Interesting, the options for customization is endless.

Looks interesting. Are there any real-life non-marketing photos of it?

Reminds me of Bollinger prototypes. Whatever happened to those?

Very exciting! Electric vehicles have the ability to be very simple, much simpler than an ICE.

Although electric can't be 100% analog, I miss the old days when a car has no software updates, no telemetry, no privacy issues, no mandatory subscription for features.

It's a $20k, street-legal, EV modding platform. Sounds like you can mount your own infotainment system. Just an electric motor, battery, and chassis, and the rest is up to you. Isn't this what we've been asking for?

I love the look and the idea, but I wonder if it will go the way of the small/budget phone?

Will folks revealed preference continue to be big and expensive?

I like it. My wife runs a riding academy and we use a Honda Fit the way some people would use a pickup truck: we can fit 10 bales of wood shavings in the back. [1] We’re dreading when it fails because they don’t make the fit anymore and compact hatchbacks seem to be on the way out. Recent experiences have made me a bit of a Buick enthusiast and I can see driving a 2005-ish sedan except that I won’t get those sawdust bales into the trunk. We are also thinking of fitting in EV into the fleet, so far the used Nissan Leaf has been the main contender but this is a pickup truck I could get into.

[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.

All those photos look fake / rendered. And they didn't even bother rendering an inside shot for a car that's all about the inside design choices.

Oh HELL yes!! This is almost exactly the kind of thing truck owners have been clamoring for for years now. The only way this could be more exciting is if Ford flipped out and rebooted the Econoline on this concept.

What’s the price without incentives though?

I loved the Saturn plastic doors. The salesdroids were conditioned to call them "polymer panels" and I got corrected when I bought my SL2 back in the day, but I was sold when in their own showroom he kicked the door in, it visibly dented, and then popped itself right back out with no damage to either the paint or the pla, uh, polymer.

That SL2 went from California to Maine, down to Georgia and back to California. It never had any dings and had only a few scratches in the paint. My Civics seem to get dinged if you look at them wrong.

I wish I could have said the same about the Saturn's stickshift, though. That actually fractured when I was in Gilroy. I mean, the shaft literally snapped.

I had an old Nissan XE truck for a few years. I loved it, the thing was simplicity itself.

I assume there's still a lot of vaporware here, but if they can make it reliable and avoid the teething issues of new cars, I'd probably impulse-purchase one. I would also love to see options for AWD and a full-length bed.

I feel like this is the perfect first car for a teen or college student Gets them from A to B. optimally 5 star crash test rating. Cheap.

If they deliver i would absolutely buy one for when my oldest starts driving in 3 years.

Hand crank windows is a weird choice, are the locks manual as well?

I would love to have such a simple car, here in the uk.

Something tells me though, that if such a company got successful, it wouldn't be long before the features started creeping back in, to justify an increase in price.

Ars Technica is also running something on this today as well. They must be paying their publicist a fair bit.

I love it.

However I wonder about the overlap between people that need a truck and this particular truck. I have only owned trucks when I needed to go out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a payload, in places with poor access to electricity. If I need to go in bumfuck nowhere without payload then there is no need for the truck, and if I need a payload in the city it's just way way cheaper to have it delivered when you factor in depreciation of even a cheap truck.

Would really love to see something like this with a simple 4 cylinder motor. Like the old s-10 / ranger. Until then the solution I have found is to just tag a trailer on small passenger vehicle, since it is now impossible to find a compact gas truck.

These are going to be backlogged for years. The US market is absolutely dying for this truck (and even moreso the SUV variant), exactly as specified. The big guys have refused to provide it, so there is a literal gold mine awaiting anyone that can.

I put down $50 to reserve one. I grew up with an old car that I tinkered with endlessly. Mostly because it was simple enough for me to get my head around! This car reminds me of that time.

I'm hoping that they go with a lot of "off-the-shelf" electronics and mechanical parts. Standards are a blessing.

It feels like they're going with a different business model to traditional car manufacturers. AFAIK most manufacturers make a lot of their money via servicing. I'd love to take a look at what their long-term business strategy is.

Yes, it is too much for consumers... Farmers might have no choice though if they want a new truck

I LOVE it! THIS is the kind of truck I'd be looking at to replace my 1998 Ford Ranger.

Here is what could be potential deal-breakers:

- Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues.

- Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Either that, or a cheap and easy to replace battery pack. I'd really like both!

- Comparable hauling and towing capacity to the 1998 Ford Ranger. Those numbers aren't exactly impressive, but I do use the truck as a truck, and I occasionally need the hauling capacity (weight).

- Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work.

If anyone from Slate is reading this, this is how I'm looking at this truck. FYI, I'll be comparing this to the Ford Maverick.

