CarCast+Edmunds - Slate prices their truck at $24950 but is it worth it?
CarCast
CarCast+Edmunds - Slate prices their truck at $24950 but is it worth it?CarCast · Jun 29, 2026
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Car
Slate Truck
The Slate is a tiny, super-simple electric truck designed to be as cheap as possible. It doesn't even come with a radio or armrests in its base version, allowing buyers to add only the parts they want, like a giant Lego set.
The Hyundai Santa Fe is a mid-sized family SUV made by the South Korean company Hyundai. It has three rows of seats to carry up to seven people and features a modern, boxy design. It is built to be a comfortable and practical vehicle for families.
The Dodge Journey is a mid-sized SUV that was made by Dodge until 2020. It was designed as an affordable family vehicle with three rows of seats. It is no longer sold as a new car, but many are still found on the used car market.
An old-school suspension design that connects the rear wheels with a solid metal bar but keeps the heavy gears attached to the car's frame to help it ride smoother.
An old-school way of building vehicles where a separate metal cabin is bolted onto a heavy, tough steel frame underneath. It's great for heavy towing and off-roading.
A modern way of building cars where the frame and the body are all one single piece, like an eggshell, making the car lighter, safer, and smoother to drive.
This stands for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness. It's how car engineers measure and try to block out annoying wind noise, engine shaking, and bumpy road feelings from the inside of the car.
A huge annual car show in Las Vegas where companies show off crazy custom-built cars, giant trucks, and new parts you can buy to modify your own vehicle.
The Chevrolet Silverado is a large, powerful pickup truck made by the American company Chevrolet. It is designed for carrying heavy loads, towing trailers, and everyday driving. It is one of the most common and popular trucks on the road today.
A modern gearbox with 10 different gears that shifts automatically, helping the engine stay efficient whether you are cruising on the highway or towing a heavy trailer.
This is a large, powerful pickup truck formerly known as the Dodge Ram, but now simply called Ram. It is designed for heavy-duty work like towing and hauling, but is especially famous for having a very comfortable, high-quality interior that feels like a luxury vehicle.
The Chevrolet Silverado EV is a large pickup truck that runs entirely on electricity instead of gasoline. It is built from the ground up to be electric, allowing it to travel very long distances on a single charge while still being able to tow and haul heavy items.
The Studebaker Avanti is a famous, vintage luxury sports car from the early 1960s. It is known for its unique, futuristic design made of fiberglass instead of metal, and its advanced safety features for its time. It is considered a highly collectible classic car today.
A popular, sporty luxury SUV made by BMW that drives more like a sports sedan than a heavy truck.
LIVE
Hello, welcome to the Edmunds Podcast podcast. I'm math
moderator DeAndre here with Alistair Weaver and Nick
Kikian. Welcome back. Alright, before we get into it, a word
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select states gambling problem called 1 800 gambler. How are
you?
First don't really as always super sick start. I'm I'm
absolutely absolutely fine. Thank you went to the went to
soccer last night. US lost in the last minute but still
qualify so we're not not too much harm done. That was great
fun. Yeah, I'm in good mood. Yeah, that was shocking to watch.
So you went to SoFi which they removed the name from not SoFi
course because they can't call it SoFi anymore. So it's a
stadium formerly known as SoFi now known as the Los Angeles
stadium.
This is off topic but since you brought it up, did you see what
Levi Stadium has been doing? It's absolutely genius is Levi has
their logo that's the tag on the jeans and it has that shape to
it. So at the stadium they had to cover it in a white sheet but
because it's such a distinctive shape, people loved it. So they
changed like all of their social media and everything like on
their Instagram profiles to that to the logo with the sheet
hanging over it going you know who we are. They've got more out
of it than anything. They've got more, you know, fans and
comments and press out of it. It's just one of those genius
moments where you're like, that's great. It works perfectly
and good for them. So I did watch that game. I thought it was
fun. I thought it was interesting. I was a little bummed at
the last minute that they scored. I know like the team was
pushing through either way. So they kind of ran like with, you
know, sort of this more of the subs and the bee team than
anything else. But everyone that was there. So it's just like
yes, yes, yes. And then I tell you what was crazy. I don't know
we're here to talk about cars. But what was crazy? Because I've
also seen this at things like rentsport event, the Porsche
event, like the merch line. Yeah, it's just extraordinary. It's
like you've spent a fortune to go to this event. And then you
turn up and the merch line before kickoff was like an hour
long. I mean, I actually went at the end of the game. Because
when everybody left, I hung around for a little bit and then
the shop was basically empty. And that was obviously the way to
play it. But yeah, it's it's it's crazy. Did you bring your kids
or is it one of those events where I was like, I was on my
this you can't because you're a child. So you're going to stay
home. See if you can see any on TV. Exactly. Daddy's going to
FaceTime you that's as close as you can get. That's all. Yeah,
there you go. But I tell you what, the other thing that drove
me nuts is I decided that there was I thought, well, I'm going
to go and have a beer for one. So I left the car at home and and
then the surge pricing on the Uber was nuts. So you end up
having to walk and wait just for the surge pricing to go. But
anyway, we should talk about cars. Now we've talked about how
expensive it is to go to the World Cup. We should talk about
a car that doesn't cost a lot of money. And Nick Nick, we
should didn't introduce Nick terribly. Well, Nick is our one
of our news editors. So our news hounds. And recently went down
the road, which is not actually very far from where we're
recording this, to have a look at the slate in Long Beach.
Yeah, that's right. Right down there. It's their design, their
LA design studio is where they had the event. It's actually
pretty cool space.
And I remember when I originally saw this couple of years back,
I had like a little preview even before the press preview, it
was like an investor's preview, and it was going to be 16,000.
But that was including the tax credit, which of course went
away. And now it's 24,950, but that's without destination. So
by the time you put destination on that, which they
haven't released, it's going to be sort of 26 and a bit, which
is it's creeping up that right, it's getting more expensive for
you know, which kind of gets away from it's kind of we're
going to be unbelievably cheap and utilitarian.
Yeah, and also, if you want anything that isn't just the
like blank slate, as they call it, you're pushing 30 almost
immediately, like if you want a second row, if you want the
fastback or the SUV body, all this stuff is all a cart, and
it's going to like drive the price up like really, really
quickly. So you're looking at a $30,000 car once you get
anything that you like.
