cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/electricvehicles/p/2162853/usa-slate-s-new-electric-truck-will-cost-slightly-more-than-24950
Range is said to be 205 mi (330 km), higher than the original estimate. This price is for the basic truck. The SUV configuration is expected to be $5000 more.
Hello Nissan and Toyota. Where are your small EV and hybrid pick-up trucks?
The new Hilux does have both mhev and bev version.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux
Seems like it’s available everywhere except america
Seriously!
This sounds nice for someone who needs a truck. But I have lots of kids. Why can’t I get an EV minivan for under $50k?
Politics. It can be done
https://m.made-in-china.com/hot-china-products/Electric_Mini_Van.html
They’re offering a 5 seat SUV body as well. Not a minivan, but, closer.
Only 2 doors for the SUV is pretty wonky.
My buildout went to $33,600 for fastback with roof rack and speakers
While that’s a lot more than base, it’s exactly what I want and it’s still a great price compared to any other EV available to me. The only thing it would really not be good at is road trips but I still have my model Y
But as a big and tall guy I would never buy a vehicle without trying it to see if it’s comfortable for me …… and to see if I can remove the back seats and fit it out as a camper. (My brother is doing that with a sienna hybrid and he probably has the right idea: lack of range could be a problem if you want to camp for a week with no electric)
FYI: it looks like slate has switched battery chemistry and suppliers. They will now be using LFP batteries. Cheaper, but they’ll last longer. Especially if you charge them to 100% and discharge them below 15%.
An overall win, as there was a zero chance I would have bought one if they put the NMC batteries in it they were going to use.
There will no longer be battery options for a small 150 mile range battery or a bigger battery that would go around 240 miles, though. Now (due to LFP batteries not being as energy dense) there’s only going to be one battery option that they claim will have a 205 mile range.
Unfortunately for me, this means I won’t be getting one. I need to go 180 miles round trip between charges, and that’s just cutting it way too close. Especially during winter time when the range would be reduced by quite a bit.
Interesting, the telematics module is sold separately at $275.00. So for everyone worrying about spying, for this vehicle you got to opt-in and pay extra for it.
Never mind the low price, not having that shit built in is the killer feature for me, making it the only new car I would even consider buying. (It’s just too bad they won’t have a 4x4 version for another couple of years.)
It is kinda good that there’s an optional module available, though, because it means there’s an interface that, in theory, a third-party module running Free Software could hook into.
I’m fairly sure that the aftermarket will sort out 4x4 situation
because it means there’s an interface that, in theory, a third-party module running Free Software could hook into
Absolutely this!
I’m fairly sure some spying is required by law, like the new driver cam legislation. Wonder how they’ll get past that.
I was wondering about that 2027 legislation and how this vehicle is affected. I didn’t see anything. Maybe that’s a next year production problem.
Very interesting indeed.
I hate the state of current website reporting.
so many sites give so much information but absolutely refuses to provide the original website or source. Instead, deciding to send the viewer through ClickHell as they try to navigate their own website sending the user in circles usually via links that go to their own pages to propagate views/clicks. I hate it
How hard is it to just link to the Slate’s main webpage after reporting on the product that way, the viewer can look at it themselves. Not one of the web pages they link there or any of the pages in said links lead to the actual vehicles site that they are reporting on.
As Canadian…
American company?, nope
Owned by Bezos?, hell nah
New Chinese EVs will be hitting the streets soon. Much cheaper and higher quality.
Higher quality from CCP run China. Nope. If the EV was from Taiwan, then yes.
Lol.
For the life of me I don’t know why we don’t develop something like this in Canada. It’s so frustrating, we have the people, the manufacturing space, the materials, we could do this.
Whenever something about Canada making vehicles gets brought up, all the nay sayers climb on immediately saying how it can’t be done. I’m sick and tired of them. Nothing worth doing comes easy, if left to these naysayers we’d all be still living in squalor.
We need to move away from the U.S. entanglement, the American public can’t be trusted to elect a proper government.
Building our own low cost, modest feature vehicles would be an excellent start. How many features of a car do people use for a normal commute to work, or such? I’d love a truck like the Slate, except it has to have 4 wheel drive ability. After having Hondas with all wheel drive, I’ll never go back to an older 2 wheel drive vehicle.
