Slate Auto's electric pickup truck cannot report your location to anyone, because it physically has no way to do so.
The Slate Truck is built without an embedded cellular modem, the radio component that lets modern vehicles phone home with location data, driving habits, and diagnostics. Most automakers treat that data stream as a revenue source, quietly selling behavioral profiles to insurers and data brokers alongside car sales. Slate is positioning the omission as a feature rather than a cost cut, framing the lack of connectivity as an architectural privacy guarantee rather than a policy promise.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Privacy policies can change; hardware limitations cannot be patched away remotely. The broader car industry has faced serious scrutiny after reports confirmed that several major manufacturers were sharing granular driving behavior with insurance companies without drivers' clear knowledge. A vehicle that is physically incapable of transmitting that data sidesteps the problem entirely.
The obvious tradeoff is losing over-the-air software updates, remote diagnostics, and the app integration that competing EVs use as selling points. Privacy as a differentiator works better as a headline than as a reason most people actually choose a truck.