No touch screens, no telemetry, no cellular modems, no wifi, no apps, no subscriptions, no infotainment.
no telemetry
In 2026?
I’d settle for Android/Apple Auto and no cellular
One of the most appealing things about Slate motors is that they seem to lack all the telemetry bullshit.
The least appealing thing about them is that Jeff Bezos is a primary investor.
I’m skeptical they’ll actually come with no telemetry or other forms of anti-features. The investors, like Bezos, will likely push for it. They have a new CEO, who comes from Amazon. There is a federal mandate for all US vehicles to come with driver monitoring technology starting in 2027.
Yeah, I am skeptical about it too. We will have to wait and see I guess.
I’m also wondering how they are going to deal with the requirement for all new cars after 2018 to have a backup camera/screen. Maybe it will just go through the tiny little screen behind the steering wheel?
Edit: I just looked it up. Seems the backup camera will go through the instrument panel screen.
Honda-san I beg of you, revist your classic designs and drop an electric motor in to them. You will become more rich
Bonus points if you can make it so that all the aftermarket suspension parts that already exist for those classic designs still fit. Ultra-bonus points if the body is externally identical so aero and body mods still fit.
Slate EV
Gas, you say? Are you sure?
How do they generate electricity where you come from?
Mostly coal in the US
Is that where they come from? Because anyone with a wrinkly organ in their skull knows that EV is just gas with extra st3ps
The amount of electricity generated by renewables an ICE car can use is always 0%. That is not true for EVs.
But like a lot more efficient to burn it in a power plant than millions/billions car engines that don’t capture the energy well anyways. And then at least renewables can be used in the power grid as well.
Ok. How well does that work with aging electrical infrastructure in places like Boston or Milan?
I mean, like, I totally get you vibing.
Unfortunately infrastructure was built when the world was new. What we all got is what we get, now and forever.
You improve the infrastructure? And while we’re at it, build more infrastructure for walking, cycling and public transport instead of inducing further demand for cars
So tear it all down?
Gas?
Accelerator!
From my point of view the steering wheel and brake pedal are accelerators as well.
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
Only in combination with a previous third type of accelerator.
Acceleratrix!
Don’t forget honk honk punch, Gas gas gas.
Steering. You also want steering.
Heated seats are a must if you drive anywhere that gets cold. Saves you a lot of miles. Backup cams are mandated on cars in the US now, and if you’re gonna have a screen, you should probably include some navigation so the car can pre-condition the battery before you get to a charger.
Well, if you’re gonna do those (pretty necessary IMHO) QoL concessions, you might as well give the user the option to integrate it with their phone, so they don’t have to wonder if the car got enough charge, or if some asshole yanked out the plug. If you’re reporting that info to the phone, you can include some controls to start/stop charging or set certian charging targets for certain charging stations. If you’re including controls, you might as well piggyback some basic lock, unlock, pop trunk features to the phone, and if you’re already letting the phone unlock the car, you can pretty easily include proximity unlocking. Since you’ve got a data connection to the phone, you can stream music and data from the car to the phone and vis-versa. You could put in another screen and physical controls for managing the music, but you already have one in the car for the rear cameras anyway, so why not just integrate the whole damn thing and now we’re at most modern features of EVs, minus the goofy handles and driver automation.
I could forgo heated seats before I could a heated steeringwheel
You derived modern EVs by adding a bunch of features I wouldn’t want.
Yes. And steering.
No one uses steering anymore. Too busy watching tiktok on my phone while trying to do my makeup during my morning drive.
So, things you can do on a train or similar transport
For about $8k you can convert a VW beetle to electric.
And make it small on the outside and as big as possible on the inside, with the back seats level with the trunk when folded down
Fully open hardware and software would be nice. I don’t plan to tinker with it. But it would give peace of mind to know that it can’t be enshittified and that discontinuation of the model will not leave me out of luck for spare parts.
China’s partly to blame for this, since people there absolutely go nuts for cars that are basically a smartphone on wheels. And since China’s such a huge market, companies do mainly produce things that sell well there.
Come on what is this image’s original context what is this
Little known TV show called the Simpsons.
Okay, but what’s the context? Why is Homer on a dress going “gas, break, honk”?
King Sized Homer: he deliberately gains enough weight to qualify as disabled, allowing him to work from home:
“Hee hee hee. I pity those poor suckers on the freeway. Gas, brake, honk. Gas, brake, honk. Honk, honk, punch. Gas, gas, gas.”
Edit: whoever wrote the quote on IMDb couldn’t spell. Fixed.
OOOOOOH!
Thanks :)
Hitting the gas in an EV is like filming with a digital camera.
My phone has a system app known as a “dialer” despite not having a round dial.
it’s easy and convenient?
Yeah. Gas [pedal] is used here in the same way the “save” icon is still a floppy disk.
It’s a skeuomorph!
What a fucked up word
On a broader note, this is a failure of capitalism in which products can never be perfected.
There are sooo many technologies that we fully figured out years ago but they can’t just make it optimal and move on.
This is why we have washing machines using internet for whatever reason.
The flip side is the kind of stagnation where you get a soviet-era hunk of junk that’s still in operation, but horribly inefficient.
Associating the soviet union, which before china was the fastest country to ever industrialize, modernize, and innovate past its competition, with stagnation is kinda wild.
They won the space race with 1/10th the budget and more efficient rocket motors. If they saw computers for what the actual potential was like Chile did with project cybersyn, the wall wouldn’t have fallen and a lot of countries would be speaking Russian right now.
I wouldn’t really take the soviet union as example for the flip side tbh
I just meant, “60-year-old rust bucket held together by duct tape and prayers,” but soviet-era was shorter.
