5 ms·

Good criticism. It looks like the car's EV tech is average at best; definitely not outstanding. That's probably why they don't advertise it strongly, and also

by coldpie 3mo ago

Good criticism. It looks like the car's EV tech is average at best; definitely not outstanding. That's probably why they don't advertise it strongly, and also probably a big factor in why it's so cheap. 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 They list a 20-80 charge time of 30 minutes so it's probably a 400V architecture, which is becoming outdated as 800V architectures and chargers exist now.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 https://www.slate.auto/en/specs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise,_vibration,_and_harshness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise,_vibration,_and_harshnes...

rjsw 3mo ago
That range is typical for European mass-market EV cars.
- coldpie 3mo ago
  That's cool. This is a US market vehicle. The geography of the US is very, very different from Europe, so I don't think expectations for the European market are terribly useful for a US market vehicle. Have a play around with https://thetruesize.com https://thetruesize.com and https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen . 200mi is definitely acceptable in the US, but it's on the low end of the acceptable spectrum.
  - vel0city 3mo ago
    Yeah all of us Americans drive 200mi+ each way nine days a week 'cause the average house is on a 2,000 acre ranch. 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.
    - vablings 3mo ago
      Americans specifically overestimate driving habits. There is the odd occasion that a requires a very long drive but that drive once or twice a year shouldn't weigh as heavily as it does for most people.
    - coldpie 3mo ago
      > Yeah all of us Americans drive 200mi+ each way nine days a week 'cause the average house is on a 2,000 acre ranch. 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.
      - vel0city 3mo ago
        > I used to go up to Brainerd from the Twin Cities regularly; 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.
        3mo ago
- pc86 3mo ago
  The US is bigger.
WarmWash 3mo ago
It's a fine anything-other-than-5hr+-road-trip car. Which covers 99% of people's daily driving. And frankly even if this thing was gas, it looks brutal to road trip in. 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.
- coldpie 3mo ago
  100% agreed, yup :)
- bluGill 3mo ago
  People buy their vehicles with the 1% use like the 5 hour road trip in mind. The cost of renting a car is high enough that it is cheaper just buy the one you need for everything. That is before you realize that sometimes who show up to pick up your rental car and they don't have anything.
  - radpanda 3mo ago
    Yup. My parents bought a Jeep Cherokee back in the day as the family car rather than something like a Ford Taurus just so they could drive on the beach. That probably only happened a few days a year, but they were beloved outings and made the Jeep worthwhile to them. You could say that it would make more sense to drive a more economical car for most of the year and only rent a Jeep for the beach excursions, but how realistic is that? Most rental car places won’t guarantee much in terms of what sort of vehicle you’ll get. And most forbid offroad driving. It makes sense to a lot of people to buy vehicles for the 1% case if that 1% case is something they really value.
    - scoofy 3mo ago
      If every couple had one EV truck for heavy lifting and a small ICE hatchback for long distances, we’d reduce our emissions and our gas bills massively. Most people don’t have to pick an everything vehicle. We all benefit when we focus on maximizing our division of labor.
tristor 3mo ago
I pretty much concur with your take. I'm interested in this because I sometimes need a truck, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on an oversized gigantic vehicle I don't really need to have a truck the sometimes I need it. For me, that is mostly to go to the home store and back w/ materials, which is something I expect to do more regularly near the tail end of this summer onward as I ramp up my carpentry hobby. That 200 mile range is fine for me, because the closest home store is just 2.1 miles away from my house. 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.
- coldpie 3mo ago
  FWIW I just rent a truck from the home center when I need to do that two or three times a year. Small hassle but a lot easier than owning a whole vehicle.
  - tristor 3mo ago
    That's what I do now, but as I spend more time on a hobby that requires trips for materials, it becomes unreasonable to do that. I am not quite at the break point where I think buying a truck makes sense, but I could see that happening by the end of this year. For those wondering, Home Depot rents pickups for $20/day if you are not leaving the immediate area of the store (the metro pretty much).
    - alamortsubite 3mo ago
officeplant 3mo ago
> probably a 400V architecture, which is becoming outdated as 800V architectures and chargers exist now. 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.
- bryanlarsen 3mo ago
  Many 800V vehicles have a split pack that can charge in parallel at 400V or series at 800V so they don't charge extremely slowly at 400V. Those are fine.
  - officeplant 3mo ago
    >Those are fine. 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. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4T9p-Iks6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4T9p-Iks6Q

by coldpie 3mo ago

rjsw 3mo ago

That range is typical for European mass-market EV cars.

