[00:00] And now it's time to take the slate for a ride through the California street. Let's go. I need to know everything. Who and the what and the where. I need everything. Trust me. I hear the same.
[00:12] I like to do what you're telling me. I'm curious. I'm going to hop in the Porsche. I'm driving a horse. I'm ready for war. I'm coming for ghosts. I'm turning with ghosts. I need to know everything. Everything is pretty expensive at the moment, except for this truck, which actually isn't a truck.
[00:27] It's a blank slate that can be whatever you want it to be, including an SUV. The average new car price in the United States right now is $50,000, and this truck comes in at half of that.
[00:39] It is modular, repairable, and one of the funnest vehicles I've seen in a really long time. Obviously, we have the truck version here, but if we swing up, we can see a roll bar on that configuration. We have a slant back over here on top of that crate,
[00:53] And if we make our way over here, we can see the roll bar and extra seats in the rear. It's like a Jeep Wrangler had a consensual relationship with a Bronco and a Tacoma at the same time. What people aren't talking about, though, is that since a brand new slate already costs half as much as a regular brand new car,
[01:11] its used value is going to be economically off the charts in a wallet-friendly direction. Let me explain. The average electric vehicle depreciates slightly faster than gas vehicles and loses about 40% of its value in the first three years of ownership.
[01:25] Break it down the window. But since electric batteries and electric motors can last easily for 200,000 miles with pretty minimal maintenance, even three years in, it still has a super long lifespan ahead of it. At just shy of $25,000, it's cheap enough for people to buy right now.
[01:41] But if this slate follows the normal depreciation of an EV, Three years from now, people will be buying these little workforces for $15,000, which is insane. The blank slate as it arrives just from the factory has the glass in the rear and the divider between the cab and the bed.
[01:57] We do have a charging port back here. Being electric, we have the NACS port. This is the same style port that the Tesla supercharging network uses, so there's a lot of chargers to choose from on road trips. There is a rear camera here for safety.
[02:10] The bed does drop down. It is not a soft close. Cup holders here for tailgating These light covers are removable You have the side markers And you might have noticed that the color of the truck is currently a slate gray kind of a I wonder where they got the name from but it designed to be wrapped any
[02:28] color you can choose from infinite possibilities and each of the wraps only cost 500 bucks so if you ever want to change your mind on the color you can always do it yourself and add the wrap package later which is something Dbrand
[02:41] that I'm sure is super excited about. There is also a lift kit option. So the stock plate comes with a 7.8-inch round clearance, and the lift kit adds about two inches to that. So the front is a strut, the rear is a spring,
[02:53] and it's cool that it's modular right out of the factory, and you can do warranty repairs without voiding your warranty. So right now we are going to swap out this faceplate
[03:05] and the covers over the daylight running lights, And these fasteners are all a T20 screw, similar to what we see inside of some cell phones. And then here, the fasteners on the outside of the body panels, all super visible, all super accessible, making the repairs of the body panels super easy.
[03:23] These are a T30. You can't see it underneath this wrap, but the body panels themselves, as they come straight from the factory, are a gray slate-colored, glass-filled polypropylene. and I think the exposed fasteners actually are pretty cool.
[03:38] Replacement grill plates are around $60 and the light covers are $50 for the pair. But the coolest part about it is that you can 3D print your own and have it say whatever you want. And that is something that Slate actively supports.
[03:51] So in theory, if you wanted to put a hot dog on the grill, you totally could. I feel like it's the beginning of a long overdue shift into affordability.
[04:03] Plus, since the slate has less bells and whistles to start with, there are just less things to break and go wrong later. The only downside is that due to the slate truck's small size, it also has those small size towing numbers capping out at 2,000 pounds.
[04:18] But it does turn out that 75% of truck owners hitch up a trailer for towing just once a year or less, meaning the vast majority of truck owners never tow at all. I do tow kind of often, and it's usually pretty heavy,
[04:31] but since I can buy three of these slates for the price of one regular truck I can just hitch them together like sled dogs for those super heavy loads Just kidding Kind of Let take a look inside The dash panels and glove box in the car are just as customizable as the grills on the exterior with different color options
[04:48] Even if you do add the extra three seats in the rear as a bench seat, they will only ever come in a two-door variant, which is still, you know, you can put some kids back there. There's room for two-size car seats, which is important to me.