They are targeting 5-stars safety rating, but we don't know if they manage to achieve it.

Seems genius, hope this catches on

Electric cars make personalization so much easier, glad someone's doing this.

And it's a pickup truck that is an actual pickup truck.

If this can’t compete head to head (no tariffs or other import restrictions) with BYD and the like, then I don’t know why one would get excited. Feels like an expensive consolation prize with tons of compromises. I want competition.

This looks great. But isn't there a long history of new car companies over the last few decades that have an impressive car, take pre-orders and never deliver? Something about production hell?

what is the point of this?

a used car for 10k does more, costs less, and has a lower carbon footprint.

Isn't this sort of thing illegal as a new vehicle in US markets because of those backup camera laws?

Love this. Definitely getting on the list.

The fact that it’s so bare bones (no stereo, etc. unless you put one in) makes me really hope that it doesn’t phone home with a firehose of telemetry like pretty much every other new car. If so, they’ve got my interest

It took me a few articles to even find it mentioned, so I'll repeat it here in case anyone else was wondering: it's rear wheel drive only.

With a 1000lb towing capacity and 150m range (let’s call that 120 when you don’t charge 100%) this eliminates too many use cases.

It’s the anti-cybertruck but aimed at people who actually could get by with a nice trailer.

Its a cool car, but forgive me for not getting Lucy-Footballed again by an electric car startup claiming to be able to "change the game" while never actually getting any cars sold.

please, god, let this thing make it to production in the US!

With all those missing of basic features why is it still 20k and not 10k?

This'll seem a like an odd question given the obvious bare-bones approach, but still: Is or could be instrumented for self-driving? I can't imagine us humans driving forever. Otherwise this looks like a dream truck to me. Easy DIY repair, electric, fewer distractions, meant for work not showing off.

Man this is so awesome. I do really think they need to consider the fold down bed sides like the kei trucks have.

The bed being plastic doesn’t give me much confidence either. The payload may be similar to a mini truck, but a mini truck’s metal bed will take a significant beating over plastic.

This is very, very close to what I want, but I worry that those two things may prevent me from actually pulling the trigger. While all of the modular features are cool and neat, I don’t really consider them very useful for what I would actually use this truck for.

The purpose of this seems to be a fleet or Personal utility truck, but I still feel like I would be leaning towards a used old Ford Ranger or similar.

No stereo is a bridge too far.

"...but is this extreme simplification too much for American consumers?"

Not this one. It's the premiumization that drove me away from every EV product out there.

Plus, load up the back with more batteries and you've got great range!

> The simplification goes simpler still. Slate will make just one vehicle, in just one trim, in just one color, with everything from bigger battery packs to SUV upgrade kits added on later.

Makes me wonder if, once "normal" features are added, cost and reliability will be a problem?

In contrast, I could see this really helping the dealer model work because dealers could compete with different customizations.

That being said: At least when it comes to the battery, efficiencies come from a single large battery instead of a modular battery. I suspect they'll need to offer a larger battery at the factory.

> Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year.

Then it isn't < $20000. It is a pitch.

I love it, now give me a gas engine so I can take it on weeklong off-road camping trips

It's a shame reasonably sized and reasonably priced imports are illegal. We could have much better vehicles for this price now.

go the next step, and offer box and wheel/tire deleet, lots of people will have or can get wheels/tires that will fit, if they use one of the popular size combos, and many would opt for a flat deck, or custom purpose box see if it can be squeezed down to 20k, taxes in delivered with no box, they can be stacked, piggy back, just the way commercial heavy trucks are stacked for delivery.....more per load, less trips

I love this. We have a Fiat 500 EV that we got for $8k used that’s a fantastic city / small hauling car, and this beats it in many qualities in a way that’s still minimalist, reasonably affordable, and low maintenance (if as promised). We also have a 1986 4WD VW camper van which gets the big jobs done but is still manageable in the city. This truck is like the DIY marriage of the two.

Does this strategy even make sense? You can charge $20k for a car. Why wouldn’t you add options that cost you nearly nothing but some amount of buyers will opt in for a meaningful revenue increase.

Charge $1k for paint. Even if 95% of people don’t do that, 5% of orders just increased their revenue by 5%. Paint doesn’t take engineering time.. just spend $500 and let some other company do it. This is why trims exist, having a single low price point means people who want to spend more either produce lower revenue than possible, or are disappointed.

IMO this one trim, one price is almost certainly a prelaunch marketing gimmick as from a business perspective there is literally no benefit.

This sounds great. There are not any pictures of the interior but I hope it is also very simple and not full of difficult to reach nooks and crannies that are impossible to clean.

Seems a bit like a spiritual successor to the Jeep Cherokee XJ, which also has a very strong DIY community around it.

