By admin 
The design boss of Slate Auto, the American start-up backed by Amazon that plans to launch a bare-bones, £20,000 electric pick-up truck in 2027, believes “folks need to have a automotive that they will afford” and the ideas of desirability and affordability needs to be “inseparable”.
Chatting with the Autocar Meets podcast from the Automobile Design Occasion in Munich, Tisha Johnson stated the “clear, overwhelming response” to the Slate Truck’s unveiling final month has been “oustanding and someway shocking” however in the end reflective of the general public’s need for extra reasonably priced but nonetheless enticing vehicles.
Previous to becoming a member of Slate, Johnson spent a number of years at Volvo’s North American design studio, primarily targeted on inside improvement, earlier than taking a break from the automotive trade with stints at equipment producer Whirlpool and furnishings maker Herman Miller.
Requested if these experiences have knowledgeable the utilitarian, useful design of the Truck, and whether or not it may very well be thought of an equipment quite than a automotive, Johnson stated: “I haven’t contemplated it as an equipment. After we first began speaking about what we have been going to do, there have been two goals that have been inseparable. The very first thing was to supply reasonably priced transportation, a automotive that individuals might afford, and the second was to make it fascinating.
“And that’s precisely why I knew I used to be in the fitting place, as a result of [those things] needs to be inseparable. Folks need to have a automotive that they will afford.”
Johnson stated that the Slate mission appealed particularly to her need to have a “significant affect for society and on folks’s lives” and gave her a possibility to fulfil a prevailing profession ambition: “It was regarding to me that I hadn’t delivered reasonably priced mobility, an reasonably priced automotive, to folks.”
Certainly, the Slate Truck is tipped to be probably the most reasonably priced pick-ups – electrical or in any other case – on sale within the US, with a focused begin value of simply $27,000 (£20k) earlier than incentives.
That places it roughly on a par with the entry-level, petrol-engined Ford Maverick and makes it roughly half the value of the Ford F-150 Lightning – presently America’s most cost-effective electrical truck.
Essential to the Slate’s low listing value – and, Johnson argues, its mass enchantment – is a bare-bones cabin that eschews a lot of the superior know-how and gear widespread to new vehicles, that includes guide seats, no stereo as normal and a tool mount instead of a touchscreen, for instance.