Car companies have, for decade upon decade now, pursued the holy grail of platform sharing – the idea that you can build multiple cars from a single set of components. Volkswagen is, arguably, the past master at this, making everything from a VW Golf to a Skoda Kodiaq, and so many more in between, from a single basic set of bits and pieces. It maximises the potential profits from the sales of multiple make and model line-ups, but with lower up-front investment, and the ability to amortise the research and development costs across multiple brands.
There’s a possible, plausible, prognosticated step beyond platform sharing, though – a car with multiple versions and variants that can be changed and swapped around after it’s been purchased. This has been much trialled in concept cars over the years – best exemplified by the 1994 Mercedes Vario concept, which could be converted from a two-door cabriolet to an SUV, or a saloon, or even a pickup truck. So far, though, no one has managed to produce such a concept in a way that would actually make money.
No one, that is, until – just possibly – Slate. Slate Motors is a start-up American car maker, and to say it’s swimming against the tide of automotive convention is quite the understatement. In fact, Slate will – theoretically – sell you a car that not only doesn’t have electric windows, it doesn’t even have a standard touchscreen.
Slate, which is backed in part by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has just shown off its first product, a compact two-door, two-seat pickup truck, which, with refreshing simplicity, is just called the Truck.
Mechanically, the Truck is incredibly simple. It’s electric and offers a choice of 52.7kWh or 84.3kWh batteries, which offer ranges of 240km-390km. Unusually, given its cut-price format – and Slate is targeting a price of less than $20,000 when incentives are taken into account – the Truck doesn’t use the cheaper, more robust lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) type battery, but uses a more advanced lithium-ion nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) type battery instead.
Even so, Slate claims a fast-charge time of 30 minutes to go from 20 to 100 per cent charge at 120kW power, which is again unusual as most car makers only quote for fast charges of up to 80 per cent. Clearly, Slate seems to know something about battery chemistry and reliability that others do not.
The Truck gets a 150kW, or 204hp, electric motor, which drives the rear wheels, and it can accelerate from 0-100km/h in about 8.2 seconds, with a top speed of 150km/h.
Again, very conventional in mechanical terms, but entirely unconventional in a US market, and Slate has not yet given any indication of sales or production outside the US as yet, where pick-up trucks have become behemoths. Slate seems to hit the rewind button to the 1970s, when trucks were lower slung, more compact and more focused on load carrying than on creature comforts.
So Dacia-like is the Slate Truck that the basic model eschews a big touchscreen (although one is optional) and instead just gives you a clamp for your mobile phone, so that it can act as an infotainment centre.
Style-wise, the Slate is also something of a throwback, with simple upright lines (although there are seemingly endless options for personalisation) and disarmingly small dimensions – at 4.4m long, it’s only fractionally longer than a VW Golf hatchback.
More excitingly, customers will actually be able to change the bodywork of their Slate truck as they please, using bolt-in kits that will be sold by the company’s putative dealer network. Unsurprisingly, there’s a simple, upright SUV shape, but there’s also a coupe-style SUV with a chopped-off rear roofline, and even an open-top four-seater with a chunky, retro-look rollover bar. Rear seats and even extra airbags are included in the kit, which can be fitted by the dealer, or at home if you’re handy with spanners and electrical connectors.
Either way, the Slate Truck is practical, capable of hauling a 635kg load, and there’s a handy “frunk” boot in the nose, too.
Slate is also unusual in the motor industry in that its chief executive is a woman, former Fiat-Chrysler executive Chris Barman. She said: “The definition of what’s affordable is broken. Slate exists to put the power back in the hands of customers who have been ignored by the auto industry. Slate is a radical truck platform so customisable that it can transform from a two-seat pick-up to a five-seat SUV.”
It’s almost a noble undertaking, in the modern automotive environment, to try to create a car that’s simple and compact, rather than bloated and bulky. Slate will have more challenges than merely pushing against the tide, though – it now has to productionise what’s currently really a concept car, find a factory and build a dealer network. Then, it has to find customers – can they be found among a generation of American car buyers for whom the size of their vehicles is paramount?
