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I completely agree. A base Prius is $30k. A base Kia Niro is $27k. Those are hybrids and not EV's, but 50+mpg is not bad. Those also come with power windows and many other features and creature comforts that the Slate doesn't.

$35k is not outrageous for a new car, but the Slate is supposed to be affordable basic transportation. Slate is selling barebones, stripped down basic transportation for the price of a middle class family car.

On the flip side, if you want a car that doesn't try to track you and record you, and doesn't upsell you on a subscription for seatwarmers, and doesn't use gas, Slate looks pretty attractive.

I'd be interested in what they could do for a competitor to my Geo Metro/Chevy Aveo, esp. w/ a convertible option.

The center console touchscreen is just a self contained vestigial free entertainment, not the "core" of the car by any means. They're exactly what airplane seatback monitors are.

The trackers aren't in the infotainment. Removing the infotainment do not solve the tracker problem.

But what problem would keeping the infotainment system solve?

Most people don't buy new cars, they buy used cars. Particularly in the bottom 45%, they know they can't afford a new car - they might look at them but they know they know it is a dream (or the car they will buy in 5 years). Car makers know they can only charge this price for a new car because in 3 years it will still have a lot of value left - most new car buyers never pay the full price: they only pay the difference between the cost and the value in 3 years (plus interest).

Time was, CAFE forced Detroit to build affordable cars which folks could buy new --- rather miss that --- that said, I'm never going to buy an all-electronic vehicle w/ multiple screens (still annoyed about the radio on my current vehicle going out) GPS tracking and built-in monitoring by way of a backup camera and so forth.

Even at the height of that, most people were buying used cars. However the cheap CAFE cars did bring in a few people who would be on the fence of affording a new car. Those cheap cars also got people who could afford a bigger car, but the price was compelling anyway.

I made $225k last year, still have never bought a new car. Closest I got was a 9 month old car with 29k miles on it for $15k off list price.

Seriously tempted with the Slate though. I have the $50 pre-registration down from a few years ago, so I could have it in July-August of next year.

> tank of gasoline that you can find all over the place

I can find electricity in far more places than I can gasoline. It even comes out of my walls. Do you have gasoline piping throughout your home?

Lots of people only have street parking or their apartment complex has detached parking where they can't realistically charge overnight.

But otherwise... Yeah, That's absolutely amazing to wake up every morning to a full tank/charge

My mom has an EV, and when my parents bought their condo they got a promise in writing that they could install a charger at their parking spot. Condo board reneged on that agreement and so she's selling her EV to buy a hybrid. If gas prices return to pre-Iran-war it will be cheaper than paying to use an L3 charger, and even if they don't it will be far more convenient.

Sorry to hear that the HOA is earning their reputation :(.

> If gas prices return to pre-Iran-war it will be cheaper than paying to use an L3 charger, and even if they don't it will be far more convenient.

Yeah, that's Toyota's main argument for not diving head-first into EVs. Yes, merging the two technologies means you have the complexity of both... but after a decade+ of experience, they've gotten it down to be pretty reliable.

For a lot of people, that's still the best choice assuming you don't mind the budget for wear-items / oil changes ... etc. When my current econobox is _done_, I will probably go straight to EV just so I don't have wear-items to deal with and because I either drive a few hundred miles per week or fly. I don't need to account for family road trips or anything else that make the ubiquitous fuel station network worth it.

> merging the two technologies means you have the complexity of both

I (and many others) would actually argue many common hybrid drivetrains are actually simpler than many ICE-only drivetrains.

Things like transmissions and complicated AWD setups are incredibly complex. Planetary gear sets and using an electric motor for the rear axle to add AWD can make things vastly simpler mechanically than a regular pure-ICE. You need a computer to get it to all play nice, but in terms of moving parts and things rubbing it can be a lot simpler.

I can find 1000 watts of electric anyplace. However to get any reasonable range from that means my car has to sit there 3-4 days! This works for me because I only make the long trips on weekends (I ride my bike to work when the weather allows).

