Ask nearly anyone, and so they’ll inform you that new vehicles are too costly. Within the wake of tariffs shaking the auto trade and with the Trump administration pledging to kill the federal EV incentive, that state of affairs isn’t seeking to get higher quickly, particularly for anybody wanting one thing battery-powered. Altering that overly spendy established order goes to take one thing radical, and it’s exhausting to get extra radical than what Slate Auto has deliberate.
Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electrical car that enters manufacturing subsequent 12 months. It solely seats two but has a mattress large enough to carry a sheet of plywood. It solely does 150 miles on a cost, solely is available in grey, and the one technique to hearken to music whereas driving is in the event you deliver alongside your telephone and a Bluetooth speaker. It’s the naked minimal of what a contemporary automobile may be, and but it’s taken three years of improvement to get up to now.
However that is greater than bargain-basement motoring. Slate is presenting its truck as minimalist design with DIY goal, an try and not simply go low cost however to create a brand new class of car with an enormous concentrate on personalization. That design additionally allows a low-cost strategy to manufacturing that has caught the attention of main traders, reportedly together with Jeff Bezos. It’s been engineered and will likely be manufactured in America, however is that this excessive simplification an excessive amount of for American customers?
Simplify, Then Embrace Injury
In case you haven’t seen the leaks and the reviews of weirdly wrapped vehicles hiding in plain sight, the Slate Truck is the primary product from Michigan-based Slate Auto. Assume “American kei truck” and also you’re not far off. It’s a machine designed to be extraordinarily primary, extraordinarily customizable, and intensely reasonably priced. These will not be your typical design targets, however then the Slate Truck isn’t the fruit of your typical design course of.
Wander via any automotive design studio anyplace on the earth and also you’ll inevitably come throughout a temper board or two, sweeping collages of placing pictures meant to align the inventive flows of passers-by. They’re a software for serving to a disparate design staff to create a cohesive product, however the place many such temper boards characteristic glamour photographs of unique roads and delightful folks, entrance and middle within the Slate’s temper board was one thing totally different: a giant, grey shark, lined in scrapes and scars.
“It seems like a shark that has undoubtedly been in a couple of brawl and clearly has come out forward as a result of it’s nonetheless swimming,” says Tisha Johnson, head of design at Slate and who previously spent a decade at Volvo. That aesthetic, of highlighting reasonably than hiding battle scars, is essential to the Slate ethos.
As a substitute of metal or aluminum, the Slate Truck’s physique panels are molded of plastic. Or, as Slate calls them, “injection molded polypropylene composite materials.” The speculation is that this makes them extra sturdy and scratch-resistant, if solely as a result of the dearth of paint means they’re one shade all through. Auto fans of a sure age will bear in mind the identical strategy utilized by the now-defunct Saturn Company, a producing approach that by no means caught on throughout the trade.
Slate continues the theme via to the upholstery, too, a heathered textile that was designed to get higher trying because it wears. The concept is to lean into the aged aesthetic.
However not everyone will dig the shark theme, and so the Slate Truck is designed to be customizable to a level by no means seen earlier than on a manufacturing car. Johnson says that is in distinction to the overly curated expertise provided by many manufacturers.
She says over-curation by automotive designers ends in conditions like premium, luxurious vehicles which might be solely obtainable in a palette of disappointingly bland colours: “There’s normally solely a fraction that you simply really need, and people are at all times costlier,” she says.
Disparaging different manufacturers for providing restricted shade decisions might sound disingenuous coming from the designer of a car obtainable in a single shade. The Slate Truck, although, was designed to make the most of the present pattern of vinyl-wrapping vehicles. Its easy form and minimal trim items imply that even amateurs can do the job. Slate will provide DIY kits that newbies can slap on in a day and change simply as shortly primarily based on temper.
Nevertheless, the most important advantage of this monochromatic considering may are available manufacturing.
Naked-Minimal Manufacturing
It’s most likely no shock to you that constructing vehicles is pricey. Elon Musk likes to bemoan simply how difficult the method may be at any time when Tesla is late delivery its subsequent new mannequin, however he’s removed from alone in that evaluation.
What’s rather less generally recognized is simply how costly it’s to color these vehicles. Making a facility that may reliably, shortly, and cleanly lay down a high quality coat of shade on automotive physique elements is a sophisticated job.
That job has solely gotten extra difficult (and thus costly) lately, with larger environmental laws and shopper expectations forcing producers to seek out methods to supply extra vibrant hues with much less ecological impression. Mercedes-Benz simply introduced it’s constructing a “Subsequent Era Paintshop” at its Sindelfingen plant in Germany, and estimates place the factor’s value at practically $1 billion.
