Slate Auto's Electric Truck is Your Blank Slate for the Perfect Vehicle

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Today’s issue is delivered late because it contains all of the details you need to know about the new car company, Slate Auto, and its bare-bones electric pickup truck. That is also an SUV. Wait, what?

In This Issue

• Minimally Viable Pickup (MVP)

• Will It Work?

Minimally Viable Pickup (MVP)

In software development, you work towards what’s called the MVP. This is the minimally viable product. At what point is what you're working on good enough to go to customers? Oftentimes, this is a barebones, basic program with limited functionality.

The Slate Auto pickup truck, in some ways, is also an MVP of sorts: a minimally viable pickup. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, and neither do the folks at Slate. Just now, they officially revealed the new truck, and it’s interesting due to all of the features it doesn’t have.

Slate CEO Chris Barman (a Stellantis alum) brings home a great point. Just earlier this week, I commented that something that costs $70,000 can’t be an “everyman’s” anything. We’re constantly inundated with new vehicles to test and review, and the prices on those vehicles continue to go up and up. Yes, some people can afford the most expensive vehicles, but with each price change in the northerly direction, someone new is bumped out of being able to buy a new car.

That’s why the Slate pickup is exciting. Let’s quickly go over the specs:

It’s a two-door, two-seat (more on that later), electric rear-drive pickup truck. It comes with a standard 52.7 kWh battery pack and a 150 kW electric motor. That motor, in freedom units, is 201 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque.

Slate is estimating a 0-60 time of 8 seconds dead. The top speed is set to 90 mph.

It’ll come standard with a SAE J3400 port, which is the NACS Tesla plug, and have an onboard 11 kW AC charger. That means you should be able to completely recharge a dead Slate on a home level 2 charger in less than 6 hours.

Peak DCFC is at 120 kW, and Slate is quoting a 20%-80% time of under 30 minutes. I hate the 20%-80% metric because I think 10%-80% is much more useful, and how most automakers quote it, but I digress. Independent testing is what matters the most here.

The standard battery (more on that later, too) is targeting a 150-mile range, or an MGPe of 96.

The truck weighs in at 3,602 pounds and is capable of a maximum payload of 1,433 pounds. For those interested in towing, you’ll be able to do that with a trailer of up to 1,000 pounds. For comparison, a Ford Maverick can be equipped to tow up to 4,000 pounds.

Speaking of the Maverick, though, the Slate is about 2 feet shorter with a length of 174.6 inches. The wheelbase is 108.9 inches, and it’s 70.6 inches wide without the mirrors. It’s 69.3 inches tall.

In interior volume of the truck is 55 cubic feet, but that goes up to 80.5 cubic feet with something I’m also going to hit on in a bit.

The company is targeting a price, with federal incentives (which this week still exist), starting at $20,000 U.S. That’s not a lot of money in the year of our lord 2025.

So, how does Slate get to that price? By only offering the bare necessities.

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This truck is extremely basic. It only has 17-inch steel wheels. It has hand crank (yes, hand crank) windows, and the HVAC system uses knobs. There is a frunk for 7 cubic feet of cargo.

There is no infotainment system. You get a phone mount and a USB port to charge your phone. That’s it. You can add your own stuff if you want, but that’s up to you to decide.

The team is targeting makers, customizers, and do-it-yourselfers. You have a “Blank Slate” to start with, and you can accessorize from there if you want.

One of the big customization options is the “SUV Kit.” That’s right, folks, you can get your Slate truck in an SUV body if you want to do the work (or have Slate do it for you). It’s a flat pack kit (think Ikea furniture) that includes a roll cage, airbags, and a rear seat. You and some friends can then make your two-seat pickup truck into a 5-seat SUV, complete with airbags.

Now, would I trust a vehicle partially assembled by me? Probably not. But like I said, you can have Slate do it for you.

Additionally, if you don’t like the total amount of range available, you can add on an accessory battery pack. That ups the kilowatt-hours to 84.3 and boosts the range to 240 miles.

If you don’t like the default color, you can wrap the vehicle. There’s three different “levels” of wrapping, designed for people who want to do it themselves (if they’re good at applying cell phone screen protectors or whatever).

Of course, safety is important, and Slate claims the truck is designed to achieve the highest safety ratings. It comes with Active Emergency Braking and Forward Collision warning, which is the legally required active safety on new vehicles.

Slate will sell direct-to-consumer and have a nationwide service network. They’re building in a “reindustrailzied” factory here in the United States. Refundable reservations are available now at Slate Auto’s site for just $50.

Will It Work?

It depends. Launching a new car company is difficult. For every Rivian, we have a Faraday Future, a Canoo, and a Fisker. It’s hard, even if you save as much money as you can.

Customers, to have the best experience, will still need to have a way to charge at home or work. If you have to use a fast charger as a gas station, you’re not going to have a great EV ownership experience. Statistically, someone looking at a $20,00 vehicle doesn’t have access to a garage where charging can be installed.

Yes, the situation is getting better for apartment dwellers, but prospective owners will need to have that figured out before they buy the truck.

If you do have to use a DCFC as your only source of juice, you’re going to pay a lot for that electricity. At some stations, I’m charged over 60 cents per kWh. It’d be less expensive to operate a Ford Raptor — any Ford Raptor — than constantly recharge at that station.

The optional SUV kit will make the truck more appealing to more customers, but customers are still going to have to appreciate a truly basic experience. That’s yet to be seen if a stripped out vehicle is something people actually want.

Yes, people on the internet and in comment sections say this is what they want, but are they actually going to go out and purchase one of these things? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

There will be some advantages going in, though. Lower operating costs are obviously great, but insurance should always be reasonable. The truck is very basic and uses basic components, meaning repair costs should managed. That’ll lower insurance.

Plus, with fewer things to go wrong, fewer things WILL go wrong.

But Slate is a newcomer to the game, so it’s still not known if people will buy something like this from a new car company that nobody has had experience with. With Scout, you at least have Volkswagen’s knowledge — and investment — all over it. With the Slate offering, you don’t.

I’m cautiously optimistic, as I can see the appeal of something like this. I can also see fleets loving this idea, including places that used to rely heavily on cheap Rangers (like the Orkin man, AutoZone, and so on).

What do you think? Would you be interested in one? Would you shell out the $50 to reserve one? Let me know.