What? Why don't we step back a little bit? Why don't you explain
what the slate is? We've touched on it a little bit in the
shows, but also like looking at the website, which is kind of a
acute website. So I'm trying to figure out who the audience is
for this. It's definitely not. I was thinking more of like a
commercial audience as well, maybe, you know, local workers,
you know, things like that, lawn care, pool care, you know,
maybe I honestly, I was thinking like Napa auto parts, you
know, like you they deliver parts to shops and stuff all the
time, get 30 of these trucks, put them at stores all over the
place, wrap them with Napa, charge them at the store, you've
got a great delivery vehicle, but I don't see anything
indicating that's the audience of this. And as we're talking
about all of these options that you can get on it, why do you get
them on this car? So why don't we start from the beginning about
what slate is?
Yeah, so slate is, but it's like the super tiny single cab
short bed pickup, it's an EV. And its goal is to be as cheap as
possible. And so you don't get any creature comforts aside from
air conditioning. So you got like crank windows, you don't get
an infotainment system, you don't rest, you don't get an arm
rest, but they're made of hard plastic. You don't get even
like, you don't even get speakers in the car unless you add them
on afterwards. It is as bare bones as modern cars can reasonably
get. And it seems like there's a lot of people who are interested
in something like that. Also, if we're saying it's like, it's
like it's an EV, it's rear drive only, it's got 1550 pounds of
payload and 2000 pounds max towing. And the range is only 205
miles from a relatively small 64 kilowatt hour battery pack
that's like mounted in the floor of the chassis there.
So Nick, I had a question on that, right? Because you say it's
relatively small battery, but I mean, something like a Tesla
Model S has got about 70 kilowatts or just over 70 kilowatts
and goes the best part of 300 miles even on the even on our
Edmunds E-Rerange test. So it doesn't seem like the most
efficient thing in the world. And I'm not sure about some of the
battery technology and how they're deploying that. But I
mean, this is a, this is on the face of it is a very kind of
squared off blocky truck. It's not, you know, if you were
starting to build something with maximum range and maximum
efficiency, you probably wouldn't start, probably wouldn't
start here.
Yeah, I don't think so. It's kind of like a, I mean, the front
of it shaped like a brick. And I was talking to their lead
engineer and he said they did a lot of work on aerodynamics,
but there's only so much you can do with this particular form
factor. Like it's limited just inherently because of the way
that it looks like, you know, if a Rivian wasn't shaped the way
that it was shaped, you'd probably go further. But it's,
you know, there's only so much you can do to meet the air or
when when you meet the air, I should say.
Going back to like when I first saw saw this years ago. So I
mean, I kind of followed this journey from before it went
public. And it's been, it is really interesting. It's the
CEO who I believe is like recently changed role was from
was from, I think, Stellantis. There was a lot of the other
executives were from Harley Davidson, who had really
specialized in accessories, you know, Harley's great at all
the customization and modifications and making a lot
of margin in the, in the add-ons. And at the time it was
going to be, you know, we are taking this apps that we are
taking everything out. It's got these plastic body panels that
you can unscrew and bolt on if they get damaged. And it sounded
I like the idea of a kind of super utilitarian. So it's
very charming about that. But I guess then it's how cheap is it
to get to the point where it's like, it's a cool, maybe a
third car, you know, you're a surfer, and you want something
that you can just beat up on. You, you know, you have it as
some people have been saying, Oh, it's a good college kids car.
And it's like, was it really? So and then the Christ gets to
remember the time thinking, how they're doing it for 16, it's
like, Oh, well, that includes a tax break. Okay, so really, it's
25. And as Nick said, you then, you know, all you're really
getting inside is a phone holder. So everything runs
through your phone. So then maybe you buy a $100 Bluetooth
speaker from, you know, Best Buy or Amazon or whatever it is
and throw that in. And that's your high five. But as soon as
you start adding bits on, if you want to wrap, so you have some
colors, a few hundred bucks, I was going through the
configurator, and you want, you said arm rest, that's another
manner. That's another few hundred bucks. You've got arm rest
that incorporate a speaker, if you want this, that.
And very quickly, if you want the SUV or you want the fastback
SUV body, suddenly, you're getting 3035 even up to 40,000
perks. And then it's like, Well, hang on, man, I'm gonna see our
V now. And the biggest problem for me is on the truck bit, you
know, at 26 and a half, what's a Maverick startup, not a lot
more than that. The Ford Maverick, which is, which is a
little bit bigger. 29. Yeah, Mavericks 29. Yeah, so get a used
one, maybe a year old. I mean, it's, as soon as you get close
to 30 grand, you've got Sant Hyundai, Santa Cruz, I know
they're not electric, but they're a great little truck.
The the the slate, the standard features are artists like
air conditioning, right, like heat and air.
Yeah, you got heat and air and you don't get a heat pump, right?
Like you would in a more sophisticated EV, you get a PTC
heater, which is like old tech, like, you know, Nissan first gen
Nissan Leaf stuff. So what's the difference? It just gets
longer to get warm. It takes longer to get cold or get warm
and they're inherently less efficient than a heat pump would
be. So they draw more energy and they take longer to work. Yeah.
Okay, if this vehicle was not an EV and had a small four
cylinder or maybe something even smaller, three cylinder,
didn't Ford used to have like a one cylinder engine that they
had at the LA Auto Show like, like six or seven years ago, it
was like, but they were like, no, no, no, it's really awesome.
It's got like 100 horsepower. It's like, well, that's actually
pretty cool. But I kind of feel like if it had a little gas
engine and, you know, a drive shaft or front wheel drive,
right? And a pretty basic four speed, you know, transmission.
I don't know what does that do? Maybe take five grand off? Do
you get it? Like, could this could have been maybe more? I
mean, it could have been 1999, you know, like before
destination reasonably and go, we're still going to make all
these options, you're going to get all this stuff on it. And
but we can get it for under 20,000 bucks on paper, right? And
then so now when you start adding all this stuff on it, you
go, you know, if I added as much as $10,000 of options, I'm
under 30 grand. You know, it's the kind of maybe I don't know,
missed the mark on that.