150 miles of range is pretty terrible, especially when it's winter and you have a load in the back. Suddenly that's 70 miles of range.

I get that it's a bargain price, so that's the tradeoff. But a pretty bad one.

~$30k for a manual-window, slow-charging truck? Will anybody in the US actually want one?

It's a cool concept... looks good to my eye, small trucks are neat, etc. But, I'd want push-button windows, up-to-date charge controller/battery tech, and the normal EV integrated app. Maybe if it was really a $20k truck (they're advertising the price after incentives, many of which are either going away or vanish for higher income earners).

This Truck is gonna be a big Hit with consumers!

But once it starts selling like hotcakes they'll jack up the price to "Whatever the Market will Bear" relative to how many they're able to produce.

With most people struggling to get by nowadays (economically) we'll love the "less gadgetry" option because all that advanced technology stuff (and I do mean even power windows!) is, as my father always said, "Just something else that's going to eventually break, and was designed so it must be replaced not repaired."

I hope they succeed, this is a great idea. I’d love something like this.

> Instead of steel or aluminum, the Slate Truck’s body panels are molded of plastic.

Deal breaker. Plastic gets brittle with age.

This is amazing. More car manufacturers should get out of the infotainment business. tablet tethered to a cellphone for reception, and a connection to OBD2 for car data is all you need and allows for easy upgrades/replacements when things fail.

I do think they should keep in mind that people will want to do this and at least design the dash to easily accept a tablet mount (vesa standard), amp mount (plug and play Pyle 120v?), speaker wire, and speakers (6x9 or 6.5”). That’s an easy hour install if everything is standardized, accessible, and doesn’t require drilling.

Would also love seating for 5.

In Colorado, I need 4x4 sometimes. Slate is just RWD. I'd love to see a minimalistic 4x4 model like this.

I like the idea, but I think a hybrid version would be the better first product. A 150 mile range is going to limit the people who will purchase this truck.

Me, showing this to my wife: Oh, they made a car for you!

She's not wrong, though I'm not at a point where I want THIS much minimalism (or lack of range). What a great product though.

Now, the Ineos Grenadier? That thing speaks right to my soul.

Looks like a concept that will never actually reach the market.

And if it does and I'm completely wrong, this concept is probably doomed anyways, as it is swinging far too far to the other side away from fancy tech and right into uselessly bare. I'm sure a few people are excited by this, but realistically it will have a tiny real market. Nearly no one wants manual windows and leaving them out isn't saving huge amount of money.

Make it comparable to a decent conventional vehicle, but electric, and you may do well. This though is more useless and non-functional than my old Jeep, which has a trip computer and bluetooth as the biggest "tech features".

As far as I can tell, it's "$20K" the same way Cybertruck was "$39K". It's not available for purchase yet, and when it is, it'll be twice as much, because Bezos also likes money.

I hope they separate the BMS from the battery, unlike Tesla and others, which force you to replace the entire battery if the BMS fails. What a concept, allowing people to personalize and repair their own vehicles.

I like it but minimalism always fails for complex products because everyone wants a different 80% of the features cut. You can already see it in the comments haha.

Do youngs know how to use manual windows? LOL

People say they, and many other Americans, want a cheap and simple truck. They're lying.

I know you don't believe me but it's true.

Automotive sales numbers are public information. Every single time a VIN is stamped into some metal, that record is public. The gradual decline in the sale of small, simple, cheap trucks is well documented.

People want full-sized trucks.

People say they love manual transmissions, too. They walk right past the manual Tacomas and Jeeps and buy an automatic.

People say they love station wagons. Then they go to the Volvo dealership and walk right past the V60 and buy an XC60.

People say they want a cheap car. Then they walk right past the base model Corolla and throw down $50k on a Rav4 Limited.

Only enthusiasts and weirdos like me will buy one of these.

A company whose audience is enthusiasts and weirdos must charge a shit-ton to stay in business. $20k isn't a shit-ton and if their strategy is to make up the difference on upgrades, they're not selling cheap trucks anymore.

I know what Americans, in aggregate, want. They want a big-ass SUV with heated and cooled seats with a screen that stretches across the entire god damned dash, 360 degree cameras, RGB mood lighting, 47 speakers, and second-row captain's chairs that make getting to the third row easy.

I own 3 cars, a Fiat 124 (MANUAL) Spider, a Volvo V70, and an Alfa Romeo Giulia.

But I am a weirdo, and because of this those companies are about to go extinct (in the US, at least).

I'm the guy that ran OS/2 and BeOS until the bitter end. I prefer writing software in Ada. I had a Saab.

I am literally and actually a subject matter expert on this shit.

I know what normal people want, and this ain't it. I know this because I want it.

