The usual car review goes like this. A carmaker flies a journalist somewhere scenic, hands over a fully loaded trim, and the journalist comes back with views on the infotainment system and the ambient lighting. Slate Auto, the Jeff Bezos-backed startup building a cheap electric pickup, did it differently. It brought a prototype to Washington and let Jonathan M. Gitlin of Ars Technica drive it from southwest DC to Rockville, Maryland. The drive lasted 45 minutes, and Gitlin’s verdict was: “I think Slate Auto will have quite the hit on its hands.”
The other notable thing about the review is how much of it is about things the truck lacks, and how happy the reviewer is about that.
Here is the inventory. The seat and steering column adjust by hand. So do the mirrors. The windows have cranks. You turn the truck on by slotting the key fob into the dash and pick drive, neutral, park or reverse with a shifter on the steering column. Climate control is three dials, for hotter or colder and more or less air, and Gitlin says they come close to “the platonic ideal for car climate controls.” There is no navigation screen. There’s a phone mount on the dash instead. The one digital display is small and plain, though he found it very legible: it shows your speed and, in reverse, the backup camera. The door handles open with what he calls a pleasing mechanical action and compares to the ones on the Morris Marina, which is roughly the most British-Leyland compliment you can pay a door handle.
Normally every item on that list costs a car points in a review. Here each one is part of how the price works.
The arithmetic of a crank
Slate announced in June that the two-seat truck would start at $24,950, with an SUV version at $29,950. According to Electrek, that base price excludes taxes, title, registration, destination and documentation fees. The company used to pitch the truck at under $20,000, but that figure assumed buyers would get the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, and the credit has since been eliminated. Do the subtraction and the old pitch amounted to $24,950 minus $7,500, or $17,450 net. Without the credit the truck is just a $24,950 truck, and Slate has to make the case on its own terms.
It also has to make money on it, and that’s harder. Chief executive Peter Faricy told CNBC that every vehicle Slate builds will be gross margin positive, and the company is aiming for positive cash flow next year. That is a big claim for an EV startup, since the usual EV startup sells each car at a loss and hopes to fix it with scale later. If you mean it, every component is a margin decision. A power window needs a motor, wiring, a switch and a control module, and a crank needs a crank. Leaving out the infotainment screen saves the screen, plus the software team, the update pipeline and the warranty claims when it freezes. Slate’s whole strategy is to treat “we left it out” as a feature and then find reviewers who agree.
It’s found one, at least. And he’s not grading on a curve: he notes that the manual seat and column still have plenty of reach, which budget cars used to give up to save money. Cheap but not punishing seems to be the target.
What the battery bought
The powertrain shows the same thinking. TechCrunch and Electrek both covered the June reveal, and Electrek reported that the production truck uses one 65 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack, 63 kWh of it usable, driving a single 181-horsepower rear motor, for an estimated range of about 205 miles. Electrek says Slate had earlier planned two SK On nickel-based packs good for roughly 240 miles, and that the entry-level figure used to be 150 miles. Lithium iron phosphate is the cheaper chemistry. Ars Technica’s deck says the prototype “won’t win a specs race,” and I suspect Slate is fine with that.
The truck isn’t tiny, either. It stands 68 inches (1.7 meters) tall, about the height of most crossovers, so you sit fairly high, certainly compared with a sedan, and Gitlin says the visibility from the two-seat cab is good.
The caveats
This was a prototype, and it looked like one. The odometer showed almost 6,000 miles (9,656 km). Slate says the cabin layout matches the production version, but the materials don’t: the test truck had a lot of hard, shiny black plastic, with strips of Velcro still stuck on from when the interior had to be covered in camouflage for driving in public. And 45 minutes around North Bethesda, roads Gitlin knew from an earlier career in science policy, tells you how the controls feel. It tells you less about a winter commute or a full bed of mulch.
The schedule is the next test. Electrek reported in June that first deliveries were still expected by the end of 2026, and Slate recently opened its first showroom as production gets closer. That leaves about eight weeks for the company to hit its date.
Which brings us back to the review, an odd thing for a car company to want. The usual pitch is “look how much you get.” Slate’s is “look how little you get, and how little you miss it.” It’s a good pitch if buyers believe it, and a review full of praise for manual window winders is some evidence that they might. Of course, this buyer was a car journalist who “still remember[s] how to use a manual window winder.” Slate will also need the people who don’t.