I mean, I think they set off to be an EV brand, and then they
also they can sell directly as a startup. There's a lot of, you
know, there's a lot of advancing what they're trying to do. It's
built in the USC, I haven't got some of the tariff issues, so
that's going to be in their favor. Look, I really like the
concept. I love the fact that companies come along and trying
to do this. There is a huge amount of interest in it. My, I
guess my question, and Nick, you've you've been closer to the
production version than than I have is, who buys this? Because
it's isn't it a, isn't it actually better? I mean, it's
interesting, like Ford with the F 150 pitch it as a commercial
vehicle, which of course, sometimes it is. But by
pitching it as kind of the workhorse of America, they also
sell it as the, you know, the the Texas, or they call it the
Texas minivan or whatever, whatever the expression is. Yeah.
And it strikes me that this is more this would be great if
you're a gardener, a plumber, a, you know, that that sort of
flourish, that kind of profession, particularly in an
urban area, like somewhere like LA San Francisco, New York,
where you want something small and compact, you charge it
every night. 25 grand, you can beat up on it. It that seems
that seems like the audience right, but that but the whole
pitch has been much more kind of no, this is a cool consumer
car that you're gonna, you're gonna modify and you're gonna
get, you know, you're gonna get an arm respite as part of your
birthday present and etc.
That's kind of the the appeal in my mind is and I agree, I think
it's a it's gonna be a little bit lost with the consumer would
be you can get the basic model and then you save up, you know,
whenever you get some cash, you start adding those components
to it, you just pay for the component, you add your Bluetooth
speaker, you add your the back to it, whatever. And of course,
you're like, you know, birthday's coming up. Hey, guys,
how about, you know, how about an arm rest? Or hey, guys, you
know, which is crazy, by the way, like 50 bucks, you know, or,
you know, Santa Claus, how about bring me, you know, bring me
some, some, you know, something else for my can I get a blue
can I get a blue interior this year? Yeah, mix it up. I imagine
something at like, again, I just don't see the consumer side of
it too much, where I can see like the promotional material, you
know, the, you know, the roll the truck up and you're doing, you
know, you're, you're an energy drink and you're wrapping it
like that. Or maybe you're having some fun with it at the
scene, Michelle and kind of showing all the different things
you can do to it. And you get creative and you're like, you
know, also, like, we hit CAD and, you know, we, we designed some
stuff, we 3d printed stuff and we can attach things all over it
and we had some fun with it and we can turn it into this and
turn it into that. And but interesting on the configurator,
you can get the regular version, you can get it lifted or you can
get it lowered. Right? There's a there's a little kit and and a
lowering kit for it. I'm like, okay, that's
I was also like that, you can put 20 inch wheels on it. But as we
know, from all our testing, you put 20 inch wheels on it, you
lift it. Like what's that do to the range? It's like, I'm sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. It's but also like the SUV thing and the range. Yeah,
there you go. You're done. I mean, going back to what like what
was next talking about the journey, you know, what is also
interesting when people say, well, it's an SUV fast baggage,
you so basically you buy the truck, which is what you know,
the play on the word the slate. So that's the clean slate. And
then you can buy an SUV back, which you kind of Alan Keon in
simple terms, or you can buy this kind of fastback. So if you
think like Volkswagen Atlas has its full size SUV, or you can get
the one with the slanty rear window. And then they're going
to do like an open top version, which I think will be quite fun.
So you've got rear seats, not got rear seats. But if you're going
to have this kind of configurability, you've got to
have somewhere to store all this stuff, presumably, what you're
going to have to have somewhere to store all this stuff. And
then, you know, you just keep bolting on money because the
SUV doesn't start to what the early 30s, you know, and when you
think that an Ioniq five is a couple of hundred bucks to lease
at the moment, you know, that's, it's, it's, it's a tough, you
know, Hyundai's Ioniq five does what 300 miles, that's a, you
know, and it's got the other thing, the safety technique, I
was, I read your article and watch the video, which is on
our YouTube channels. You've got cruise control, but very basic
cruise control, and you haven't got any of the lane change
keeping assist and in the blind spot monitoring and there's
stuff that frankly, we take for granted now.
Yeah, so none of that stuff is coming. They made that choice
very deliberately to they say to keep costs down. And I
imagine because they're a new OEM and they haven't developed
those systems, and buying them off the shelf takes a lot of
calibration work, I gather they just said, no, forget it, we're
just going to cut it from the get go and not worry about it. A
lot of this truck is off the shelf stuff, like the electric
motor, for example, is bought from somebody else, they didn't
develop that in house, a lot of the control electronics, the
steering column, the gear, the steering gears, like these are
all things that they've bought from suppliers and then sort of
like made to work for their purposes. So it's very like, it's
so funny, the truck you buy is like all a car, but then also the
truck that they built is also all a car like the whole thing is
just like a mishmash of little bits that you get to put
together. It's kind of funny how that ethos goes all the way
through the entire story of the truck.
And what strange is like when you we did the interview a few
weeks ago with Alan Clark, who heads up Ford's EV division, and
he was adamant that that doesn't work, because you're making
compromises all along the journey. So you've got somebody else's
motor, then you've got different software engine and the battery
and the whole point is these kind of like incremental approach
where it's a little 2% here, 2% there. And the one thing that
worried I think about with Slate is like, how deep is their
talent pool? You know, you look at I went down to Long Beach,
looked at what Ford was doing, the amount of people they've got,
the amount of technology invested in for Slate to come along
as a startup. It's, you know, it is really difficult to do these
things. And I've spoken to so many people in the EV industry
say they just aren't that many people with the knowledge and
experience. It's a bit like we started talking about the World
Cup, but there aren't many world class soccer players. And I
don't think there are that many world class EV battery
engineers and software tuners and motor motor engineers, and
they're all fighting over them. And I think that's been
Stellantis' problem. And I wouldn't know how many, you know,
what does Slate's talent pool look like? But I don't want to
sound too down on it, because I think it's, I kind of look at
it, it is interesting for sure. I agree. I think Alan Clark at
Ford, his point was we're trying to develop more efficient
vehicles that are software driven. So if we if we buy all
these third party components, and we're supposed to talk to
those components, it doesn't work that way. We need components
designed specifically for a core brain, if you will, right?
Slate's going, our car doesn't have a brain for the most part,
like we don't really, you know, like, like, it just kind of is
meant to piece together. And it's not going to get over the air
software updates as far as we know, right? Like there's just
nothing really
I don't think there's anything to like really even update,
right?
Because also, they're not going to, to add
the modem and they're not going to add the Wi-Fi, they're not
going to add that stuff to it. They're just cutting costs.
