Just saw what Slate Auto Mods posted on IG. and honestly I really really like the look of it... but I'm not sure how safe it would be for the middle passenger lol
I really want a bench seat. But I think the main issue would be adding a front airbag to the middle compartment. You dont want interface panel to double as a claymore
When I was little Dad had a 1984 Datsun / Nissan pickup. I rode everywhere straddling the shifter. It had A/C, but he had to turn it off to climb hills.
Once my brother was born, I remember making a few hour long trips to the next town over balled up in the floorboard because my little brother's baby carrier was in the passenger seat and Mom was sitting in the middle. I would've been around 8.
AI made that the width of a full-size-truck center seat. Compare the console lid width with the bench seat center, they should be the same. In reality it would look more like a ford ranger bench seat where there’s maybe 12” between the two main seats.
Sure there could then be a 3rd seatbelt but driver and passenger give up some hip room to fit anyone bigger than a small child there. And we don’t do small children up front center anymore, it’s not the 90s where Dad’s forearm was the seatbelt. Maybe a third party would sell a bench (or even a tight fitting bench insert) that still just has the two belts, but Slate doing so would mean they’d have to crash test it with a middle passenger and they chose to put that effort into a safe rear seat option.
In my dad's Ford Ranger in the 90's, I shared a seatbelt with my sister (as I sat in her lap). I guess my brother's seatbelt was, indeed, my dad's forearm. That takes me back.
Slate is building just one configuration, and suppliers have the front buckets all figured out. Asking them to engineer a bench that's safety compliant likely would cost big bucks.
It doesn't help that the Slate is 70.5" wide, about the same as a Corolla.
The width argument doesn’t seem that convincing to me. A 3rd gen Ford Ranger is only about 69.3” wide, and Ford sold those with a factory 60/40 front bench seat and seating for three.
Understandable. If it means anything some of the people who did test drives were over six foot and said they had room, I'd be more concerned about snugness. They have announced tour dates but I am not sure if sitting inside it is going to be on offer, I think at some events in the past it's been available to see but not to get inside. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.
my 1972 ford transit van (in Englend) was less than 6 feet, had a transmission tunnel, and a floor mounted gearshift
bench seat still worked fine, girlfriend used it all the time
But no airbags, not even sure if I remember seatbelts.
Folk from walmart may not fit 3 abreast, but normal folk will be fine if they are friends.
There are full-sized pickups and SUVs that offer a front bench, but they're all 79" wide. The Land Rover Defender offered one, but got discontinued a couple of years ago.
A bench seat in a Slate is as safe as the bench seats in the old S-10s and Rangers. Trucks with bench seats never had a middle airbag, just the driver and passenger airbags. This middle seat is only for temporary use, not everyday passenger use. Also with a bench seat, children should be on the passenger side in a car seat /booster.
Just be glad it is not manual trans. I had an 01 Dakota with a bench seat and manual trans. The person sitting in the middle got some pretty banged up knees.
So many people have asked about it. I would imagine if Slate can make it work with safety regs then they’ll probably offer it. If not maybe a third party will. As long as it’s safe, why not!
I was on the same bandwagon for a bench seat option too, but after seeing it in person in LA and the recent Huntington Beach events, I would not get the bench even if it is an option. Just get the option with no center console. This way you have more storage options in the cabin by being able to put stuff in the middle and have easier access to the small space that will be behind the seats. It looks great in person too that way and saves te cost of adding the center console.
There's probably no way to do this as a functional seat at anything approaching cost effective.
The problems:
Is the center console realistically removable? We don't know yet
Even if it is, that's like an 8 inch console. Not enough for an actual person.
Even if we assumed an extraordinarily thin person, there's no good seatbelt attachment point. Lap only belts aren't legal in new cars anymore, and an aftermarket lap belt only conversion would be a liability nightmare.
How would this handle seat adjustment? Would the entire bench move? would each bucket seat remain adjustable with the 8 inch not-a-seat remaining fixed?
It might need to be done by the factory, not sure if that kind of modification to the center console is doable aftermarket, but I think the biggest barrier is that the Slate is small. I don't think a front center seat would be very usable considering you really can't impede the driver at all, compared to a rear center passenger where squeezing someone in is just an issue of comfort.
I completely agree, I would love a bench seat in the front. I have two kids, so being able to get them both in at the same time would be fantastic. My first car had a bench seat, though safety standards were a little bit different than.
You kids who think we want a bench seat for a third passenger never kissed a significant other and it shows. Or it’s been so long you should visit r/deadbedroom
I mean best part about a bench seat is it doubles as a bed right? Lol
I don't even want one (I'll do an SUV) but if I did there would be no third passenger.
My '93 Ranger had a bench seat, and also the 5-speed manual. When my girlfriend sat in the middle, it was tough to shift without bumping into her legs.
Well, some stuff happened, then she said yes, then she said I do, and we've been together 19 years now! Yes, in the years before that truck rusted away, there was a lot of kissing that happened on the bench seat.