Before the current political chaos, you would have made a mint. A little ingenuity and affordable value, along with the worlds second biggest car market next door would have been huge
100000000% agree
Bezos was one investor, not the owner
Slate raised at least $111 million in Series A financing, including an undisclosed amount from Bezos. Slate then raised $600 million in 2024 from Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and CEO of Guggenheim Partners, Jeff Bezos, and General Catalyst, a venture capital firm.[5] In mid-2026, the company said it had completed a $650m series C investment round, which took its total capital raised to $1.4bn.[6]
Bezos was seed money AND part of the owner conglomerate that raised all the capital the company started with in 2024. That is enough for me to avoid this like the plague as it will, certain as the sun is hot, be enshitified to the core
If you do not believe me, here is an article explaining how this is all a big Amazon initiative
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
I would truly not be surprised that this would be an attempt to take over there ev truck market, but manufacturers should have been paying attention. There’s a huge market for small ass trucks, no one is catering to it
While I’m sure they’ll try to enshittify, the downside to that plan is that they need to make sure no one takes their place and they need to have something people want that they can enshittify. The benefit of simplicity is that it makes it simpler for another manufacturer to pick up the slack.
I drove a small truck at one point. Think a late 90s Tacoma, Ranger, or something like that. I don’t want an F250. I don’t want a Ram 3500. I just want to be able to haul a bed full of bikes to the MTB trail and help my friends move a washing machine.
Small truck form factor is only one checkbox on my list. I want to do that with electric instead of gas, yes, but as cheaply as possible without all the expensive gimmicks and touch screens. Give me manual roll up windows if they’re cheaper, I don’t care. 25k USD is still too much in Canada.
Slate has a size comparison widget on their website. You can show it with the silhouette of a current full size pickup and a circa 1985 small pickup. It’s almost exactly the same size as that generation.
That’s cool. 99spokes does that for bicycles and I’ve found it useful in that respect. Would be cool to compare all of the cars I ever had like that.
I really love my hybrid Maverick. It is still bigger than I want, but it works really well and averages about 40mpg. I can also fit it in a normal parking spot, which is nice.
I wish the Maverick was body on frame and had better tow capacity. It’s almost what I want.
There’s a huge market for small ass trucks, no one is catering to it
Absolutely correct. The American car makers keep on saying “we only want big trucks” but that is complete BS, there is plenty of demand for smaller trucks which is why they have lobbied the gov to all but ban any possible import
The benefit of simplicity is that it makes it simpler for another manufacturer to pick up the slack.
While this is true in theory, in practice it rarely shows up. If these trucks do deliver a good, simple experience at $25K, others would not be able to just copy it and catch up. It would be easier for any of the big guys to just buy the company.
If the company is not for sale, then they would have the monopoly on small trucks and thus, freedom to enshitify
While this is true in theory, in practice it rarely shows up. If these trucks do deliver a good, simple experience at $25K, others would not be able to just copy it and catch up. It would be easier for any of the big guys to just buy the company.
I agree, but without the complications of a combustion engine, it makes it a lot easier. You can buy ev conversion kits for around $15k, so there’s also an “I’ll make my own, with blackjack, and hookers” option.
so there’s also an “I’ll make my own, with blackjack, and hookers” option.
Always the best option! hahahaha
There’s a huge market for small ass trucks, no one is catering to it
Ford is. The Maverick is selling like hotcakes (not the 60s coupe). And they have an electric small truck coming soon as well. There’s also Tello.
There’s a huge market for small ass trucks, no one is catering to it
That’s incorrect. The Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz exist and are very popular.
Toyota is about to release one to compete with the Maverick, and Dodge has a small and a mid sized truck in the works.
Those are midsized. I would say Hyundai is the only one with the Santa Cruz, and that’s not really a truck.
Edit: I stand corrected, I had assumed the maverick was rwd/awd, not fwd/awd. I’m going to amend my statement and say the maverick is also not really a truck. I consider having the drive wheels under the payload to be an important aspect of a truck. Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things.
The Santa Cruz is absolutely a truck. It even has a 3500lb towing capacity. Plus it’s only 4in shorter than the Maverick.
