This is Technology Bytes, episode 115 for May 18th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week’s technology is not something that I’ve ever touched, not something that I’ve ever used.
It is something that I’ve read about, and not fully in depth, but I understand a little bit about the idea behind this technology.
And what I’m talking about is the Slate truck, and you may have heard of it.
It’s basically an electric vehicle that is selling for around $20,000 if you can still get the rebate on it.
Otherwise, it’s like $27,000.
But the idea of the truck is it’s a blank slate.
And so that’s the idea of a Slate truck.
It’s the very minimal of a vehicle, I think, that can be driven on the U.S.
highways and streets as far as being legal.
They have put really next to nothing in the truck except the battery that allows it to go, oh, it is an electric vehicle, and the wheels that come on it, and steering wheel, blinkers, all the things that they have to do to make it a legal vehicle to ride and drive on the streets of the United States.
So I was reading up on it a little bit, and so they do have some included safety features.
So they’ve got some traffic collision warnings.
So they do have sensors on there.
They don’t have like adaptive cruise control and a lot of those driver assist things, but they’ve got some basic safety features that I think people expect to have in their cars these days.
So that’s part of probably what some of that cost is beyond just the cost of the vehicle itself.
And so those are minimal, and it’d be something that you would find on a low-end vehicle by any other car manufacturer.
I think that’s where it starts.
So a couple other things.
It is an electric vehicle.
They’ve got two battery levels that you can get.
They’ve got a standard battery.
This is the very least expensive vehicle purchase price that you can do with a capacity of about 150 miles, or you can get an extended battery that will go up to approximately 240 miles.
I’m not sure this truck is out.
I’m sure they’ve built some prototypes, so the numbers that they give on their website are about and we think kind of, like there’s not a lot of testing that has gone into it.
So from that standpoint, the extended battery, pretty good distance, 240 miles, 150 a little on the light side, but if you’re just using it at a commuter vehicle, it’s probably something that would work.
So this truck is fully customizable, and so it doesn’t come with any of the standard things that you might expect in a vehicle.
So no radio, no entertainment system, however you want to look at it, no speakers, no, you know, basically anything else.
So anything that you want to put in the truck, you would have to buy in a third-party market of some sort.
So it’s going to be interesting to see if that market exists for this particular vehicle and what might be available to put in it.
So the idea is that there’s no Apple CarPlay, there’s no navigation, there’s no Android Auto, there’s no speakers, there’s no, you know, you name it, and there’s very little in this truck.
So you get an opportunity to spend very little money to have a vehicle, and then when you, I guess the idea is when you have the funds to put more in the vehicle, then you can just do that and potentially, you know, put a Bluetooth speaker on the floor, hook your iPhone up, you know, through some kind of adapter, USB power adapter.
I’m assuming it has those, but I didn’t even read about that.
And then you just play your music, run Apple CarPlay on your car, play your music to your Bluetooth speaker, and you have your navigation and your phone does all the talking to you, but there’s very little fluff in that.
It’s very basic.
And I’ve listened to a number of tech podcasts that, you know, are saying, we hope this technology works, it’s a great idea, and I’m not sure they’re really thinking it through.
So I think we’ve tried this a la carte model in our world before, where you just get the basics, and then if you want more, you just add on.
And one of the things that I thought about was in our cable TV, where everyone was like, cable TV is so expensive, and I get 200 channels, but I only watch five, so I’m just going to pay for the five channels that I get, or that I watch.
And then it turns out that to pay for those five channels, and then you realize, oh, occasionally I watch that channel because of a sports team, or I occasionally watch this channel because of something else.
And so you either end up paying for the extra channels and then turning them off when that event, show, whatever is done.
And while you can do that and may save money, I think you start to find out pretty quickly that paying 20 bucks a month for five channels, you’re spending $100 a month to watch the TV shows that you want, because you can barely get any streaming for less than 20 bucks a month.
And if you get a cable package, you might spend 80 bucks a month.
And I use Google TV, YouTube TV, sorry, and I think my bill is $69 a month or something like that.
And I get a lot of channels that I never watch, but I also get channels that things end up being on that I want to watch that I would never pay for the streaming for.
And so I think we found out in that model that paying a la carte ends up costing more than just not watching the channels that you pay for.
And the fact that they can bundle those things, you get a discount because of the volume that they purchase.
And I think the same thing probably holds true in the car market.
Now I just recently bought a new car, a Kia EV6, as you’ve heard on this podcast before, and it has a lot of tech in it.
And you may say, well, it’s got a lot of tech in it that I’m never going to use.
And yeah, maybe that’s true, but I think I use almost everything that’s in that car.
Maybe I wish there was something else in it.
I was trying to think the other day what that might be.
But some things are held out of my model of EV6 because I bought the lower end model.
And if you get the next one up, you get a few things here added on it.
You know, mine came with what they call the technology package.
So I got all the driver assist stuff and some other odds and ends and things like that.
But the reality is that what I have in that car, I don’t think I could ever pay for individually.
I think to make the slate truck do everything that my EV6 does would make that truck $80,000 where I spent 50 on my car.
So I don’t know it for a fact, but if you want to keep the bare bones and spend very little on a car, maybe the slate truck works.
But if you want to make it like a modern vehicle with the conveniences that come with a modern vehicle, if you want a leather interior, if you want all the bells and whistles, I think you’re going to end up spending more out of pocket than you would if you just purchased that car straight from the lot.
Now, I understand that there are things on cars that you may not want that you feel you’re paying for, but that comes from volume, I think.
And with the volume, the car companies get to do more for you for less money because they get to spread that out across all of their customers.
And on the slate truck, you’re the only one spending.
And if you want a nice stereo system, you’re probably going to spend more than what is in a normal car.
Maybe it’s better than what’s in a normal car, but when you buy a brand new car, the stereo is pretty good.
And to replicate that is probably going to cost more than whatever they add to your car price for that.
So I’m not sold.
If it works, it works, and that’s great.
I don’t think it’s for me.
And I think the idea that you might save up money to put things in your car and then your car payment doesn’t go up, yeah, that might work too.
But I don’t think we’ve seen that a la carte mode or model work in almost anything else that we do.
I think that it’s going to end up being an overpriced, underperforming, not very nice electric vehicle.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
