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Finally A Right-to-Repair Small Affordable Electric Utility Vehicle (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The best daily transportation isn't a car/truck at all, but there is still some need for freight/hauling to be done.

I'm posting because this truck feels like the opposite of modern trucks. I mean the CyberTruck (literally the icon of Cyberpunk dystopia) and other trucks like Rivian are:

extremely anti-right to repair
brag about their 0-60 (instead of practicality/efficiency)
a privacy nightmare
massive in size
have high prices across the board
are absolutely crammed with manadory luxury features like air conditioned seats or motorized trunks

This truck, with manual roll-up windows, seems to be about getting work done. Its not trying to be the biggest baddest fastest most-techo-advanced thing money can buy.

I bet, in less than 1 year, hobbyists will have solar panel array mounted on the back of these.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

How much would it cost to give a slope to the front of the car. If you want your vehicles to be the future let's make sure it doesn'g kill it.

Not only having a straight hood makes it more likely to be lethal in case of collision with a pedestrian but it also greatly reduce visibility to shorter individuals, like kids.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

EDIT: I hadn't watched the whole video, didn't realize the presenter is 6'10" which gives a skewed perspective on the height of the hood. Still lower than a lot of other truck hoods, but not as good as my original comment made it out to be.

A valid complaint, but at the same time, just watching the video, the person presenting the truck, if he was hit head-on, would fly over the top of the hood because the hood would hit him square in the hips, right underneath his belly, sending his top half flying over the top of the hood, instead of dragging him under.

The issue you raise is still valid, but its way more of a problem in the giant trucks that are everywhere now. The Slate seems to be one of the smallest trucks that will be available on the market. Sure, the sloped hood would help, but the height of the hood is going to be hitting pedestrians on their hips and legs, not their major internal organs in their stomach, nor does it risk dragging them under the wheels like most big trucks.

Take the little wins, sometimes.

https://www.motor1.com/news/757625/slate-truck-size-explained/

Slate’s electric Truck is about the size of a 1984 Toyota Truck. No, really. Both the Slate Truck and a short-bed, single-cab 1984 Toyota Truck SR5 share an overall length of 174.6 inches. A Slate Auto representative says this is purely coincidence.