The Santa Cruz is exactly as much as a truck as the Ford Maverick is (which is to say, they’re both unibody vehicles).
That’s incorrect. The Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz exist and are very popular.
And they are still inefficient monsters compared to what a real small truck should be:
Ford Maverick (2022+):
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Length: Approx. 199.7 inches (5.07 meters) almost 1.7 meters larger, 6 feet or so
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Width: Approx. 72.6 inches (1.84 meters)
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Height: Approx. 68.7 inches (1.75 meters)
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Bed Length: 4.5 feet (approx. 54 inches / 1.37 meters) 45% LESS cargo space than a kei truck
Typical Kei Truck (e.g., Suzuki Carry):
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Length: Max legal limit is 3.4 meters (133.9 inches / 11.15 feet).
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Width: Max legal limit is 1.48 meters (58.3 inches). Often around 1.4 meters.
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Height: Varies, but typically around 1.9–2.0 meters (75–79 inches) including the cab/bed height, though the cargo bed side walls are very low (often ~1 meter total height from ground).
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Bed Length: Typically around 2.0 meters (78 inches / 6.5 feet), which is actually longer than the Maverick’s bed in some configurations relative to the vehicle length, though the total footprint is much smaller.
You gotta add a normal US truck to your stats.
The Santa Cruz and Maverick are 2-3.5ft shorter than a Ram 1500.
I have a Santa Cruz, and it looks like a toy truck next to the normal ones. Especially next to duallies.
oh yes most others are way bigger… but I was comparing the “small” trucks that are actually available in the USA to make the point they are not in the same level the real small trucks are
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Same as a European, I do hope it succeeds though and as much as I hate bezos if he’s backing shit like this my opinion of him has increased by about 3.83%.
Hmm? We have much better options available in Europe
I heard that Bezos left the company as an investor. I don’t blame you for disliking anything American, but Slate Auto seems alright so far…
He was never “in it”; but he put up the seed money, then participated in the main round of fund raising and placed a ton of his people in the company. So even if his is not personally involved, he has all the strings he needs to pull it where he wants it to go (which, IMO, means Slate will be enshitified to the full the moment those little trucks start selling)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
Yep. Seen this schtick a hundred times.
Now that the seal is broken on price hikes, it’ll climb more and more. About the time it reaches double, the project will be canceled. Investors will be screwed, and some slimeball will run off with the cash just like he always planned to.
Just like all the other ones.
I’m not very familiar with this stuff, but it sounds terrible. When has this happened in the past?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elio_Motors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lit_Motors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors
Here’s a few. But there’s more of these dating back at least to the 70s.
The concept is a good one. The marketing and financial backing is bad. I think an affordable ev would be a good thing, but this is America.
You’d have to be a massive idiot to think buying into a Bezos led infrastructure won’t nickle and dime them to death down the road…
Off the bat, this thing is basically a dumb phone and it’s going to be very easy for third parties to mess with the platform. My bigger concern with the first launch is quality control. It’s a new vehicle, a new platform, and they’re trying to be extremely cost conscious. I won’t be surprised if there are quality issues with the first production run.
My guess is that, like with Rivian, Bezos is more interested in an EV platform for logistics. These are cheap, they don’t dent, they the don’t have a lot of electronics that can break, they can be easily retrofitted with new logistics platforms if you have an Allen wrench, they’re small enough for urban areas, and you don’t pay for gas.
Bezos is a lot of shitty things, but what made him rich was being a penny pinching logistics geek. This is right up his alley. Cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, cheap to operate.
Tbh that kinda sounds like the point from the start. The price they give is the base-base. Like, an absolute barebones build. Any color you want as long as it’s grey.
But making each individual add-on available…individually…is pretty damn sweet. And also making them available after-market…presumably in an easy-to-install method (kinda figure to be scalable it must be, otherwise the build-to-order model would flop at the assembly line), is icing on the cake.
It sucks that it’s a Bezos initiative, otherwise I’d be yelling to shut up and take my money. A basic-ass EV two-seater that can handle light open loads is exactly what I want. And one that is (seemingly) user-servicable? Hell yeah. AND A FRUNK TO BOOT!
