The Curious Case of Slate Auto

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host and on today's episode we are going to have some Cybertruck news. We're going to talk a little bit about a up and coming EV maker here in the US that's in stealth mode but they're coming out of stealth mode and we have a little bit of housekeeping we need to take care of. So let's start with the housekeeping first.

[00:00:49] Acast is the service that I use as my podcasting host so wherever you happen to listen to this podcast, Acast makes it available and then you're able to download it. So I'm very grateful to them because they charge me a reasonable amount of money and I have four different podcasts that I host there and I pay the same rate whether it was one or four.

[00:01:14] So pretty good deal if you're asking me. They had a service or have currently a service called Acast Plus that is going away. So if you wanted to support the show but you don't like Patreon because many people don't then you could support it through Acast Plus and you still get an ad free experience.

[00:01:36] Acast is doing away with that service but they are providing an alternative and the alternative is in the form of a service like Supercast which is similar to Patreon. Now I have not ever used Supercast and I'm not a member of Supercast but I've looked at some of their stuff and it looks interesting. I kind of like what they're up to.

[00:01:58] I also have plans for a sub stack and sub stack is getting into podcasting. So my question to you the podcast community or the Kilowatt community is what do you prefer? Would you prefer a Supercast option or a sub stack option? I'm going to be honest I can't do both because it is doesn't seem like it's a lot of extra work but it's it's a it's an it's extra work.

[00:02:25] There's there's extra steps that need to go into creating a sub stack for the podcast or creating a Supercast page for the the the podcast because every episode I have to post to three different places basically. So in either case that's going to be extra work for me. I can't do all I can't I can't do Patreon Acast sub stack and Supercast. I got a limited at three. So which one would you be most interested in?

[00:02:55] If you want to email me it's Bodie B O D I E at 918 digital dot com and this is for everybody. It doesn't matter if you use Acast plus or not. It doesn't matter if you never plan on supporting this show financially. That's OK. I still would like to hear your opinion as to and as to why you're choosing one of those services over another. It's it's valuable to me. So Bodie B O D I E at 918 digital dot com.

[00:03:22] All right. Let's go ahead and jump into our EV news. Q Merit is a company that installs level two chargers in homes and actually they don't really install them. They facilitate the installation of L2 chargers in homes. They actually contract with companies that are local to you and then you pay Q Merit and then they pay that company. It's kind of a nice deal.

[00:03:49] I actually use Q Merit to install my level two charger. And it's kind of funny when the installer called me to set everything up. She tried to get me to cancel my install with Q Merit and go with her outside of the company. And for doing so, I would save a few hundred dollars. It's like one hundred and fifty dollars or something like that. I remember what the exact number is. But here's the thing.

[00:04:12] I decided to not do that and just go through Q Merit because this lady had a contract with Q Merit to be an installer for them. And I felt like maybe she was being a little bit dishonest and I didn't want to get into a relationship with somebody who I felt was maybe a little dishonest and may or may not, you know, honor their warranty.

[00:04:36] So I went ahead and went with Q Merit, paid a little bit extra just so that I could have that confidence that somebody would come out and fix my problem if there was a problem or, God forbid, a fire or something like that. Somebody would be able to, you know, pay for the damage to be fixed. Anywho, that's not what we were talking about today. That's just an interesting story.

[00:05:02] Q Merit told Insight EVs that Q1 2025 was their best quarter ever. Q Merit said it installed 57% more chargers than they did in Q4 2024. So in Q1 2025, they installed 57% more chargers than they did the previous quarter. Now, how many more chargers is that?

[00:05:30] I don't know, because the company declined to share that official install information. But still, there is, that's a good sign. I think that's a good sign. Q Merit's a pretty big company. They're pretty reputable. It is interesting that they didn't share an actual number, but, you know, what are you going to do?

[00:05:48] I mean, if I had to guess, one of the things that was probably driving installations was people were going out and trying to take advantage of that $7,500 tax credit here in the U.S. before it went away. It'll be interesting to see what happens next quarter or the quarter that we're in, Q2 and Q3.

