I'm not totally sure. Even an ICe car now is insane for all the modules. Sure I can see battery management in an ev being robust but I'm sure it could still be pretty simple. Look at just injectors and cam sensors in an ice vehicle and the engine harness, its insane. Not to mention the entertainment bullshit that needs all its own modules.

an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle

Not true. Modern ICE vehicles need an ECU for fuel maps, they use throttle position mapping, sensor feedback for emissions, knock, fuel sensing. Far more subsystems and computer modules than EVs.

Even that could be minimized, a car doesn't need to have a wiring diagram that rivals a nervous system in complexity. You could definitely get away with cutting down a modern EV or ICE computer system with minimal or no loss to functionality, hell you may even make it safer overall if you scrap worthless shite like lane assist or cruise control.

No matter how you slice it, an EV requires much more computing functionality under the hood than an ICE vehicle, just for the basic powertrain management.

I've got ECU reads with full DAMOS data (memory addresses of maps) for my two cars, one from 2001 (Bosch EDC15P) and one from 2007 (Bosch EDC16CP34). If you're willing to download the demo version of WinOLS, I can send you the WinOLS projects if you want to see how much was going on in there even back in 2001, let alone 2007. I unfortunately don't have an EDC17 ECU or any of the petrol ECUs physically available, but I believe can give you full bench reads of some of them since I downloaded a huge torrent that would extract into a few terabytes of data for different vehicles.

Or if you don't want all that, let me just give you an example of one tiny sliver of functionality in an EDC 16 diesel ECU, the actual fuel being sprayed. We'll completely ignore even very closely related things like boost pressure.

The car is running and in gear. The driver presses on the fun pedal. First off, there are multiple maps for each thing based on mode (Sport/comfort) and possibly the gear you're in (for torque limiters). The value of this pedal is translated into a "driver's wish" value in Newton-meters of torque based on current RPM (in different RPM ranges this is limited to a different number). Multiple things are now calculated based on RPM and driver's wish: Among the fuel ones are: injection quantity (mg/stroke), fuel rail pressure (controlled by a valve on the rail as well as a metering valve on the pump), start of injection, duration of injection - actually those latter two may have been based on iq rather than dw, but it doesn't matter much since those are very tightly related. You now have multiple different maps that limit either the driver's wish or injection quantity and the lowest limiter applies: Smoke limiter (limitation map by air flow and RPM), torque limiter (limit simply by RPM and pedal position), potentially gear-specific torque limiters, though these could also come from the TCU. I think there may have been one or two others.

Now, before injection there's actually pre-injection, this warms up the cylinder to get a better burn for the main event. The main event is usually aimed such that start of combustion (not start of injection) occurs fairly close to top dead center of a piston. Working on older cars like the EDC15 I believe Bosch said the delay is one millisecond (which you need to calculate in degrees of crankshaft rotation), but I think for the EDC16 and 17 ones it might be less than one millisecond since the pre-ignition is there to help. If your start of combustion is too far before top dead center, you raise cylinder pressures and temperatures and create more noise. If your end of injection is too far after top dead center, you waste fuel (bad for wallet), increase exhaust gas temperatures (bad for turbo) and put out black smoke (bad for everyone). The only time having a late end of injection is sensible is if you're building a diesel for tractor pulls or drag racing and you want to get that last percent of power out of it. For how start of injection and duration are actually applied on the ECU: It takes the fuel quantity being asked after all the limiters and fuel or coolant temperature, then based on those it'll choose a start of injection map (or rather, it interpolates between different maps) and based on the start of injection it interpolates between different duration maps. Rail pressure itself is also consulted, though I'm not yet 100% sure how since my EDC16 car is stripped down to repair a leak and I haven't gotten into tuning it yet, I only started doing this this summer and I've only had time to work on my older EDC15 car which has unit injectors and thus no rail pressure to speak of.

Oh and fuel temperature also needs to affect everything because we calculate in mg/str, but the actual sensors measure fuel volume and as you know, density changes with temperature.

There's also post-injection, but that's irrelevant for everyday driving, that's used to raise exhaust temperatures to initiate a regen burn in the diesel particulate filter every 200-1000 km.

Now, here are SOME of the other things that also get handled by this ECU and I won't go into detail on how any of these work because it would take a day to write out this comment: Starting and stopping the engine, asking for a certain boost pressure based on multiple maps, asking for a certain airflow based on multiple maps (those two are of course heavily interrelated), reporting fault codes, operating exhaust-gas recirculation, operating cooling for the aforementioned exhaust-gas recirculation, operating cooling for the engine itself, creating swirl in the intake manifold to improve burn at lower RPMs.

