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The $25k car is going extinct?

(media.hubspot.com)
319 points pseudolus | 2 comments | 29 Jun 25 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.436s | source
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jvanderbot ◴[30 Jun 25 12:21 UTC] No.44422372[source]▶
Is anyone following Slate auto? They claim to be making a suburban pickup in the Ford Ranger size for ~20k. I've been cautiously optimistic about my reservation.

They apparently optimized for cost and molecularity, most notably by removing the infotainment system, which apparently is the biggest warranty / "feature" cost center.

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1. chis ◴[30 Jun 25 13:43 UTC] No.44423185[source]▶
It's a pretty car but I feel like they are mostly just selling a story about cost savings. Third party carplay screens can be bought for $150 so that just can't be very meaningful. The real cost savings is that it's a cheaply built EV with a small battery. Plus it's hard to get excited talking about the price a startup is claiming to sell cars at, before any have made it to consumers.

That being said the car looks sweet. I hope we have more startups making retro-vibe electric cars since the barrier to entry is much lower than with combustion engines.

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2. jvanderbot ◴[30 Jun 25 21:04 UTC] No.44427854[source]▶
Apparently (and I'm paraphrasing), the cost of the screen is not much. There's the cost of controls integration, at least, but also feature segmentation and warranty servicing. Apparently that's a lot of work to provide / cover and infotainment is one of the top warranty items. So it makes it a lot cheaper to just add a rack for your off the shelf bluetooth speaker.