It’s going to be very interesting. Has Slate identified an under-served market? Will they see mainstream success?

Or is this another iPhone Mini / Framework / sports wagon where a small, passionate minority ends up disappointed and angry that their priorities are not shared by the mainstream?

I sincerely hope for the former. We need lower-cost vehicles, I like diverse product offerings, and this is a purist’s take on a small truck. But then I like small phones, (the idea of) repairable laptops, and sports wagons.

Strange to put Framework in this category... They seem reasonably successful and even the company I work at is switching to them.

The iPhone mini was reasonably successful; it shipped more units than Framework has in the life of the company (about 15m iPhone minis based on reports of if being ~4% of iPhone 12 and 13 sales, vs hard to find estimates of Framework but none over 1m).

Framework is making a go of being a niche provider, which is great. But they are currently estimated to have less than 0.1% of the laptop market.

It's most likely will have comms. And it will make 0 difference for most people. Having your most expensive asset NOT have basic tracking is insanity. That said I'm all in for all of this to be easily disabled even tho I struggle to find a valid reason (in actual dictatorships you are fucked multiple ways anyway and in democratic ones you are about to do crime).

Gotta get a GPS for my house lol

Smoke alarm is already a legal requirement. HomePod already sends notifications to your phone when it triggers. Mine of course had false alarms while I was abroad, so I verified using air quality monitor I got for co2 that also does particles.

> a vehicle with no communication, sensor, or surveillance systems

Do we know that? The website seems silent on the topic, unless I've missed something.

As we used to say in the car business, "it comes with a heater and paint."

In this case, not even paint, but you can buy decals and wraps.

You must be very naive to think that this app that you would need for this vehicle won’t do all that.

It doesn't require an app, hell if you even want a modem in it you need to pay extra.

Edit: it only needs an app for updates, which isn't notably different than taking you older pre-modem cars into the dealer for updates. Also I can't find any evidence that the base model even has a GPS built in.

Interesting. Well hope this is what lands. Tracking all metrics and location is a bit out of control