Going through some of the info that you wrote up, you know,
significantly fewer parts overall. So in your question
about talent pool, in general, it's like, there's probably an
engineering team that's half the size, if not a third of the
size of most companies that are working on these types of
projects. And it's mostly about maybe coming up with some
interesting ideas, sourcing, seeing what what what parts are
available and finding a way to sort of Lego them all together.
Right? Instead of going, you know, clean sheet of paper, we're
going to design this car. This is what we want. Now we're going
to start designing like, how do we make this work? And how do we
get a dash to work? And how do we get, you know, what's our
gauge is going to look like? What's our shape going to look
like? This was more like, we're starting with sort of this
block, and we can start fitting in third party pieces into it.
So I, you know, again, you're right, I don't know how many
people are on staff. If you said the whole company was 30
people, I'd be like, Okay, interesting. But if it was 300
people, I think maybe that makes sense. Maybe that's a little
heavy, you know,
Don't teeny tiny though. I mean, relatively speaking, that's a
tiny company, especially for one of trying to make cars.
So a couple of questions. First of all, before I sort of get
into the future of the vehicle is, you got a chance to ride in
it. Yes, right. So let's talk about what is it like as a
vehicle, right? What's it like to drive or be in or is it is it
is it loud? Is it comfortable?
Yeah, so the first thing you notice is even though that e
motor only has 181 horsepower, it does feel pretty punchy. Like
they won't give me they didn't give me like a weight figure,
but I can't imagine it weighs very much. Even if it is an EV I
can't imagine it's that heavy.
It's front wheel drive. Oh, rear rear wheel drive. It is rear
wheel. The motors on the back axle. Yeah. So it feels pretty
punchy. I don't think it was designed with like limit handling
in mind. And also the rear axle is a DD on rear axle, like it's
super archaic, like old timey stuff. And so it feels trucky,
even though it's not a body on frame vehicle, it's not built
like a typical truck. But it feels kind of like halfway
between like a unibody SUV and like a small, like a small body
on frame vehicle would. So there's a little bit of bobble and
it's sort of like, you know, meanders around a little bit on
the road. But overall, it's pretty comfortable. The big problem
I think or the one that I spotted was that it's really noisy.
Like at 45 miles an hour, there was a lot of wind coming in
from the side of the like the passenger side window, like I
could just hear it. And like, I like tried and I think it's not
in the video, but you can see me trying to like roll the window
further up because of course, you have crank window. So I was
trying to like crank it up even more than it would go.
You thought it was like leaking or something.
Yeah, I thought I thought like, I thought I didn't close the
window all the way or something. But no, it was just like kind of
loud in there. And so I think maybe they'll get better at that
as they get closer to like delivering cars. I don't know.
But I mean,
I'm sure they're pretty limit on like sound dead nerd and things
like that.
Question is, I mean, there's a lot of things that go into what
we call NVH noise vibration harshness, which is aerodynamics
wind noise. Then you know, so you can either build a car that's
fundamentally quiet, or you can build a car and add a load of
stuff that quietens it down. So yeah, if they're trying to save
money on on sound deadening material, you know, we've got
the arrow that they're trying to, you know, trying to optimize.
And it's, yeah, I was thinking about it going back to like who
buys it going back to the Ford bit, because I was thinking the
Ford is aiming to be 30 grand. So let's say that you know, 30
grand plus destination, let's say so early 30 so a bit more than
this. Ford is adamant that it's a totally different audience. I
think they're probably saying we don't know who's like audiences,
but Ford is saying, our audience is not they sent me an email
after the piece went live. And we're like, yeah, you, you know,
you can't say it competes with the Ranger and the and the
Maverick. And I said, Well, it's a 30 grand truck. So it kind of
does. But I think in all their analysis, they're saying we're
not talking to that customer. We're talking this person over
here who's more of a technologist and everything else.
And they they think that Slate's talking to a different customer
again. But they're all 30 grand trucks.
Listen, I get it from their standpoint. And maybe their
their marketing speak, you know, like, listen, if you're Alan
Clark, and you've just been hired to open an entire facility in
Long Beach and develop EV trucks, of course, you're going to go,
this is a completely different audience. We're not competing
with the rest of the trucks and Ford's lineup. But when you're
with a customer and you walk into a Ford showroom and you see an
F 150 and a Ranger and a Maverick and this new EV all in front
of you, you, you know, you sort of get the small, medium, large,
extra large or extra small or however you want to look at it,
you're going to stand there, you're going to ask a few
questions. But for the most part, I think your your initial
impact is you're going to walk it. Listen, if they said, we're
going to sell this differently, it's not even going to be called
a Ford's going to have a different showroom, or you're
going to order it online or deliver it, then they can get a
little bit more separation. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Right? You walk into a Ford dealer, it's going to be there
with everything else. How do you separate that?
It'll have to be just from just from the way Ford operates and
the way the law operates as well, how they sell their vehicles.
And, you know, that also remains a bit of the, you know, I
think Slate is going to service through repair, right, Nick? And
then, you know, it's still a bit unclear as when you buy it
with a delivery, whether you pick it up, what that looks like.
So, you know, there's all that infrastructure to to build as
well. I was thinking like, how are you going to buy it? Are
they going to have like, you know, like little popups with a
parking garage outback where you can drive test drive them, you
know, like, I don't know, maybe Fisker or not Fisker, maybe
Tesla did it for a little while. And what am I thinking, like
Vinfast or something like you can, you know, you walk into a
little showroom in a in a shopping mall or something. And
they go, yeah, we got three of these in the parking garage.
Let's go for a ride. Like what's Slate's plan? Did they talk
about that?
They did not. I don't so I don't know what their plan is
regarding like a showroom style or whatever. All I know is that
when you buy one, they will deliver it to you how you
order it. So if you buy the SUV, the Fastback or just the truck,
it those those are the only ways you can, those are the only
ways the factory will build it. And then if you order to other
stuff, they send it to like an upfitter who then adds all the
stuff on afterwards and then it gets delivered to you.
I'd rather send it to me because that's part of the fun of
it. Like I want to because on the website, it actually tells
you when you're looking at the options, it tells you whether
it's like easy, medium or hard like, you know, I was looking at
because that's like buying IKEA furniture where you're like, Hey,
maybe you should get a professional. Maybe you should
don't do it. Don't do yourself. But I was actually looking at it
and thinking, you know, when the boy gets a bit older, when my
daughter gets a bit older, actually, this would be a fun
thing. You know, if you had the kind of house where you know,
if you had the money, say, well, actually, I'm going to do this
with the kids, we're going to buy the blank one, and then we're,
we're going to modify it, we're going to add bits and it becomes
like a grown up Lego set. Then there is fun in that. But if
they can send me the whole truck that way, that'd be awesome.