For practical EV purposes there is not electric everywhere. If there isn't enough at home chargers are hard to find. Sure they are all over - but they are not advertised and not at every exit: you need an app to find them. Using an app is not safe when you are driving so you better have someone else with you to figure out how to find them or plan ahead.

Batteries are good at averaging out usage. Anybody who averages under 40 miles a day can do almost all of their charging overnight on a 120V outlet. As long as most nights you charge more than you use eventually it hits a full charge and is ready for your next long trip.

This is just fundamentally not true, literally every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging, the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.

Using apps like ABRP you can easily schedule your drip to have the optimal stops for route planning based on your battery technology, if you are doing a drive long enough to have multiple stops that should be part of your travel planning even with a gas car alongside a pre-trip check.

You can easily circumnavigate the entire USA with an EV that supports NACS!

> every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging

Agreed

> the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.

They almost never do. This is the key thing you are not understanding about my reply. We can get level 2 anywhere, but most of the time it means you have to have an electrician.

> Using apps like ABRP

That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app. I drive until my gauge gets "low" and then find the next gas station - I can be assured that almost anywhere I will make it to a gas station if I start looking when the gauge reaches 1/8 (though I refuse to let it go below 1/4 for safety reasons). No app needed for gas, there are big signs everywhere that alert me where I can fill up. Last road trip I looked for those signs wondering if I could have used the EV and there wasn't 1 in 300 miles: then I pulled up the app, and there were plenty - but none where in places you could see from the main road and none advertised (they were also a lot less common than gas stations)

> They almost never do. This is the key thing you are not understanding about my reply. We can get level 2 anywhere, but most of the time it means you have to have an electrician.

In my personal experience most, homes have a dryer outlet in the washroom connected to the garage at least in TX. It's no bother running a cable from the washroom to the garage.

> That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app

Any time I am making a long drive I always use a GPS app such as Waze or Apple Maps, I don't know what's on the road ahead traffic, accidents and closures the app will re-route me appropriately and optimally. If you made a drive so regularly you felt like you didn't need an app then you would already know on that route where charging stations are.

I do agree they are less common than gas stations because of a few reasons but that's set to change with time and market adoption.

TX is the key. Where I live nobody would put a washroom in an unheated space - the pipes would freeze and break. Thus no easy to get at dryer outlet. I'm not sure how far north things change, but my impression is not very. Rest areas in TX often don't put doors on the restrooms (thus heat is not possible), but OK does - implying that it gets cold enough to need them (but this was also very different ages of building so not a fair comparison)

I use a GPS when I don't know the route, but I've been to parents in a different state several times - I don't need a GPS interrupting my music to get there.

I agree EV chargers are being installed and will be installed more and more.

FWIW, placing a climate-controlled laundry room or mud room between the house and the garage is pretty common here in VA. It might not have the dryer (washer/dryer have mostly moved upstairs to bedroom level for new builds), but there's a good chance it won't be hard to pull that 240 circuit into the garage.

That's assuming you have a garage and the breaker box isn't already in it, which is also common.

Of course, I have neither, so installing a car charger would be expensive. Thus my continued use of ICE vehicles.

I do have my laundry room right next to the garage. However, I would not consider it a useful place to plug in a car, except maybe as an extreme emergency. It requires moving the dryer out of the way since the outlet is near the floor behind it. While this is certainly possible to do, it's not exactly easy. Also, your typical dryer plug is built to remain plugged in for years on end and so even if you would try this, it will wear out the socket really quick.

You can get a "Dryer Buddy" or similar transfer switch and plug both the car and dryer into it.

Depending on how far your commute is. Level 1 charging may be appropriate for you.

Overnight charging will give you approx. 30 miles of range (depending on the car and state of charge). It's really hard to know without having an electric car for some time if it's going to be annoying for you.

We do get below freezing weather here. The washroom is conditioned space that leads to the garage. This is pretty common in most slab-on-grade homes since they do not have a basement

Also, who the hell still uses GPS instruction its annoying. I always have my gps muted

Tell me about this "garage" it sounds magical. ;)

For me, installing a 240V outlet for charging would entail...