[00:06:09] Because I think Q2 will actually probably be pretty good depending on what happens with tariffs and carve-outs and all this other stuff that, you know, is happening in the world. I guess we'll see. That's what I'm saying. We'll see. All right. Are you familiar with the EV maker that's in stealth mode that Jeff Bezos is rumored to be an investor in?

[00:06:38] So this company is called Slate Auto. And Slate Auto is rumored to be building a pickup truck that will cost around $25,000. Now, as far as the pickup truck part of the rumor, they do seem to be building a truck or possibly an SUV because there's a Newsweek post on X showing off part of the vehicle that's wrapped in this camouflage that has Newsweek logos all over it.

[00:07:07] And this teaser video that Newsweek put out looks a lot like other teaser videos. It's very hard to get an idea of what the vehicle is actually going to look like. It is kind of boxy, almost like a Ford Bronco. So they do seem to be building a truck. The thing that makes me maybe doubt some of the rumors a little bit is that they say it's going to be $25,000.

[00:07:35] The $25,000 part seems like a very difficult target to hit, even if you're Jeff Bezos, unless you're just willing to take a bath on every single one of these vehicles. It seems like a very difficult target to hit. Another thing that kind of struck me as odd is if Jeff Bezos really is an investor in this company. And again, we don't know if he is or not.

[00:07:59] Why would they leak this or why would they give this story to Newsweek and not the Washington Post? It does seem a little bit odd. But then on the other side, according to some, and I looked on LinkedIn, and there seems to be some validity to this, that the Slate Auto company is also linked to a company that Jeff Bezos is invested in called... And listen, this is not a great name.

[00:08:27] You can definitely tell that this is a holding title. This is not a great company name. But Jeff Bezos is invested in a company called RE colon Build Manufacturing. That is connected to Jeff Bezos. Now, it does seem to have something to do with automotive. It is based in Michigan, and Slate Auto is based in Troy, Michigan.

[00:08:54] So there does seem to be some links there that are valid. Based on my very limited LinkedIn research, some of the folks working at this new startup come from places like Ford, Rivian, Faraday Future, Fisker, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Harley-Davidson, and GM.

[00:09:18] Now, some of these people worked at multiple of these companies, but these are the names of companies listed in their LinkedIn bios. If this company is an automotive company, an EV maker, and they are based out of Troy, Michigan, there's no shortage of smart people who build cars in that part of the world. So this leads a little bit of more credence to the rumors.

[00:09:48] When you go to their website, you just get a sign up, and they're like, hey, give us your information, and we'll send you more information when we have it. So I went to slate.auto, S-L-A-T-E dot auto. I signed up. I was like, well, that was fine. I guess I'll wait to get an email at some point. When I got my confirmation email, I wasn't even looking for it. I was checking my email for something else. And this is what it said.

[00:10:17] You're probably wondering, what's slate? We could tell you, but then you'd have to sign an NDA and go into witness protection. What we can say is that it's going to be big, revolutionary. Okay. Want to know a tiny bit more? And then you can click on the button that says, yes, tell me more. And that'll take you to this little FAQ site. And there's like five or six questions on there. And each of the questions, except for the last one, playfully pokes fun at itself.

[00:10:48] Like there's some humor in this company. There's some whimsy, which I like. I like all that stuff. Um, so you click on each of the FAQ questions and you get a cute little answer. Although I can say, if you do this too much, it's annoying, but I kind of see what they're trying to do here. The final question says, when will I know more? So I clicked on the little plus and then it brings up a countdown clock.

[00:11:14] And at the time of me writing these notes, it said no little more in eight days, seven hours, 14 minutes and six seconds. So I was like, I am entirely too tired to try and figure out when that is. So I went to chat GPT. I put the information in and it says that on Wednesday, April 23rd, around 1130 PM Arizona time, which is also Pacific time at the moment, uh, we'll find out more. So this is going to be very interesting.

