Slate. Well how about this! There's a company taking "reservations" for a small EV pickup truck. It does not have an "infotainment" system inside and it does have hand-crank windows, just to name a few atypical features in the year 2025. My interest is piqued...
Being a privacy freak, and being anti-enshittification (as we all should be), my first question was obvious: does this vehicle phone home? I felt like I knew the answer. Of course Slate would have 5G devices in their vehicles, sending telematics and location data back to home base to "improve their product" and to then "anonymize" and sell to insurance companies or train AI. Every car company does it now, why should I expect different from Slate?
The car stayed on my mind though, so I decided to ask Slate directly. I feel this is one of the most important questions to ask about a car, so I'm sharing the full e-mail conversation. Note that greetings and signatures have been removed. All emojis are included.
Me: Been considering a reservation, but I have a question holding me back: does Slate have any internet connectivity for telematics, product analysis, etc? The Slate looks great, but if it phones home like so many of the other cars being made today, I'm probably not interested.
- Sent 2025-05-16, ~07:00 EDT
Slate: The Slate actually does not come with any sort of infotainment system, so there is no internet connectivity to connect to! The only connection in the vehicle is through Bluetooth to your phone, so no need to worry!
- Received 2025-05-16, 10:09 EDT
Me: understand that there is no internet connectivity offered to the driver/passengers directly. But does the vehicle connect to the internet for other purposes? Such as to receive over the air updates or to send data of any kind back to Slate Auto, the company?
- Sent 2025-05-15, 10:29 EDT
Slate: I should have said it betterš¤£ that's on me! What I meant when I said no internet was there was no internet period. For either us (Slate) or the driver to connect to.
- Received 2025-05-16, 10:32 EDT
The communication from the Slate auto rep seems pretty clear. I'm stoked to learn that Slate auto does not appear to be throwing its future owners under the bus in a world where most other car makers are mining our data!
Off topic: my last reply, thanking the rep for the information, got blocked by spamhaus. Something about my mail server apparently tripped their spam detector, but they include no information about what they found offensive. F*ck spamhaus.