Running a new circuit from the breaker box (back wall of basement) to the front facade (40' forward, 1 level up) with whatever drywall patching/paint comes with that.

That gets the outlet. But, I don't have a driveway, so I'd need to trench my front yard and the public sidewalk in front of my house, so I can pull the charge line through to the front edge of the curbing adjacent to my parking space.

I figure all-in, that's a $10k buy-in that only serves one of my two cars, so I'm stuck rotating cars every few days (not a big deal, just not ideal). Only one of my parking spaces is assigned - the other is "guest parking" open to anybody.

And I fully realize my situation might not be the norm, but it's not far off for many TH or condo residents.

It isn't legal to have multiple receptacles on 20A+ circuits. New work has to connect to a panel directly.

> That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app. I drive until my gauge gets "low" and then find the next gas station

You may use your phones maps app while driving to show you the nearest gas station, or even the cheapest. You might also do the same with EV charging.

> This is just fundamentally not true, literally every single home in the USA is capable of level 2 charging, the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.

Technically true, but if you've only got 60 amp service to your home because it was built in 1955 and the cost to run a new service line is greater than the cost of a new car, it's pretty difficult to get any useful amperage to your level 2 charger.

The price of a 200-amp service upgrade should not cost more than $25,000. Even in the most extreme examples it shouldn't come anywhere near to that cost.

$25k would be on the low end for what my the electric provider charges for houses located like mine. That's just the cost of horizontal drilling and installing conduit.

Pulling the service wire, upgrading the panel, etc. are all normally priced.

See https://www.titam.ca/2021/05/cost-to-upgrade-underground-ele...

The transformer for my house is two lots away and under a pathway.

Would be less expensive to install a natural gas generator and connect an EV directly to that whenever I need to charge it.

My argument for pricing is based on the USA. A large majority of homes are connected via overhead hookup and often do not require a transformer replacement since they are oversized a reasonable margin and have been for decades, it only usually requires fairly minimal work.

Also, your price is in CAD not USD

Also also, for the case that you already have power unless it was installed a long time ago its probably already in conduit and doesn't require any horizontal drilling

There are lots of vehicles available for $22K. On the used market. Buying new is a privilege.

A $35K vehicle will reach $22K on the used market a lot faster than a $60K vehicle will.

There are new hybrids available for $30k. There are new vehicles available for $22k. There are reasonable used vehicles available for $10k.

The problem with the Slate isn't that cheaper vehicles exist. The problem with the Slate is that you can buy nicer, better equipped vehicles for the same price.

...that use gasoline, and come from a dealership that is actively hostile. I'd rather take my chances on the Slate to replace my 13 year old car.

In '73 a Chevy Nova just under $2500, which CPI is just under $20k. Median household income was around $12k

$25k is about right for a cheap new car today (you can get a few base models for less than that, but good luck finding one). Median household income is around $83k. So a cheap new car cost went up by 10x but income only went up by less than 5x. Inflation implies it should cost 8x as much, but it costs 10x as much.

Of course the Chevy Nova didn't have ABS, airbags, a touch screen, an automatic transmission, power steering, or retractable seat belts. Car companies could make models without some of these (though most are required by law; can't even have a car without a screen since RVC is mandated). But now they would be competing with used cars that have most, if not all, of these things and cost less.

A new Honda Civic is $25k, so the same as the Slate. The average new car price in the US is $50k, so double the Slate base price and still significantly more than the upgraded Slate I built. As far as I can tell, the US market has only one sub-$20k car - the base Nissan Versa.

The versa is dead now. The Hyundai Venue is now the cheapest base model vehicle in America at nearly $22k.

> Can we stop being so out of touch and/or deluding ourselves to believe $35k is “pretty inexpensive” [...] let alone for a tiny two seater electric truck that has a 200 mile range.

It suppose is "pretty inexpensive" compared to other new trucks you can buy right now. However, my much more equipped, full size truck cost less, inflation adjusted even, than this thing when it was new. Today's truck market baffles me.