[00:11:44] I'm intrigued. So we'll find out more next week. I am seeing people when I was kind of digging into this company and trying to find out more information, seeing a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and other social media sites where people are talking about, uh, different things about this company as if they were a hundred percent true. I would be skeptical that these things are true.

[00:12:06] Uh, I don't think a company goes through this much effort to, to, to hide their identity and come out with this big reveal just to let some schmo on the internet and on all the information so that they could leak it early. I'm not saying what these folks are putting out there isn't true. I'm just saying it seems unlikely that somebody with 35 followers is going to get the inside

[00:12:32] details on what's going on with this company and then share it with everybody. So just treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. I got my information from inside EVs and I think clean technica and electric for this article. And, um, I trust all those sites. So yeah, way more than I do, uh, just some schlub on the internet like myself. Like I would not consider myself to be a reputable source of information.

[00:13:02] I get all of my information from reputable sources information, but if I just started spewing stuff, I'm not, I'm not a good source of information. Um, but I'm just regurgitating good sources of information. Like if I was just coming up with it on my own, not a good idea. That is it for our EV news. Before we move on to our Tesla news, I just want to let everybody know that we do have a Patreon that you can go to.

[00:13:30] It's, uh, support kilowatt.com or patreon.com forward slash kilowatt. If you want to support this show, I would not go to ACAST anymore and support it on ACAST. If you are interested, like I said, send me an email or if you're not interested, if you'd like to share information or your opinions, which community platform I should join for this show, uh, again, Bode, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. And I do want to be clear, Patreon's not going anywhere.

[00:13:59] Uh, if you're a Patreon member and you're happy, we're, we're keeping it. We're not, we're not moving anybody off of Patreon for this. All right, let's move on to our Tesla news. Elon says that RoboTaxi is on track for June for a June launch in Austin, Texas. We had heard this before, um, but Elon's been pretty vocal lately on social media, uh, hyping up the company cause you know, they got the, the down quarter as far as deliveries and we're

[00:14:29] not sure what the earnings call is going to look like, but he's definitely out there trying to, to keep everybody excited about the company. Uh, one of the things that we did learn were customer cars could be added to the, uh, RoboTaxi network in 2026. Now I'm, I'm not a Tesla hater cause I own a Tesla and I love it.

[00:14:51] I am a little skeptical of Elon's timelines because they are always skewed. I do believe that he delivers most things that he says he's going to do, but, um, they do tend to take longer than he says that they'll actually take. So we'll, we'll see what happens in, in 2026 and also in June for that matter.

[00:15:18] Tesla has officially shipped 3000 of the new and updated model wise to Australia. These vehicles are coming from Giga Shanghai. So if you are in the market or you ordered one of these, uh, congratulations. Cause it's a, it's a good looking car. Moving on. Tesla has stopped taking orders of the model S and model X in China. And this all comes down to the recent trade war between the U S and China.

[00:15:46] Uh, the U S, uh, you know, um, and I don't need to tell you this. You guys don't know what happened. Uh, tariffs were implemented and then one side tried to outdo the other side. And we just went back and forth. So right now, if you were to purchase a model S or model X in China, it would nearly double the cost of the car because of the tariffs. So Tesla very wisely said, we're going to put a pause on these cause it doesn't make sense.

[00:16:14] Nobody's probably going to buy, uh, this anyway. Um, and it looks like Tesla only ships about 2000 model S's and model X's to China anyway, or at least that's what they did in 2024. So this is not going to devastate the company by not selling these cars in China. All right. So now on to our final part of the show, and this is all about the cyber truck.

[00:16:40] The cyber truck got a new trim this week, and it is a cheaper version of the cyber truck. So we'll just start off with the price. This truck is going to cost you $70,000. If you want one, if you wanted an all wheel drive version, which is the next version up, that would cost you $80,000. And then the cyber beast right now is sitting at a hundred thousand dollars. So what do you get for $70,000? Well, that's a, that's a really good question. First of all, this is the long range variant.