That's a money thing again, isn't it? Like, I'm sorry, but
like, you know, that's what I suppose all the people do with
it. You know, I grew up racing catering in Europe. And you
know, you built a lot of people built them themselves
initially. And that was part of the joy that you get this car
and you, you bolt, you know, you learn about the engineering
and a lot of people did it with their kids. And you know, you
learn what the suspension looks like in a steering rack, and
you bolt all these things on and it takes you six months to
build. And the slate's got a bit about it. But again, it's just
you've got to be pretty affluent to, you know, are they, you
know, as a few guys around me are saying, Oh, I'll get it as a
surf truck. Well, great. But, you know, then where'd you put
the kids? Because actually, there's no way really to put,
you know, you've only got two seats in the front. So it's not
a family truck, unless you buy the rear seats. And if you buy the
rear seats, where does surfboard go? So you sort of start
twisting yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, not only
do you need to have like a bunch of money to be able to afford
all the beds, but you also have to have like, the willingness,
the time, the energy, like, you have to really commit, like,
it's asking a lot of people who just typically look at a car as
a thing to go, I need to do I need this to get me from a to
be and that's it. Like, it's a real hobbyist type of product.
And there aren't that many, you know, hobbyists out there is at
least not compared to like everybody who buys a car.
Yeah. And maybe those hobbyists are buying classic cars and use
cars and, you know, sometimes which might have, you know,
better long term, term value as well. But yeah, and then of
course, you know, you've got to store the car, ensure the car
tax the car, all of which,
I tie it. If there was an option on the website that says,
well, we'll knock off another seven grand if I assemble the
whole thing myself, I would absolutely do that. That would
be the one reason why I would buy that thing and just get just
get a pallets delivered, maybe not to my apartment, but find a
location, get some pallets delivered and go, this is going
to be great.
Body panels are like an Allen key. So that would be cool.
And yes, because, you know, like the custom fabrication and
stuff and whatever is taken out of it, even the paint, it's
removed from the equation, you know, it's like,
you know, like some of these companies, they do like the, you
know, the 72 hour build or whatever at the SEMA show, what
they do is they build an entire, you know, 65 Mustang, paint it,
you know, paint it, do everything, then they take the whole
thing apart, and then they bring it to the SEMA show, and then
they get a team that works, you know, three days straight to
put it all together again, but they're not hand fabricating
anything. At this point, you're right, they're just busting out
the Allen key, basically, and putting it all together.
Before we wrap up on this, I want to get your thoughts on
this is, is this a vehicle that people are going to buy? Is it
going to be a vehicle that people are going to lease if you
are one of the commercial buyers, if you're a Napa or
whatever, and you're leasing it through your business, but then
you're customizing it with all of its pieces, and you're getting
it wrapped a certain way. Where does that car go when it's
done to slate? Look at it and go, hey, it's up to you. Like if
you go sell it to the next guy, you got to pull the wrap off or
pull your logos off or whatever. And assuming if you buy most of
the add-ons from slate, there's, I don't know, or all those add-ons
included in the warranty for the initial, you know, whatever the
initial warranty is on that vehicle, how does that work?
Especially for bigger items like more seats or, you know, the
SUV back, you know, so there's still some questions around
this thing, and then it's resell value, and how do you resell
it? Or if it's a lease, do you give it back to slate? They
don't have a showroom. Like, does it go back to the factory? Do
they pull some options off and pull your stickers off and start
on over? Like, I'm curious what happens to that vehicle?
Well, I doubt they're going to, like, do a lease program. I
don't think Rivian did a lease program until like their fifth
or sixth year selling cars or something like that.
Yeah, because also, then if you do a lease program, then, you
know, then you generally have to use a third party, even
something like Jaguar Land Rover struggle with this, then you
use a third party, and the third party's got margin built into
it, so your leases ended up expensive, and you sort of start
twisting yourselves up in knots. I think they're basically
saying, look, this thing's so cheap, you're either going to
finance it or lease it. Sorry, finance it or buy it, of
course. Yeah, finance it or buy it. Right. And they're saying,
go get your own bank. We're not even really in the business
of doing that.
The other thing that I think slightly odd about it from a
business perspective, you talk to most manufacturers, and they
say, the most efficient way to build a cheap vehicle is
basically not to offer customization. So if you think
about when you go on, you know, like a Honda Civic or whatever,
you're basically, yes, there are different trims, but they try
and minimize it, you're basically buy a hot this Honda Civic or
that Honda Civic. Yeah, the idea that you're going to have
like 200 plus accessories, you got to build other accessories,
got to design them, you got to build them, you got to stock
them, you got to, you know, you got to support them. It feels
like quite a challenge for the business. So I think what they're
saying is a bit like the Porsche model, well, all the margins
in the accessories. Yeah. I don't know, there's, there's
maybe maybe if the car is built here, the truck is built here,
maybe all most of the accessories are not maybe it's just
like volume inexpensive overseas, or, or wherever and saying
that's how we're getting it done, even with tariffs, we saw
you a $50 armrest, it costs us $2 to make it and $1.50 to get
it here. Yeah, we're going to sell it to you for 50 bucks.