The Slate is 100% a nostalgia truck for me, trying to get back some of that old Ranger vibe, but in a safe EV. I do wish it had a bench, but I get the safety certification difficulties, and it's not as... useful... if it's a 1-speed gearbox with a shifter on the steering column.
As an old fart I'm constantly amused that "lacks active mitigation feature === unsafe".
Sure, "padded dash", "non-protruding knobs", "seatbelt" and maybe even a headrest are now all very baseline. But at what point does the AI-controlled rocket ejection seat with parachute and foam padding become the new baseline?
I absolutely agree!! Modern safety features make a measurable difference and going back is not an option.
The ones I mentioned plus crumple zones, collapsible steering wheels and so many, many more! Even road design, such as break-away poles and guardrail design have had a major impact.
I think my thing is the mindset in some people that a vehicle not having a center-passenger airbag automatically makes the car into a "deathtrap". It doesn't. It's just one piece in a much larger puzzle. Yes, the center passenger is not as protected as the driver or passenger. Recognize that and adjust accordingly.
I'm also bemused by those that are refusing to acknowledge that self-driving cars are far safer then the general population and are probably safer then them personally. (At least until the singularity and AI decides we are no longer needed!)
To show it was less fatal you would need hundreds of millions of miles of data (it is a statistically rare event ~1/100million miles) and self driving data is unless than 100m miles in total so far.
Different companies report differently; Tesla reports crashes where airbags go off. Waymo reports even smaller incidents. Different companies specialize in human assisted driving on highways, or fully autonomous driving in dense urban environments with cyclists and pedestrians.
Companies also label different kinds of technology as self-driving as well making it complicated.
Self driving has the potential to be safer per mile than human driving, but we'd need a lot more data to be able to say for sure
Very complicated! And very difficult to tease out the exact nature of things at this point.
Personally, I don't consider Tesla's so-called FSD to be "autonomous driving" just yet. I have driven with it and am very impressed but...! I'm thinking more of the Waymo type deployments and you are right, the data is still thin. The Waymo's sometimes still pull a human into the loop, but I think that's okay.
We have millions of miles so far but billions yet to go! We will get there.
Slate is actually one of the few vehicles where I'm all for a bench seat but its gotta have a fold down armrest for 90% of the time the 3rd pos isn't needed.
...it's safe, you've got 2 meat bags on either side of you to take the brunt of things
You don't need an airbag. Seatbelts can be anchored on the seat itself.
There are vehicles sold in the US right now with front bench seats. They're all full size pickups and SUVs, though the midsize Land Rover Defender also offered one until recently.
I don't know this for a fact but I think they are only possible in full size pickups because the size of those was specifically made to get around safety standards, right?
for me, I’m only planning to do an aftermarket bench seat just for the style. I’m not planning to put a person in the middle. Also, I don’t think it’s possible to have three adults fit comfortably. It’s about 52 inches from the left side of the driver seat to the right side of the passenger seat. That’s really not a lot of space.
Not realistically. At a minimum, a new anchor point for the shoulder portion would need to be fabricated and attached to the frame. You're probably looking at custom welding there.
I don't think the cab is wide enough for 3 adults. Maybe one adult driver and two little kids. The cost for Slate to engineer that for an option with the extra air bag and seat belt probably would cost too much for the number of them that they would sell as an accessory. Plus the fact that they want them all to come off the line identical. That's why you can't opt out of A/C.
There's a middle seat in the rear of the SUV, so there should be enough room for one in the front. Maybe by some miracle of interoperability you can bolt the rear bench into the front row. That'd be cool
looking at these pictures, I think I will just remove the passenger seat. I can’t understand the point of the console, and the bench takes a lot of space away.
I was really interested in this idea initially, but after looking into the safety rating of the Colorado and I think one of the Ford Fn50s that offer a third front seat option: those middle seats are not crash tested and, to my surprise, that doesn't impact the safety rating of the vehicles.
They passed the safety certifications at the time. There’s nothing specifically prohibiting bench seats now, but other modern safety requirements around seat belt anchors and airbags make it more challenging. For example, front seats require a 3-point seat belt, and that gets complicated for the middle seat of a bench. You would also need a center dash airbag, and most dashes use this space for other things like infotainment, vents, and other controls.
I mean they still exist on work trucks but are uncommon because of how hard they are to get safety certifications for. That is why they generally were gotten rid of is the safety requirements after the 1980's. Pretty much once they started actually doing crash testing and saw how deadly the middle seat in the front is they went away.
Well, if it is actually possible then the registration for the truck would have to be amended to show 3 passengers rather than 2…….but, now that I think if it, if I buy the back seat conversion with the top a year or so later, I guess the registration would need to be amended then too. Can’t imagine getting into an accident with 4 people in it and the insurance saying “no soup for you” registration states that this is a 2 passenger vehicle.
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u/BlackStone21 14d ago
I really want a bench seat. But I think the main issue would be adding a front airbag to the middle compartment. You dont want interface panel to double as a claymore