But if bezos is behind it, it’s instantly sus. More sus than any other billionaire, save for a handful.
Slightly more than $24,950, so likely less than $30,000
Yeah, leaving the destination charge unknown for this announcement leaves a lot of uncertainty.
I don’t know where they’re getting the “slightly more” from, but no.
no screens!? I’m sold. would be perfect for me to have a little around town truck like this. but it will be $80,000 by the time I can actually buy one. and I’m sure it tracks everything you do and everywhere you go.
The range is now 205 miles, from a 63-kWh battery.
That’s… Not that great. For comparison, the 2022 Chevy Bolt has a similar sized battery (65kWh) but about 260 miles of range. The weight’s a little less than the slate at 3,600 lbs though it still wouldn’t be enough to gap the difference in performance. There’s either some heavy drag introduced by the truck or some drive system inefficiencies.
Aerodynamics. The Bolt is a slick little running shoe. The Slate is a slab.
I don’t understand the obsession with range. I agree that efficiency is important, but who is regularly driving a pickup truck 200 miles in a day?
Rural people, as in the folks who actually have a use for pickups. As it so happens, it is about 200 miles round-trip to my nearest airport/major city, so if this were my vehicle, I’d have to take a charge break when picking someone up/dropping them off at the airport, or making a shopping run, or going to a concert/special event, or seeing a medical specialist. And I’m not even that far off the beaten path; I have family for whom the one-way drive to their nearest major city/airport is over 200mi. Plus if you’re hauling anything, I’d imagine that range goes down quick.
That 200mi estimate is based on driving around 30-40 mph
You can expect like 140 miles of range at highway speeds
I live in Wyoming so I understand rural, however we are not the only folks with a “real” use for trucks. Plenty of reasons for a townie to own one.
My point was more that a pickup’s core demographic live in places where range is absolutely a consideration. Some city folks do have good reason to own a pickup, but for most it’s an aesthetic/image thing. Which, given the environmental/traffic safety consequences of driving a larger vehicle than necessary, is plenty deserving of judgement imo.
More range not only means driving further without charging but also fewer charge cycles being needed.
Imagine it being like your phone when you play games and the battery dies after 6 hours. How long do you think your phone’s battery is going to last when you’re regularly charging it that often? Now imagine you paid $30k-$100k for the phone and you’ll see why range is important to most people.
I personally have a 100 mile work commute and have decided not to get an EV for the time being because I want one I can keep at least a decade like my current ICE (Camry) without worrying about a $20k battery replacement or having to constantly keep it on a charger. It looks like the new solid state batteries should solve this issue but nobody is producing them yet.
My only problem with the Slate’s range is that, being a truck/SUV, I would want to use it for overlanding (the kind of use-case where even gasoline vehicles need extra fuel tanks strapped to them, as shown here). Trying to do that with an EV with anything less than exceptional range would be limited and take careful route-planning.
Obviously it’s not a “regular” use and therefore shouldn’t rationally be a deal-breaker, but nevertheless taking a couple of jerry cans is a lot less weird and complicated than towing a generator. (And the fact that I’m seriously considering the latter as an option just goes to show how much I like the Slate truck anyway.)
The range is reduced when used to haul things around or when the AC/heat are used. With charging being significantly slower compared to filling up a gas vehicle and without the option to use a gas can if it runs out, there are unknowns and people don’t like unknowns.
I think the range is fine for regular light use personally, but being concerned about a fairly short range isn’t completely baseless. Or would be if the people buying it actually used it as a work truck.
It isn’t regularly, it is what you do on the margins. that one trip a year. Those really cold days in winter (ICEs have a built in heater). 200 miles is more than enough most days, but once a month it will be really close.
Americans get anxiety from having to do math in their heads. Average commute distance is 30 miles a day, and there is always some asshole who whines about towing his boat.
But don’t try rational arguments with pickup drivers who commute to office jobs and drive a tank for that one time they needed to move a brother in law’s couch.
Miles are a bad way to track performance because real life conditions can wildly impact BEV efficiency. I can tell you from first hand experience that towing, elevation changes, or moving at highway speeds in winter can cut per kWh efficiency in half.