It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but, you know, the
margins could be there. Yeah. Well, I was talking to, I
forget his last name, CJ, he's the head of customization and
slate and I was like, I asked him point blank, I was like, are
the accessories the way you guys plan on making money? And he
said, Oh, like we don't care if anybody buys accessories. And I
thought to myself, like, I don't think that's true. Like you
definitely want people to buy the accessories. Yeah, we need to
make money. Like that's the big thing. Like if you if you want
to exist as a business, making money is like the number one
priority. Yeah, that's not and they all come from Holly who
made all that money from accessories. Right. Yeah, you
was formerly. Yeah. Ask the engineer. Sure. He's going to
give you that answer. But where's the CFO? Who's in charge of
finance? Yeah, checks, man. Yeah, it's like who's who's who's
looking at the costs and the sale value. All right. I think
the interesting thing for might met for them might be if you
know, as you say that they get big fleet orders that you know,
particularly if you've got the kind of fleet where everything
goes home at night and you can plug it into an array of of
different charges, then that feels like a good business for
them. Yes. But do fleet customers want to lease the
vehicle? Right? Like is that what they would maybe they would
prefer it? I don't know. Well, there's some tax incentives,
there's certain write offs and stuff and depreciation of that
vehicle and how you're using it. So it's all about a tax thing
for those commercial vehicles, even a small business you, me or
whatever, you can you can lease one vehicle and and write off a
certain amount of it. So leasing is advantageous for for small
business owners. If like, if you're a florist, like you
mentioned, you have, you know, you have one company vehicle
that your employees share and you're delivering it, you'd want
to lease that vehicle so you can get your tax benefits on
leasing that vehicle. Maybe the third parties will solve that
problem. Well, I mean, you could go to a third party leasing
company outside of Slate and because Slate doesn't care who's
paying for it really, right? If you go, we go into this company
and do it, there's ways to do it. But it's more expensive to do
it that way. The fees are greater. There's no, like a lot
of EVs that have good leases, there's incentives at the
manufacturer level to make that happen. So there's nothing
there. Okay, so we're going to take a break. Are we done with
Slate? Do you think we're, do you think we've had enough?
Should we talk about it? Should we talk about an old school
truck, but old school, but new school?
Yes, okay, we'll be right back. Give us two minutes to do a
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app and place your first bet today. Okay, we're back. Let's
talk about trucks. Well, first thing I just popped up. We didn't
even, you know, do this ahead of time, but Polestar, like we're
kind of done with Polestar in the US, like just a kind of a rip
the bandaid off kind of announcement saying, you know,
the parent company that owns Volvo and Polestar is saying we
just doesn't make sense for us to keep Polestar in the United
States. So they're going to sell off whatever inventory they
have, but that's, that's done. Do you guys, am I making this up?
No, this, this court, I think this court, a few people out me
included it. So for background, Polestar, so Geely, which we
tested recently, Geely is a Chinese business that owns a bunch
of brands that you'll have heard of, like Lotus, Volvo,
Polestar. And there's long been this fuss with Polestar about
could they sell directly like Tesla because are they startup
and then there's this big fuss about, well, actually,
technically, they're not really a startup, they're kind of an
offshoot of Volvo and it all got a bit messy. And there is this
legislation now, which is all about Chinese brands coming into
the US. What's the security provision? What's this? What's
that? At the long and short of it, this is really about
protecting the domestic automakers from what is seen as
unfair competition. I don't think anybody, you know, we have a
million DJI Chinese drones in this country, which everybody
films on the beach with. So I don't think this
is necessarily deep down a security issue. I think this is
this is about protecting the US industry from what is seen as
basically state subsidized companies in China. Yeah,
what's also with a different, you know, wrapper around it.
But what's interesting about this is Volvo's got an exemption
from this. So Volvo basically has the same parentage, but I
think Volvo is so heavily invested in the US and so many
jobs that depend on Volvo that they've, they've managed to
kind of navigate some sort of solution around, oh, we've done
this to protect the security and this to protect the data and
you know, so I think what's what's not clear to me about the
Polestar thing is Polestar has been struggling for a long time.
They changed their CEO. I think they're good looking vehicles,
but they are, you know, they've been really struggling. So is
this, is this really a bit of a neat excuse to get a word, you
know, to actually exit the market and not spend not keeps
losing a ton of money and effectively blame somebody else? I
think it's probably a bit of both to be honest, but it's
still, it's still slightly shocking because there's been,
you know, billions invested in this business. US was seen as a
critical market for what are effectively, you know, a bunch of
that EV SUVs. And suddenly from 2027, it is, it is no more, but
Volvo continues Lotus never even made it in as an EV as the EVs
these fairly ugly EV SUVs, they were knocking around as
prototypes or as you know, concept cars.
I think the dealer had one. I think Gallup and Lotus had one.
I saw somebody driving it and they were trying to promote it. I
just, it didn't catch on and I don't think Lotus had any
marketing dollars behind it at all.
I don't think they could bring in, I think there's a different
ownership or there's a different corporate structure between
the Lotus that builds the sports cars in England and the
Chinese built SUVs because the Chinese SUVs built SUVs then
have the 50% tariff on them so they become economic. Whereas
the sports cars are still built in, built in the UK and are
kind of almost like a different entity. So a lot of this gets
really complicated, but the reality is Polestar's dead in
this country, but there's a lot of provision for, you know, the
business, the underlying business isn't dead. So there's a
lot of provision for if you've got one, don't panic, you know,
the residual values, it's not going to help the
residual values, unfortunately, but you know, in terms of
servicing and keeping it operational.
Well, they're going to sell them in China, right? And they're
going to sell them in other parts of the world. So yes,
there's going to be parts being built for that car, for those
cars. Yeah, I'm a little bummed out about it. I kind of like
what Polestar, the direction they were heading and, you know,
they were, they, they were not announcing officially, but like
trying to show some concepts and show where the brand is going
and some pretty cool stuff that
Oh, in March. Yeah, they basically announced that they're
going to redo the whole lineup in like a bunch of different
ways. And that was not that long ago. And they said that those
cars were going to come to the US. I think there's like a little
bit of like they were caught off guard by this. And like maybe
they are using it as like a need excuse. But I think there's
also an element of like the US government playing favorites
with this like handy new rule that just came into existence a
couple years ago, like, like, it's like, well, Bobo's so
invested, so we'll let them slide. But Polestar is not a big
enough fish. So you're out of here. It doesn't, it doesn't
like, it doesn't work for me. It seems a bit odd and like, you
know, meddling with the market by ways. Maybe that was the
trade off. Maybe the trade off was we'll allow Volvo, but we
still need to have some sort of example being made. So we're
going to get rid of Polestar and you keep Volvo and they had no
choice to go, well, it's either that or get rid of both of
them. So let's, let's, well, yeah, and I think Polestar was
losing so much money over here that I don't think you just look
at the lease rates and how much they were having to subsidize
them to sell the cars. I just, I don't think, honestly, I don't
think they fought will have fought terribly hard to keep it.
It's just, it's just too much money that as soon as they weren't
able to sell directly, Tesla, you know, the whole business model
started to crumble a little bit and the products are decent, but
too expensive. Nobody's heard about the price. It costs too
much to market.
Yeah, the three is super duper good. I think that's like their
best product. It's like a very underrated car in my opinion.
