 800V architecture. But the 200mi range would take at least one full charging stop, possibly two, which will also be slower thanks to the slower architecture.
Like I keep saying, I don't think 200mi is a deal killer, but it's also definitely a con for the US market. But it keeps the price low, which is definitely the focus here and means it slots nicely into the 2nd family car budget. Nothing's perfect; I still think it's a cool product and will be keeping my eye on it.
But you're going to stop somewhere along that path already, right? You're not driving straight there and immediately turning around and leaving right?
I've done several road trips between DFW, Houston, and Austin in an EV with ~200mi of range and a 400V pack. The DFW<->Houston trip is nearly 300mi. Compared to my average trip time in my gas cars, its about an extra 15-20 minutes on a four and a half hour drive. I was going to stop for lunch on that four and a half hour drive anyways.
Oh no such a massive impact on my life, spending an extra 20 minutes a few times a year.
Meanwhile I spend hours a year going to gas stations and pumping gas for my gas cars that get fewer miles.
Honestly, no, I didn't. It's only 2 hours. Having to stop for a 30+ minute charge in each direction would add a significant amount of time to the trip.
I don't really understand why you're being so aggressive about this. We are almost entirely agreeing. 300mi is a selling point for buyers because it means an easier time doing 100+ mile road trips, which are not uncommon in the US. More range is a tick in the "pro" column when comparison shopping, and it could convince someone to buy a car other than this one. That's all I'm saying.
Sure it would, but why would you? It would be more like one 20 minute charge in Brainerd. Maybe a half hour if you want some extra buffer. And that's assuming you're unable to charge wherever you're staying.
Very surprising it doesn't say the battery capacity anywhere and has no option for a bigger battery