The corporate goes all in on simplicity, to the purpose of austerity. The Slate is a tiny, two-door pickup that’s shorter than a Honda Civic. A lot of the media protection has obsessed over the truth that the bottom mannequin’s home windows use hand cranks, a characteristic straight out of the twentieth century.
Slate can also be breaking away from different EV producers’ efforts to compete with gas-powered autos on vary. The truck sports activities a small lithium iron phosphate battery, ringing in at 65 kilowatt-hours, and its quoted high vary is simply 205 miles. For comparability, probably the most primary Tesla Mannequin 3 can go over 320 miles on a cost.
By accepting a shorter vary and forgoing the frills that People have come to count on in autos, Slate is ready to supply the bottom mannequin of its truck for lower than $25,000. Some prospects will select to improve their truck with non-compulsory add-ons, like a Bluetooth stereo system, vinyl wraps, and even energy home windows. However the value will nonetheless probably are available nicely beneath the roughly $50,000 common for a brand new automobile within the US.
It may appear an odd option to go so small and easy in a market that’s more and more sizing up—however the established order hasn’t precisely been working for EV makers. Just a few years again, the hero for US automotive electrification was imagined to be the Ford F-150 Lightning. Introduced in 2021, it was an electrical model of the nation’s best-selling automobile.
However Ford discontinued the truck in December 2025, simply 4 years after its introduction. It’s not solely the Lightning’s fault: The second Trump administration slashed tax credit and different help designed to spice up EVs.
