Slate Auto, the EV startup backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has finally revealed the starting price of its electric truck: $24,950.
That’s excluding taxes, title, license, registration, governmental fees, destination charges, documentation fees, and any optional equipment, according to the company. Slate started taking pre-orders for the truck on Wednesday.
Crucially, Slate also said that it has boosted the estimated range of its base model from 150 miles to around 205 miles.
The aggressive pricing — half the average cost of a new car in the United States — puts Slate in position to capture a share of the lowest end of the new car market, which has few gas and fewer electric options these days. The Chevrolet Bolt is one of Slate’s closest EV competitors on price, starting at around $29,000, while the Nissan Leaf starts at around $32,000. Ford has been teasing a $30,000 electric truck that’s due in 2027.
The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from stealth. Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the extremely basic, transforming EV, which starts as a two-seater pickup truck, but can be modified into a five-seater SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday.
Slate has said the conversion can be done by professionals or by owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed off some of its first of its “Slate University” how-to videos, which guide people through the steps for doing everything from the SUV conversion to adding headlight covers.
Everything else about the truck is bare, though it’s customizable. It has hand-crank windows, lacks an infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle. That likely helps cut out a major cost center, as factory paint shops can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The company did not offer more details about the buying process. Slate has said it “won’t have traditional dealerships,” and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors.
Earlier this month, TechCrunch first reported that Slate Auto has granted online used car giant Carvana a warrant to purchase its shares, suggesting the two might collaborate on selling the low-cost truck. Carvana recently revealed plans to sell new cars, shaking up its existing business model. (One of Slate’s lead investors, Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, is a major shareholder in Carvana.)
Slate has been promising the vehicle would be priced in the mid-$20,000 area before it came out of stealth, as TechCrunch first reported early last year. The company’s goal is to create something like Ford’s Model T, or Volkswagen’s Beetle, and a starting price of around $25,000 has been the target for a long time.
But the path to those goals has been complicated by the second Trump administration and Republican control of Congress. Policy changes have loosened emissions standards, and removed a $7,500 federal EV tax credit. As a result, many major automakers have delayed or shelved plans for new EVs in the U.S.
The startup has raised a fair amount of money as it chases these ambitious goals. So far, investors have thrown around $1.4 billion into Slate across three major funding rounds. The company has been tight-lipped about those backers, though along with Walter’s firm TWG Global, we know the cap table includes General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos’ family office, VC firm Slauson & Co., and former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini, as TechCrunch first reported last year.
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Sean O'Kane Sr. Reporter, Transportation
Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.
You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.
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