[00:17:07] It is a single motor rear wheel drive truck. It will get you 362 miles of range, but there are trade-offs. You might be asking, well, what are the trade-offs? Well, there's no adaptive air suspension, which I, that's one of the reasons why I wanted a cyber truck. If I'm being honest, it does not come with power outlets. There is no rear screen. So in the back seat, there was this little rear screen that people could watch movies back

[00:17:34] there or adjust the heat and, or temperature or whatever. Can't do that back there. The front seats are not ventilated anymore, although they are heated. It doesn't come with a bed cover. You, if you, if you want a bed cover, you have to pay an additional $750, and it is not the same cover that comes with the cyber truck. Now it's like a soft tonneau cover. So a little bit of a downgrade there.

[00:18:00] Uh, you get seven speakers instead of 15 speakers, 18 inch wheels, instead of 20 inch wheels. It'll tow 7,500 pounds. The all wheel drive version tows 11,000 pounds and it's zero to 60 in 6.2 seconds. It does qualify for the $7,500 tax credit here in the U S. And, uh, yeah, I'm curious, is this something you would be interested in?

[00:18:29] If you were in the market for a cyber truck. Now put aside all of the bad feelings that people have towards Tesla, or you might have towards Tesla and just the, the vehicle itself. If you wanted a vehicle in 2019, you wanted a cyber truck in 2019, would this be something that moves the needle for you? Because in 2019, a $50,000 version of this truck is basically what the $80,000 version

[00:18:58] of this truck was supposed to come equipped with. So, uh, I'm, I'm curious if this is enough to move the needle to get people to buy these. Uh, I'm not a hundred percent sure it is, uh, like the adaptive air suspension, like for me is a big one for sure. I don't like that my kids don't have the ability to, um, change their, the, the temperature settings or turn on heated seats in the back of my model. Why?

[00:19:26] Uh, I don't mind doing it, but they shouldn't have to ask. They should just be able to be comfortable without having to ask me to do that. So I do, I do know the new model Y does fix that though, but, um, I don't know why you would take that out. I can't imagine how much money that saves you, but all these other things, you know, the power outlets, those are nice. Uh, I would like that ventilated seats would be nice, but I understand why they take that out.

[00:19:51] The tonneau cover selling the truck without a bed cover and then making me pay $7,500 for a soft tonneau cover. I'm not a big fan of that for sure. Um, and I don't really care about the wheels or the zero to 60 time. So, uh, this is still well outside of where I feel comfortable buying a car. Um, but what are your thoughts? Bodie B O D I E at 918digital.com. Oh, and I have one more quick thing on the Cybertruck.

[00:20:22] According to reports, Tesla has stopped taking, uh, the Cybertruck in as a trade-in. Now we've heard this before. I think it was probably back in the beginning of the year, we were starting to hear reports that people were telling, uh, news outlets that Tesla would not take the Cybertruck as a trade-in. Um, some of the newest reports kind of a little bit of an addition to that. Some customers who have Cybertrucks waiting to be serviced.

[00:20:50] And, and apparently there's some long periods of time for these trucks to get service. Tesla is telling these folks to pursue the lemon law process. If you want to get rid of your vehicle instead of them actually taking the vehicle in as a trade-in. I can't imagine that, um, Tesla, uh, telling people to go to the government and pursue the

[00:21:17] lemon law to get, to get your car taken care of is an official policy. More than likely, this is an employee at the Tesla service center who is sympathetic to what's going on with, with how long it's taking to get some of these vehicles fixed and the complaints that are, are being, um, given by the customers. They are using that as a, Hey, just between you and me kind of a thing.

[00:21:45] I don't think that's a, that doesn't seem like an official Tesla policy. I can't see Elon, uh, sending that out in an email for sure. So yeah, uh, we'll keep an eye on this and see where it goes. All right, everybody. That is it for me today. Actually recorded this on a Tuesday. I am very proud of myself. Very, very proud of myself. Let's see if I can get an episode out on Friday on time. We'll see. We'll see. All right, everybody.

[00:22:14] Thanks so much for listening. Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you maybe on Friday.