I see this and I don't see it as an every day, driving-on-my-commute style vehicle. As someone who (previously) drove a 2014 honda civic, cheaper cars leave a lot of comfort for longer drives. I can't imagine this barebones vehicle being fun to drive for any extended period of time, or any extended distance, unless you'd spent considerable time customizing it to those needs (at which point, you've probably spent more than buying something off the shelf).

I do see this being great for short utility trips (think running errands, picking something up, etc), and as a utility vehicle (would be nice to be able to have an 8ft bed).

It would be really interesting to me to see a fleet of vehicles like this that are ultra-rentable; think a Bird/Lime scooter, but a utility truck.

How much before incentives?

TFW just want cheap Hilux Champ.

This is like a car version of the Framework laptop. Love it.

I'm really intrigued to see how this does. Kudos to Slate for trying something new and building it in Detroit at a great price point.

I see a ton of discussion on social media from people who want to buy simpler vehicles with less features at a better price point (e.g. the Japanese Kei trucks). I'm not convinced Americans will actually buy such a vehicle because we are used to our modern conveniences in new vehicles. You can even see that trend in this thread where people are asking for more features, or things that were phased out decades ago due to safety (e.g. bench seats). Perhaps Slate has figured that out with their options packaging? I'm rooting for them regardless.

No electronics in an EV, nahhhh

I want exactly this, but with a hybrid engine, RWD, and a manual transmission. I would buy it new for $28k, no frills.

1. $50 for a reservation

2. No guarantee of delivery date

3. No right to purchase

4. No guarantee of purchase price

5. No assignment of purchase to other parties

I've got some lunar real estate to sell you if you think this product will ever exist

Love this! Would like to see a (manual) split rear window- super helpful for hauling longer things in a smaller truck. I put 10' conduit in my Ridgeline all the time.

this seems so funny to me like "hey you want to buy something worse"

I'm talking specifically about the no stereo/screen

This is amazing. I hope it succeeds. If I had any use for a truck I'd be lining up to buy one. They make one in a compact sedan or hatchback form factor and I am in. Heck, even better a subcompact.

"but is this extreme simplification too much for American consumers?"

No, it's not. This American consumer says bring on the simplicity. Also like that this is not some monster sized thing.

This is cool, but you can buy a 3 year old used model 3 right now for close to $25k that has 300+ mile range. The model 3 also has, wait for it, a/c and speakers…

Remember when cybertruck was supposed to be cheap minimalistic truck? No paint, spartan interior, simple materials and straight shapes. $39k price tag. Yeah…

This makes a lot of sense for a run around town and short commute car. It specializes for that use case perfectly. I can see a world where families have one decent gas/hybrid car and one cheap EV. That set up could save a lot of gas money over time while meeting the needs of the household.

Also, when is the last time an economy car/truck looked this good? The slate is beautiful.

I think it has a real shot if it arrives as promised, but we know how these things go.

I'd buy this immediately and just paint it myself. This care looks perfect for modding.

What are downsides of "no paint"?

I want one.

This is just beautiful. A small, functional, electric truck. Not a luxury SUV with a tiny truck bed for cowboy cosplayers, or a cyberpunk glue heap.

I hope they sell millions.

I love this concept and will probably buy one for that reason alone. 150 miles is too low though, I already struggle with the 180 I get out of my current electric car. Really cool to see more ideas in this space, congrats to the founders getting this far!

this is cool but does it meet strong safety standards?

> "and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker"

Why not make a physical connection (power/network) and define a form factor for entertainment system with or without screen and speakers and let other companies design something to fit the space available. I don't understand why no one does this instead of selling cars full of crappy software that can't be upgraded.

All the images look like renderings. Is the car actually in production?

The big thing I would want from this is no call-home/telemetry. I want privacy so I want a vehicle that gets me from a to b.

I'm not sure why I read this as a $20k guitar pickup...

If they make a sedan I would buy it in a heartbeat at those prices. A pickup or suv doesn’t work for me.

I'm looking for a vehicle which doesn't track my location, and doesn't have complex software controlling vehicle functions which could kill me. Maybe this is for me.

The question is... how many farmers / ranchers need these pickups? There seems to be like an absolutely crazy competition for vehicles for a very narrow group of people.

Who will be buying all of these pickup trucks?

I'm wondering why the hood is so big, given that it doesn't need to contain an engine? Is that where the batteries are located? Or is it just mostly empty space in the form of a frunk serving as a crumple zone to meet crash testing standards? I hope it's not just a strictly aesthetic thing, because you could reduce that distance and end up with an even more practical truck.

I'm quite excited about this. Ticks all my boxes for "low" tech, simple, moddable, useful, and cheap. I'm hoping my aging Pontiac Vibe holds out long enough to upgrade to one of these, if they succeed. I put in a preregistration!