Slate Auto, the EV startup backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has finally revealed the starting price for its electric truck: $24,950.
That does not include taxes, title, license, registration, government fees, property charges, document fees, or any optional equipment, according to the company. Slate began taking pre-orders by truck Wednesday.
Sadly, Slate also claims to have increased the estimated range of its base model from 150 kilometers to around 205 kilometers.
Aggressive pricing — a fraction of the average cost of a new car in the United States — puts the Slate in a position to capture part of the lower end of the new car market, which has few gas and electric options these days. The Chevrolet Bolt is one of the Slate’s closest EV competitors in terms of price, starting at around $29,000, while the Nissan Leaf starts at around $32,000. Ford has been teasing a $30,000 electric truck due in 2027.
The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from the ruse. Since then, the company has been detailing an extremely basic, convertible EV, which starts out as a two-seater truck, but can be converted into a five-seater SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday.
Slate said the conversion can be done by a professional or by the owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed its first “Slate University” videos, which walk people through the steps of doing everything from modifying an SUV to adding headlight covers.
Everything else about the truck is blank, though it can be customized. It has hand-crank windows, no infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to allow buyers to order custom wraps for the car. That probably helps determine a major cost center, since factory paint shops can run hundreds of millions of dollars.
The company did not provide additional details about the purchase process. Slate said it “will not have traditional dealerships,” and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies such as Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors.
Earlier this month, TechCrunch first reported that Slate Auto had given online used car giant Carvana the go-ahead to buy its shares, suggesting the two could work together on a low-cost pickup truck. Carvana recently revealed plans to sell new cars, and shake up its existing business. (One of Slate’s leading investors, Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, is a major shareholder in Carvana.)
Slate has been promising that the car will be priced in the mid-$20,000 range before going undercover, as TechCrunch first reported early last year. The company’s goal is to build something like Ford’s Model T, or Volkswagen’s Beetle, and a starting price of around $25,000 has long been the target.
But the path to those goals has been complicated by Trump’s second administration and Republican control of Congress. The policy changes loosened emissions standards, and eliminated the $7,500 EV tax credit. As a result, many major automakers have delayed or shelved plans for new EVs in the US
The startup has raised a significant amount of capital as it pursues these ambitious goals. To date, investors have thrown nearly $1.4 billion into Slate in three major funding rounds. The company has been tight-lipped about those backers, although along with Walter’s company TWG Global, we know the cap table includes General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos’ family office, VC firm Slauson & Co., and former Amazon CEO Diego Piacentini, as TechCrunch first reported last year.
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