Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

www.theverge.com Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

Would you buy a truck this bare-bones?

You're viewing a single thread.

395 comments

"No touchscreen" is a really great selling point imo
- Every smart feature a vehicle *doesn't *have is a selling point for me. I want my car to be dumb as a boot.
  
  Yep, the more software it has, the less I want it. And I’m saying that as a software engineer.
  
  Nothing made me want to distance myself from technology more than going back to school for computer science.
  ...well that and all the fascism espoused by tech CEOs.
  
  Well, I want smart boots
- I fucking hate the touchscreen in my vehicle.
  
  I dont mind a secondary 8" screen for things like navigation as long as there is no control over functionality of the vehicle on said touch screen.
  My 2016 Veloster has a perfect balance
- After reading the article and the website, I can't find anything that explicitly says there is no network connection built into the vehicle.
  The instrument panel is a screen, and will be used to display the backup camera video. There is some computer capable of handling video processing and displaying the instrument graphics - so more than just low-level electronics to handle the battery and drive control. It could have built-in GPS, it could have 5G, it could still be collecting and sharing data on driving habits &etc, it could be subsidized by that on the backend. Just because those functions aren't displayed to the end user doesn't mean they aren't in the system.
  
  Oh yes I was not commenting on any of that. Data privacy and the reliability of computer hardware and software over time are separate issues.
  I was just speaking from the basic-level user experience of operating a vehicle- touch screens are terrible. Pretty much everything you want to do in a car should have 3 requirements:
  Keep your eyes on the road. Controls need to be in consistent locations and have some other way of communicating what they are and what their status is non-visually. Dials, knobs, buttons that lock in-or-out, switches, levers, sliders. Anything close together needs to be differentiated- buttons with different textures, shapes, or resistance for example. This is very difficult and almost antithetical to touchscreens. The strength of the touchscreens is their flexibility- they can have deep menus that re-use a small amount of space efficiently, but the trade-off is that they need the user's vision to work.
  Non-visual feedback to the user for their activation. Touch screens CAN do this with haptics and sounds. And there are physical inputs where this can be a problem, like regular buttons or knobs with uniform shapes. Levers, sliders, switches, and dials have this as inherent properties
  Response time. Touch screens on vehicles are usually underpowered and seem to take seconds to register an input, then apply it. If the music changes and is suddenly way too loud, it's annoying to be subjected to that for 5 seconds while navigating the touch screen and waiting for it to work, in contrast to a regular old volume potentiometer that operates basically instantly. Really any music or audio controls can get really annoying with delay, though I'll admit those are a luxury. Things like the lights are not.
  Not a requirement, but cars should be judged on whether these things FEEL good. Touch screens have improved slightly over time with better materials and haptics, but that only applies to higher-end ones and still isn't great. Cheap physical inputs can suck too, though they are usually still better than touch screens.
  
  Hoping it doesn't have tracking 🤞
  If they also make a 4wd version in the future then this would basically be the first new car I'd consider buying.
  Edit: I emailed them and they said it doesn't have any data collection at all.
  
  The vehicle will absolutely collect data, but likely won't be transmitting or collecting personal data (which is mostly done within vehicle infotainment units). It'll be stored within the hardware which is much more preferred but I'd still consider that "data collection".
  Most vehicles have an Event Data Recorder (EDR) which records and stores vehicle data in the event of a collision/abnormal operation above a certain threshold. They're mandated in many countries. You can connect to these systems, some easier than others, and get vehicle data such as vehicle speed, accelerator pedal position, brake activation, changes in velocity, yaw rate, steering wheel angle, steering wheel angle rate of change, ABS/TC activation, number of ignition cycles, odometer readings, etc. Newer vehicles with enhanced safety systems (of which this vehicle doesn't sound like it's intended to have) can provide even more data including but not limited to proximity to a target object and camera images.
  It's not data in the sense of personal or tracking data, but it's still data.
  
  Everything you describe could be handled by a single ESP 32 module but they probably do have much more computing power than that.
  Other articles seem to indicate that it would need you to use your phone to perform updates on the onboard computer.
  I guess this doesn't preclude the possibility of other types of embedded surveillance.

395 comments