And beyond that, you’re supposed to be capping your daily charge limit below 100% for battery longevity. 200 theoretical miles can turn to 160 miles and down to 70 real quick. That can get uncomfortably tight if you miss an overnight charge.
Frankly, its dumb to criticize people who expect their personal vehicle to perform reasonably well in situations where a personal vehicle should excel. Why own a car if it can’t do a round-trip weekend excursion or haul a bit of furniture?
By your logic everyone should only need a tiny moped with a rain jacket and a backpack. It’s irrational to worry about climate control or passengers or suitcases, you statistically never need them.
You know what? You’ve led me to the diagnosis of my own EV range anxiety: Unpredictable performance.
In a gas powered car, you pretty much can think in miles. They put the “24 city, 29 highway” numbers on the sticker in the window, and that’s pretty close to what you’ll get out of it. Maybe loading it until it squats on the suspension or pulling a trailer or driving like a maniac will decrease the economy. But, if you do those kinds of things, you can fill the tank, note the mileage, drive like that awhile, fill the tank again, note the fuel consumed and the mileage performed and you’ve got a figure you can pretty much rely on no matter the weather. The limiting factor is almost always the driver. Drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank, drive 200-300 miles, stop for 5 minutes to fill the tank…
I happen to be a flight instructor. There’s a whole chapter in flight school about cross country flight planning and predicting aircraft performance. Wind is such a factor that you really can’t rate a plane in miles of range, but in hours of endurance. So to plan a flight, you look up the route of flight on an aeronautical chart, the weather forecast, read performance charts and tables out of the plane’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook, crunch a whole bunch of numbers and you’ll know fairly precisely how long you’ll be aloft and how much fuel you’ll burn.
With an EV…they spit out a range in miles that the vehicle will do in unspecified ideal conditions, tell you that heat, cold, using the heater, using the air conditioner, carrying weight, wind and age will reduce the range, and then they’ll get impatient with you if you try to work out what the vehicle will actually do and they’ll mail you anthrax if the answer you arrive at is “not enough.”
Why own a car if it can’t do a round-trip weekend excursion or haul a bit of furniture?
The overall point I’m getting here is that yes, that’s a fine expectation to have. But do you really need a King Ranch Super Duty just to go to the airport twice a year?
Thats the trouble with private vehicles in a nutshell. Sit idle for 95% of the time, and we need to buy models that are capable for the 1% of the drives we might want to do in a year.
That’s a false dichotomy.
I’ve been driving an S10 for decades. Yeah, it’s a little bit 20th century, it makes 18mpg out of a large, slow, primitive V6. It’s great for small truck missions, it’s reasonable for long hauls, and I can expect to go THIS far on THIS much gas.
My obsession isn’t with range, it’s with charge time. Yes I’m a bit irrational wanting a fully charged car every morning but that may not happen with a lower battery efficiency using a level 1 charger. I’m sure you’d appreciate better range efficiency like any gas car user would want better MPG.
Even with high efficiencies, you are going to have troubles with a level 1 charger. Level 2 charging is 5 times faster and still takes a long time to fill a battery. The most efficient consumer EV, the Kona, only charges at 6 miles per hour of level 1 charging. Yeah, you can get 80 miles of charge leaving your car charging overnight, but it completely limits any flexibility in using your car outside of commuting. I should know, I tried to do level 1 charging with a 90 mile range car for a couple months. It sucked, so I got a level 2 charger installed. After that, the 90mi range was fine for 3 years.
Yeah, 120v15a is a pain. At least see about rewiring an outlet for 220v 15a. An electrician can often do it cheaply because its the same wires. Then you can get most of a full charge between commutes.
I would say probably the boxy front and truck bed. They have to do the range tests on the base model so I wonder if it would improve the range with the SUV mod
Pickups have better aero without a bed cap.
I remember watching that Mythbusters episode and being convinced. But it still doesn’t fit neatly into my intuition of the thing.
I wonder which is actually more aero between the squareback and fastback options?
I have just placed my pre-order. I’m so pumped!!! :D
Nice. Did they have options to select at this point, or just the base truck?
You can go on their site and spec it all out with pricing. A few accessories have pricing incoming on then but most of the accessories seem reasonably priced.