I think it's great. I rang them up the other week. And when I
was looking for replacement for the family Genesis and said,
how much is a lease on a three? And they were like, it's 700
bucks a month. I said, well, I can lease a Cadillac for 300.
And they said, well, sorry.
Yeah, they're like, you should get the Cadillac.
Basically, I was like, okay, okay, all right.
So we shift gears and talk about Chevy Silverado. Is that
still made in America?
No, the GMC Sierra. GMC Sierra. That's a Freudian slip.
Yeah, well,
well, they are the same.
It's not that. Like I was close.
So GMC, I was up in Detroit a few weeks ago and I had a meeting
with all of the comms people from GMC and Cadillac and Chevrolet
and the GMC guys always get so upset because Chevrolet is seen
as like the, you know, the, the, the daddy brand. And so they
always get to launch first. And then you always kind of wait a
month. It's like, oh, and here's the GMC version.
Here's zero. There you go.
It looks pretty cool.
Yeah, it looks pretty good.
I think it's handsome. It's basically a slightly smaller
version of the EV, which was also a pretty decent looking truck,
I guess. We don't know anything about this car. We don't know
anything about this car. That's the thing. The release was like,
hey, it exists. And there's a V8. And then that was basically
the end of it. We don't know anything about, we don't have
any real specs. We don't have towing or payload. We don't have
the number of cab configurations or how long the bed is going
to be. We know that there are going to be like six trims that
you can get. And there's four different engines. They all have
10 speed automatics. And I think they're putting 35 inch tires on
the AT4X. And that's basically the long and short of it so far.
Okay, so it was a very forward of announcement.
I was just looking at the pictures though. I got the pictures
up on my other screen. And it looks, I mean, the interior
looks nice. GM has been criticized for so long for the
interiors. The current generation Silverado was a bit rubbish.
They improved it. And this looks nice. I mean, lots of screens
again. Everybody's obsessed with screens. It's got screens
everywhere. But it looks sufficiently different from the
Chevy inside to be a clear choice. It looks, at least in the
pictures, you know, another jump up market, which is kind of
where they're pushing the GMC brand. This is like the Posh, the
Posh version isn't the more kind of leisure orientated version.
I mean, you know, big glass roofs and stuff. I mean, it looks
like they're going after Ram with this to me. Ram's got a great
interior.
Also, that center screen is on like, like two arms on the side
and it like pivots and like moves upward. It like slides
upward to reveal like a cubby.
So I was like, that's kind of cool. I like that.
I kind of like that, you know, sort of this clear span of view
across the dash without a giant screen in front of you, like
it's having a little bit more integrated into the dash area
instead of an iPad's just stuck up high up on the dash. I like
that. I think that looks, looks pretty good.
Actually, kind of opposite slate.
Yeah, opposite slate.
Just like it's just built right in.
So why don't you run through some of the specs that we do know
what are going to be the engine options on that? That's always
a big thing, even though we don't have the tow ratings.
Is there a hybrid in the lineup now or?
No hybrid.
Maybe that will come like they haven't said anything and they
haven't. Yes. And they're going to stay tight lipped on that
until they're ready to announce it, if that's even an option.
They did say in the press backgrounder that I was in that
the diesel will get better fuel economy than the other
hybrids on sale. That's the Tundra and the F-150.
And so, you know, I mean, but I guess you can, you know, 26
mpg is better than 24 mpg. You can say that if you want.
It's not that big of a difference.
And the hybrids allow you to do a lot of cool stuff with tailgating
or powering accessories or your house, even to some degree.
So I think a hybrid is, or lack of a hybrid is kind of a miss
for them, but there are two new V8s, which they think is very
important. They were super proud of that.
There's a new 5.7 liter V8 and a new 6.6.
The 6.6 is related to the engine found in the new Corvette
Grand Sport. That new, I forget exactly the name of that new one.
So they're like similar.
I imagine like, you know, what the one in the Corvette's like
6.7 liters and the one in the truck is 6.6. I imagine it's
like a slightly shorter stroke as opposed to anything else.
I don't think it's like a huge architectural difference.
It's going to be a turn of change there.
We also know that this is going to be, you know, it might
start reasonably cheap, but this is going to be pushing 100
grand in its Denali trim.
Oh, yeah. I think the Denali ultimate, the current Denali
ultimate starts at $89,000. You add in, you know, maybe an extra 10
percent for the fact that it's an all new truck and you're already
at 100 grand.
Right.
It's a larger, I mean, the hybrid thing, this is like the
first question and I asked when I was up in Detroit, oh, and you
got the hybrid. No, no, you know, GM's had this, the GM put, you
know, you were talking about chips and chips on the table.
Well, they shoved all the chips into the EV category and said,
we're basically going to do EVs over here and then we're going
to do gas and, you know, diesel over here and kind of
completely ignored the middle ground.
And of course, the world is now focused on the middle ground
and Ford is actually selling a ton of, it's not like hybrid
don't sell, Ford's telling us, selling a ton of F-150 hybrids.
So yeah, it's
Is the Silverado EV, is that kind of done like the light?
No, they exist. They're a separate vehicle.
Remember, they're not the body on frame.
It's not like the F-150 Lightning where they took the standard
truck and bolted batteries in.
They are ground up vehicles, so they will just continue.
So the Sierra EV, the Silverado EV, they will just be sold alongside
this new truck or not sold.
And you think they're going to continue to keep that platform alive for a while.
I don't know if they're going to do a new version or invest in it,
but they're going to ride that out for a few years.
I don't think they've got any choice.
I mean, they've made all these commitments to suppliers and everything else.
Unless you just cancel it and write all the money off,
which let's face it, plenty of people have done recently,
I just can't, there's so much invested in
that technology across Hummer, across GMC, across Chevy.
You know, where else?
I mean, if they are sharing that technology, Cadillac Escalade,
Cadillac is the one I'm thinking of, yeah.
They were able to bring out more vehicles with a bunch of that platform with it.
Whereas Ford's Lightning, they just had the Ford Lightning.
The Ford Lightning is four years old now, going on five years old now.
So for them going, hey, we're going to stop making, they're done with the Lightning.
Yeah, yeah.
And dealers have them, you know, some dealers have them,
people are still buying them, whatever's out there.
But whatever the next generation of that Lightning will be,
at one point they're like, we're done with it, we're not getting it again.