[05:00] It's cozy. as well as there's a middle seat in the center that should be able to accommodate a booster seat, if you're interested in throwing kids in the back. The seat covers can zip on and off and be replaced in about five minutes,
[05:12] and here is a selection of all of the interior dashboard pieces that can be configured inside of any of the vehicles. The slate does have air conditioning with analog buttons, the stereo, which you do have to add on afterwards.
[05:24] This is $250 for the center Bluetooth unit. Up on stage, I'm kind of a big fan of this variant. It's kind of like a safari vehicle. And this one, so the package that adds the rear seats and the roll bars and stuff, I think is $5,000, which you can add at any point.
[05:37] And then back here with the tow hitch, you can tow 2,000 pounds with the slate, as well as you can put 1,550 pounds in the bed. And the truck bed is wide enough to handle full sheets of plywood
[05:49] that just might hang off a little bit over the tailgate. And while this one does look like a safari type of vehicle, that one over there with the slant back on it that one's gonna crush and what's wild is that
[06:01] if you change your mind at any point while owning the vehicle it's modular enough that you can switch it around to the truck or the slant back or the square back whenever you want i can't think of a single other modular automotive manufacturer that exists besides slate and now it's time to take the
[06:19] It's late for a ride through the California street. Let's go. Dropping in the drive, signaling, merging. I can already tell this is one trip.
[06:32] This is cool. Very cool. Bigger than cool. Right out of the factory, this place has a range of 205 miles with a 65 kilowatt hour battery pack. Just one battery option.
[06:44] And they say there's a 0-60 of 8 seconds, which is just about the same acceleration as a Toyota Tacoma, but it feels faster to me for some reason. Probably because off the line it has that instant torque where the Tacoma has to spool up for a second I prefer electric vehicles over gas vehicles because not only do you avoid gas stations that refill up every night like you do with your cell phone at your house but you also
[07:08] avoid oil changes and like regularly scheduled maintenance. EVs are kind of maintenance free, which is a big deal. The one we're driving right now does not have the lift kit on it. We have the 7.8 inches of ground clearance with a single motor in the rear, two wheel
[07:22] which should make IT streets a little more interesting, but it is rear wheel drive. They're telling me we have a top speed of 90 miles an hour. I'm not going to head that on City Street, but, uh, yeah, it's not a performance vehicle.
[07:35] It's a vehicle that gets the job done for the least amount of dollars possible, which is refreshing because I feel like no other automaker is doing that at all. One of my first trucks out of high school was a Chevy 1500 that had a little bit of a...
[07:50] Inside the front trunk is enough storage space for two carry-on suitcases, as well as the only three liquids that we need. The battery and electric motor coolant, the windshield wiper fluid, and of course, the brake fluid.
[08:04] And you might be like, hey, Jerry, how safe are those second seats if they bolt directly into the truck bed? And Slate has actually thought about that, which is good. The seats bolt in underneath this panel right here, which is hard enough to support the 1,550-pound payload capacity of the bed,
[08:19] And there's also a spot here for the roll bar. And the roll bar is where the safety comes in because there are airbags built into the sides of the roll bar. And we swing over here to this camo version.
[08:32] You can see the roll bar here and where it bolts in underneath those rubber booties that I showed you in the bed of the truck. As well as the seat bolts into that cavity. And the airbags are up there inside of the C-Ciller.
[08:44] There's also a lowering kit for people who want to slam it. And I'm sure you can split the kits if you really want to squat to get that clean cowling. The slate also has a rooftop light bar for $800. And a rear tire carrier is just $550.
[08:58] Plus a solar-powered bed cover for $2,300 is insanely cool. And pretty reasonable, all things considered. And there you have it, a brief overview of the Slate electric vehicle. You gotta call it a vehicle since it's a truck and an SUV at the same time.
[09:12] And honestly, I'm pretty excited about it. But let me know what you think down in the comments, and thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.