Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen
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?
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It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker.
Instead of steel or aluminum, the Slate Truck’s body panels are molded of plastic. Or, as Slate calls them, “injection molded polypropylene composite material.” The theory is that this makes them more durable and scratch-resistant, if only because the lack of paint means they’re one color all the way through.
By eliminating paint, and thus eliminating the paint shop, Slate’s manufacturing process is massively simplified. So, too, the lack of metal body parts. “We have no paint shop, we have no stamping,”
Plastic with no paint is not going to do well in places like the Southwest. But I’m sure that getting it painted or wrapped won’t be a huge deal.
Many vehicles have some sort of MIC paneling these days. It does fine in the SW.
You can paint it if you’d like.
It does fine for a few years, but eventually starts sun bleaching and looking terrible. Seen a lot of hacks to make it look better, but the plastic still gets brittle and dry. A coat of paint or spray on bed liner does wonders to fight that.
Seems like half the article is talking about paint.