But there's going to be some new generation version of the Lightning, presumably.
It seemed like that.
Well, I think Ford's going to see you launching this.
We've kind of come full circle now.
I mean, Ford's going to launch its $30,000 EV compact truck.
Figure out where that takes them and what the demand is and whether they can actually
make money on it.
And then I think work from there.
Whereas GM's kind of.
The new Lightning from what we've been hearing as Lightning owners is in ERAF,
some sort of range.
Yes, which makes.
That's right.
Which is kind of, yes, which is a sort of twist on a hybrid.
So GM needs a hybrid.
I mean, I think everybody needs a hybrid.
Everybody knows that it seems a bad business decision.
But that's the problem.
Maybe you can't afford to do all of these things and they made a big bet on EVs,
which now looks foolhardy.
But the time kind of made sense.
Yeah.
I mean, Cadillac seems to be doing well with the EV push.
And all of their EVs are pretty good, at least to us.
We think they're good.
And I see a ton of them, whether they're town cars or like customer cars.
I see a lot of them on the roads, at least here in Los Angeles.
So that's good for them.
But like the trucks are just not selling.
They're putting a lot of money behind them, though.
That's the other thing.
You have to look at how much they're incentivizing that.
I had a cat.
I was driving down the local street yesterday.
A cat of like Escalade IQ came past.
I mean, that is a monster of a car.
You don't see many.
It's just like 10,000 pounds.
It is enormous.
Yeah, it's crazy.
There's a guy on my street that has, he has the Escalade,
but he's got the V Series.
You know, he's got the big engine loud.
Oh, the LT6.
It just makes me giggle every time he pulls out of the garage
and then kind of hits it on the straight.
And you see it kind of squat down on the back
and tries to lift the nose up.
But it's so heavy, but it just growls like a beast.
And you're like, huh, interesting.
Like I'm sure he's getting 9 and 1 half miles per gallon
every time he does that.
But it is interesting.
It's kind of fun to see.
All right.
So before we wrap up, let's take a look.
Do you want to take a look at the Hyundai Elantra?
Oh, yeah.
This was another thing that dropped just as we were going on
as we were about to go live.
It's still a little bit away from the U.S., isn't it?
And they've still got another year to come.
But it's another Hyundai where you look at it and go,
wow, that's super distinctive
and doesn't look like a $25,000, $30,000 sedan.
It looks a lot more expensive.
So this is a vehicle that they announced in Korea
that will be the Hyundai, Elantra
when it comes here, right?
Yes.
My, OK, also my sources tell me that this car is not going
to be revealed for the U.S. next year,
but at the LA Auto Show this year.
So that their U.S., their big unveil for the LA Auto Show
is going to be the Avanti, which is the Elantra.
And that'll be our spec car.
So we'll know more about it in the middle of November.
OK.
And then we are looking at four-cylinder or hybrid technology.
We're looking at a couple different versions of it in the lineup.
My guess, actually, I wouldn't be surprised
if they do the Toyota thing where the whole thing is,
everything is hybrid.
And then there's still an end performance version.
And that's the only two cars you can get.
It's, yeah, it's it.
I mean, on the pictures, it looks like a handsome thing.
So it looks really cool.
We will see.
I think we talked about this last week's show.
We all sort of, yeah, I kind of feel like there's the
everything circular, the return of the sedan.
And this might be another great-looking vehicle that says,
well, I'm going to save a bit on the gas and it looks cool.
And I can still get the family in.
Hey, you're right.
It looks nice.
The only thing that concerns me, and we talked a little bit
about this off the air, is there's no normal gauge cluster.
And it's kind of up high, but it's a little like above the steering wheel,
not through the steering wheel.
And that it makes for an awkward driving position.
And you can't see much out of it.
Like we saw this with the Toyota BZ, I believe.
Alistair, you and I both have driven that.
And, you know, you're too tall for the BZ.
I'm too short for the BZ.
There was no, like, happy medium.
Like, there's no place to, like, how do you sit and not have the steering wheel,
like, in your lap or you hit your ceiling, your head on the roof?
Like, it's kind of awkward.
So I'm a little concerned about that arrangement in this vehicle.
I drove a Peugeot in Europe, which had the same setup as well.
And I ended up with a steering wheel, basically, you know, in my lap.
And it was just, you know, and it's just miserable.
So I don't know.
We'll see.
It's the ideal position.
Yeah.
If the ideal position is like, do you raise the steering wheel up a little bit?
It seems like it's not going to work.
Can you look through the steering wheel to see that?
But if you have to keep the steering wheel down,
and it's not a completely flat top steering wheel,
I just don't know how you're going to, it's going to be weird.
That's my concern.
Again, we're just basing it off of this picture.
But yes, based like the Peugeot you drove, the Toyota that I drove,
it was awkward.
And it was just, it was kind of a deal killer for me.
I was just like, I don't know what's going on.
Like it's so weird to drive.
So I don't know, let's see what Hyundai comes up with.
You're going to do something like that.
You probably have to nestle it right where the windscreen meets the dat,
like the dat right at the corner of that.
Because like they need to be as far away as possible,
basically, to make that viewing angle work.
BMW used us.
Lincoln, like they have a gate or something like that,
that they're doing that kind of makes sense.
But yeah, this is going to be interesting to do.
All right guys, what else is coming up?
What do you guys got?
You got some fun stuff on the docket for next week?
Testing anything?
Driving anything?
Test truck, we're the test truck on Monday.
All stuff you're not supposed to tell us.
We're probably a lot of things we're not supposed to.
Actually, what we have got going live next week,
which is another Nick show actually, is we have some stuff on BMW X5 coming up,
which we can probably talk about next week's show.
But yeah, that's coming up.
Yeah, I can't tell you anything about it now, but it is coming soon.
Yeah, and it looks interesting.
All right guys, again, thanks so much for listening.
We'll see you next week.
And until then, keep the air in the spare and the bag in the wheel.
If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate,
review, and subscribe.
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Thank you for listening.
About this episode
The Edmunds team dives deep into the Slate, a highly anticipated, ultra-minimalist electric pickup truck. With its starting price climbing to $24,950 before destination and options, the hosts debate whether this bare-bones EV—which lacks basic creature comforts like speakers and an armrest—still makes sense. They compare its utility, 205-mile range, and blocky aerodynamics to established competitors like the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz, questioning if a cheap gas engine would have made more sense for this utilitarian experiment.