coldpie 3mo ago
That's cool. This is a US market vehicle. The geography of the US is very, very different from Europe, so I don't think expectations for the European market are terribly useful for a US market vehicle. Have a play around with https://thetruesize.com https://thetruesize.com and https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen . 200mi is definitely acceptable in the US, but it's on the low end of the acceptable spectrum.
- vel0city 3mo ago
  Yeah all of us Americans drive 200mi+ each way nine days a week 'cause the average house is on a 2,000 acre ranch. 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.
  - vablings 3mo ago
    Americans specifically overestimate driving habits. There is the odd occasion that a requires a very long drive but that drive once or twice a year shouldn't weigh as heavily as it does for most people.
  - coldpie 3mo ago
    > Yeah all of us Americans drive 200mi+ each way nine days a week 'cause the average house is on a 2,000 acre ranch. 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.
    - vel0city 3mo ago
      > I used to go up to Brainerd from the Twin Cities regularly; 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.
      - 3mo ago
pc86 3mo ago
The US is bigger.

WarmWash 3mo ago

It's a fine anything-other-than-5hr+-road-trip car. Which covers 99% of people's daily driving. And frankly even if this thing was gas, it looks brutal to road trip in. 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.

coldpie 3mo ago
100% agreed, yup :)
bluGill 3mo ago
People buy their vehicles with the 1% use like the 5 hour road trip in mind. The cost of renting a car is high enough that it is cheaper just buy the one you need for everything. That is before you realize that sometimes who show up to pick up your rental car and they don't have anything.
- radpanda 3mo ago
  Yup. My parents bought a Jeep Cherokee back in the day as the family car rather than something like a Ford Taurus just so they could drive on the beach. That probably only happened a few days a year, but they were beloved outings and made the Jeep worthwhile to them. You could say that it would make more sense to drive a more economical car for most of the year and only rent a Jeep for the beach excursions, but how realistic is that? Most rental car places won’t guarantee much in terms of what sort of vehicle you’ll get. And most forbid offroad driving. It makes sense to a lot of people to buy vehicles for the 1% case if that 1% case is something they really value.
  - scoofy 3mo ago
    If every couple had one EV truck for heavy lifting and a small ICE hatchback for long distances, we’d reduce our emissions and our gas bills massively. Most people don’t have to pick an everything vehicle. We all benefit when we focus on maximizing our division of labor.

tristor 3mo ago

I pretty much concur with your take. I'm interested in this because I sometimes need a truck, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on an oversized gigantic vehicle I don't really need to have a truck the sometimes I need it. For me, that is mostly to go to the home store and back w/ materials, which is something I expect to do more regularly near the tail end of this summer onward as I ramp up my carpentry hobby. That 200 mile range is fine for me, because the closest home store is just 2.1 miles away from my house. 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.

coldpie 3mo ago
FWIW I just rent a truck from the home center when I need to do that two or three times a year. Small hassle but a lot easier than owning a whole vehicle.
- tristor 3mo ago
  That's what I do now, but as I spend more time on a hobby that requires trips for materials, it becomes unreasonable to do that. I am not quite at the break point where I think buying a truck makes sense, but I could see that happening by the end of this year. For those wondering, Home Depot rents pickups for $20/day if you are not leaving the immediate area of the store (the metro pretty much).
  - alamortsubite 3mo ago

officeplant 3mo ago

> probably a 400V architecture, which is becoming outdated as 800V architectures and chargers exist now. 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.

bryanlarsen 3mo ago
Many 800V vehicles have a split pack that can charge in parallel at 400V or series at 800V so they don't charge extremely slowly at 400V. Those are fine.
- officeplant 3mo ago
  >Those are fine. 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. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4T9p-Iks6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4T9p-Iks6Q