And remember, this is just the engine controller, there's also a transmission controller that's also specific to ICE vehicles.

To me this is all fairly simple and even at very high mileages I can keep these vehicles running well for cheap to the point that EVs are incredibly cost-prohibitive for me. Your average person, however, would have to take it to a shop if something goes wrong and if the mechanic is dishonest or just doesn't know how things work in a modern car, a simple 1 hour fix with a cheap part can turn into hours upon hours of troubleshooting along with playing parts darts with sensors and actuators and stuff. Because there are actual mechanics out there far less knowledgeable than myself, a hobbyist.

which the control unit figures out by reading the sensors in each battery cell

Tesla Model S battery has like 7000 cells. They're 18650s, same things that go in e-cigarettes. Trust me, there is NOT a sensor in each battery cell. There may be multiple per module, sure, but it's still at most a few hundred and likely a few dozen sensors per battery pack.

That's not a privacy issue.

The computers are issues when they include sensors, logging, storage, and uploading your data to others.

Its not the compute, its the data collection, built in ads and driver data sold to insurance companies that is the issue.

Yep thanks to ford (rollover lawsuit). Ford also patented vehicle tracking and cameras inside required to start the vehicle. . Probably one of the worst vehicle companies.

Jokes on them my tire sensor batteries all died heh

Oh, darn. Mine broke and I replaced them with valve stems. I'll have to rectify that soon, I guess.

Sorry the tire sensors do not track the vehicle. Other things may use the tire sensors to track the vehicle.

You can track all the series A and B funding with a simple search. Bezos was early in A, but Mark Walter and TWG are the major investors.

The shell actually is likely the bigger impact.

Electric cars are already really heavy, and they get most of their efficiency from aerodynamics.

If by "icy place" you mean Canada, don't worry. We won't be able to buy one any time soon, and you can't import them under the current rules.

Besides, I'll be fucked if I buy American again in my lifetime.

it has a basic physical open differential paired with a brake-actuated virtual limited-slip system.

You only need 4WD on ICE pickups because they put the drive wheels under the lightest end of the truck when it's unloaded, which is most of time, unless you buy a rare FWD pickup like the Maverick.

You just need to buy a truck with a "Limited-Slip Differential"(LSD) then.

Ford is coming out with an EV truck at pretty much the same price point as Slate. Idk who is going to buy a bozo mobile when they can get a Ford for the same price.

All electric car companies are funded by billionaires.

Take solace in the fact that they lose money in the beginning.

I mean, it's not. Bezos doesn't make anything.

EVs do very well with stop/start driving, opposite of ICE. So whatever effect of aero is likely balanced with lack of highway travel.

A small delivery truck is a huge gap in the NA market.

Load it full of gear and it drops to around 100, I'd bet. That's fine if you have a fleet of them, and you're delivering in a city. But, no one is making a usable campervan out one of these.

EDIT: I was imagining taking one into backcountry, not driving to a commercial "campsite" and plugging in. If all you plan to do is drive between parking lots, then yeah, it would work.

Are you in the market for a cargo van? Because I suspect most will be bought by companies where they see one vehicle with a larger spec sheet versus another with a smaller one and both have the same price

Does Slate have plans to avoid dealers? I guess they could just list them on Amazon lol

Yea as much as I want to not support him, I have to draw a line somewhere. Starting a new carcompany is insanely expensive and that money needs to come from somewhere, if it wasn’t bezos it would be someone like him. It’s easy enough to yell at people buying from evil multinational corporations, but every carcompany today falls under that category, just like every train and bus manufacturer. Not that I’m saying that we should just accept status quo but that’s sadly how the world is today.

My intention was not to mock the idea. There's a need for a gig worker electric small cargo vehicle and this fills that niche. Too many people go into gig work factoring in only the cost of fuel and not the vehicle depreciation. With an EV, your primary costs are only electricity and tires. This would be perfect for people doing gig work who actually want to maximize the amount of pay they retain.

The fact that this could potentially have a synergistic effect on the company of a major investor makes it both a good idea and good business.

Bezos Expeditions has a seat on the board my dude. You think he was donating those funds as a gift?

Bezos owns a good chunk of Rivian.