You know, having used a Framework 13 as my primary computer the past few years, I’ve been pretty happy. It’s not perfect. But… year over year, it improves. Running the correct Linux distro, it doesn’t screw around. It just works in a consistent and mostly predictable way. This is very nice.
I was thinking, you know what the world really needs? A maximally unintelligent, non-agentic electric car. I guess it’d be kind of iffy as a DIY project, high voltage. Customer welding his belt buckle to the frame, blowing himself up, and setting his garage on fire, might not be a great news story.
But I want to take my life into my own hands. All these appified phonesque cars they’re selling now are abominations. Business majors who shouldn’t have been released from their finger traps allowed to gin up new subscription models for hardware that we used to call “possessions”. Now the possession’s a computational demon that needs exorcised.
But no, really. I’d drop $30k on a Framework car. I’d be prepared for the earlier runs to have the build quality of discount early Teslas. I would buy in. Could double as a house battery backup. I imagine a big Frakenstein knife switch to change it from suck to blow. No LCD screens. No touch controls. No cameras. No radios. Barely needs any motors even. It’d be magnificent.
Agreed. It’s been mentioned here before, and there’s even a thread for the Slate truck as one such vehicle. [Edit: I see now that the thread has locked due to the expiration of the 180 day activity timer.] How does it compare to what you envision?
Honestly, I don’t like it. I trust Framework in a very personal way that doesn’t apply to other startups. I don’t want a truck, but if I did want a truck, I’d want to be able to use it to haul things occasionally, and that truck’s too small to expect anything to fit. Rear wheel drive doesn’t excite me for winter driving.
I’d be pretty skeptical that it’d be in my price range if I added the “SUV” conversion and the extra battery range (which I’d probably want since I sometimes drive more than two hours in a day). I don’t really like the look… and I’d be a bit afraid to be an early adopter.
All that said though, aside from it being a small truck, the gist sounds very much like the kind of vehicles I’m hoping become more common. I could see maybe buying one, once they’re available to test drive without a waiting list, if I can’t find an alternative.
It is definitely a small truck. But bear in mind, a lot of massive, “full size” trucks with huge extended cabs have similar sized beds. Not all, but many. The bed on the Slate is slightly larger than the bed on the Ford Maverick.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a small truck, and if you need a full sized bed to haul what you need to haul, then the Slate certainly isn’t it. For me, I don’t “need” a truck and would only getting one for those occasional times when I want to haul something. So personally, I’d rather drive a small vehicle during the “most of the time” when I’m not hauling anything, rather than a bigger truck that’s empty most of the time.
I like the idea of the Slate, and I hope they are good and succeed. It’s almost exactly what I want in an electric truck. Small, basic, openly supporting DIY maintenance and repairs, enough range for 99% of my typical driving, and able to haul stuff or pull a small utility trailer once in a while. If they were available right now and were known to be reliable, there’s a good chance I’d be buying one.
Hoping TELO gets this right with their upcoming MT1. The team is making a lot of other smart decisions, but have not fully confirmed what is in or out in regards to digital experience, so that’s still just hope at this point. But cautiously optimistic hope.
Tesla: so “smart” its back to being “dumb” by not getting out of your way
Ford Lightning: so many user experience misses it should be a college course in what not to do.
So yeah, very much loooking forward to a vehicle that’s not trying to out think its user and failing…
I would be interested but rear wheel drive is a deal breaker. AWD is a minimum must. Otherwise it is essentially a useless toy for three months out of the year, and that is not even including just slick roads form rain. If they were going to offer just two wheel drive front wheel drive wouold be a better option.
To be fair, it had a lot of weight in the back. But I drove RWD vans all over Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan for work. Hundreds of thousands of miles over 15 years in all weather. The only time I ever got stuck was trying to get back to a radio tower via an un-plowed driveway through a field, because I didn’t want to walk that far through the snow, lol. Luckily, I was able to dig myself out. Which was fun in the dark without a shovel.
Don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware that there are many circumstances that could make it more useful or even necessary for someone to have AWD or 4WD. Where you do most of your driving obviously matters as well. And the Rangers and S10s of old, in RWD varieties, were so light in the back that I knew people who piled sandbags in the back to give them more traction. But the Slate has a rear-motor with a battery in the middle and no engine up front. So the weight balance shouldn’t be too bad. I suspect it would do fine for me in all weather. I drove a Wrangler for about 8 years. I never once put it in 4WD on the road, and the weight balance was far enough toward the rear that I never had an issue driving in the snow with RWD.
Actually I wonder to what extent this is still true with purpose built EVs. A big part of why FWD is preferred in snow is because you have the weight of the engine sitting over the drive wheels, which is not the case with a chassis that’s designed as an ev first (typically batteries will be installed low and balanced between front and rear).
Either way, a lot of people with AWD cars are running around on all season tires, and having real dedicated snow tires will make the biggest difference of all. Obviously there are still places where AWD AND snow tires are a must, but there’s definitely many cases where people think AWD is needed when they should actually be changing their tires.
I drove a truck in Pennsylvania weather for a good 20 years in all kinds of weather, will a full load and no load…4WD saved my bacon more than once. As to snow tires…well I may have the room to store them, but some don’t, some can’t afford to have a set of tires laying around that are not in use. In other words having a spare set of complete tires is an expense many people can’t afford, also I have never needed snow tires, AWD or 4WD have always been sufficient.
I think most parts of PA are probably good bit more hilly that what I typically deal with, so that makes sense. When I drove the van for work, there were a couple guys in the company with 4WD vehicles. They were in areas with a lot more hills and customers with remote sites down long, unpaved drives.
As for the original topic, lol. I think a Framework car is probably a wildly unlikely product. Probably a bit too far outside their wheelhouse. There are just so many challenges involved.
I guess that argues for it having a market. It just seems to me like it ought to be a car. But I guess a car would be harder to sell as a modular system like they’re going for, and I’ve heard that cars aren’t popular in America. I never understood if that was strictly a ride height thing or more some mix of fashion and CAFE standards.
That looks interesting I guess… very much not for me though. Seems like it’s more of a “standard” small electric truck, just with sensible defaults? It’d be out of my price range new.
The rear wheel drive thing, I’m not sure either. I’ve driven on relatively bald tires before in the winter, pushing ice/snow/slush around, then swapped them out for winter-friendly all-season tires, and it was night and day. But even then, I think there’s probably a difference between pushing and pulling mass when traction’s iffy… sliding with counter-steering in front is different from fixed-orientation tires breaking traction and swinging around behind you. I think. Haven’t driven anything rear-wheel drive in bad conditions that much.
Yeah, but I’m still hoping anyways.
My own mostly-reviled car’s getting old. I’m starting to look around for an EV with passable range, probably used, where I could destroy all its radios and cameras and still have a functioning vehicle. It’s probably either that, one of these Slate Jeep-looking configurations (yech), or another old ICE car. Maybe there’s some kind of kit car out there.
A lot of people do say they like the high up seating position. But I think a big reason why they are SO popular is because of CAFE standards, and the marketing push from car companies for larger and larger vehicles. It also created this sort of vicious circle where the more people were driving giant vehicles, the more they could scare other people into also buying giant vehicles so they wouldn’t feel scared of getting crushed by…all the giant vehicles.