By eliminating paint, and thus eliminating the paint store, Slate’s manufacturing course of is massively simplified. So, too, the dearth of steel physique elements. “We now have no paint store, we now have no stamping,” says Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s chief industrial officer who previously led Tesla’s world enterprise efforts.
Automobile factories are likely to have excessive ceilings to make room for the multiple-story stamping machines that type steel physique elements. Injection molding of plastic is much simpler and cheaper to do in restricted areas — areas just like the manufacturing facility that Slate has bought for its manufacturing, reportedly close to Indiana. “The car is designed, engineered, and manufactured within the US, with nearly all of our provide chain primarily based within the US,” Snyder says.
The simplification goes less complicated nonetheless. Slate will make only one car, in only one trim, in only one shade, with all the pieces from greater battery packs to SUV improve kits added on later.
“As a result of we solely produce one car within the manufacturing facility with zero choices, we’ve moved all the complexity out of the manufacturing facility,” Snyder says.
Whereas most patrons will rightly fixate on the price of the truck, the larger story right here may simply be this radically simplified strategy to manufacturing. “From the very starting, our enterprise mannequin has been such that we attain money move positivity very shortly after begin of manufacturing. And so from an funding standpoint, we’re far much less cash-reliant than some other EV startup that has ever existed, so far as I do know,” Snyder says.
As Slate tries to sprint to manufacturing with out tripping over the headstones of failed EV startups that litter the countryside, that leanness is essential. It’s helped them appeal to some main traders. “The best trade magnates to put money into our firm,” Snyder says. He declined to call names, however in accordance with a TechCrunch report, a kind of magnates is Jeff Bezos.
“We don’t have a direct connection to Amazon,” Snyder clarified, however he didn’t rule out some company cooperation. “Who is aware of? Who is aware of in the event you’ll be capable of buy on Amazon? I don’t know.”
These vinyl wraps are actually simply the primary layer of what Slate’s designers are positioning as a, properly, clean slate. They need house owners to personalize each side of the car, together with its silhouette.
Want room for greater than two passengers? Slate has an SUV improve package that may bolt onto the again of the truck, including further rollover crash safety and rear seats with seat belts to match, all in a package deal that’s straightforward to put in at house.
No, this isn’t a Subaru Brat redux. The seats will likely be forward-facing, and the entire setup is meant to be robust sufficient to satisfy crash check laws. The truth is, Slate’s head of engineering, Eric Keipper, says they’re focusing on a 5-Star Security Score from the federal authorities’s New Automotive Evaluation Program. Slate can be aiming for a Prime Security Decide from the Insurance coverage Institute for Freeway Security.
This will likely be, largely, due to a complete lively security system that features all the pieces from computerized emergency braking with pedestrian detection to computerized excessive beams.
A compulsory a part of at present’s security options is a digital rear-view digital camera. Usually, this view pops up on a contemporary automobile’s central infotainment display, however the Slate doesn’t have a kind of. It makes do with only a small show behind the steering wheel as a gauge cluster, which is the place that rearview digital camera will feed. You’ll have bodily knobs for controlling the in-cabin temperature controls plus the everyday flip stalk and different switchgear, however that’s about it.
The truck not solely lacks a touchscreen for infotainment duties, it lacks any type of leisure in any respect past no matter enjoyable you may get from the 201-horsepower, rear-drive configuration. There’s no radio, no Bluetooth, and no audio system of any form past for these required to play primary warning chimes.
Many will contemplate this a cost-cutting step too far, however the inside was designed for ease of upgrading, with straightforward mounting house for something from a easy soundbar to a full sound system.
There’s an built-in telephone mount proper on the dashboard, however there’s nothing stopping you from bringing one thing even bigger. I count on the low-cost Android pill and 3D-printing communities to have a subject day developing with in-car media streaming options.
The reasonably excessive omission of any form of media system within the automobile is jarring, however it, too, has secondary advantages.
“Seventy p.c of repeat guarantee claims are primarily based on infotainment at present as a result of there’s a lot tech within the automobile that it’s created a really unstable atmosphere within the car,” Snyder says.
Eliminating infotainment, the speculation goes, essentially boosts reliability. And reliability will likely be key as a result of Slate is taking DIY to new extremes on the upkeep entrance, too.
The proper to restore your gadgets is a massively essential matter for everybody from smartphone customers to good tractor operators. Historically, auto producers haven’t precisely gone out of their technique to make DIY upkeep straightforward, partly as a result of their sellers make a lot cash hawking cabin air filters and pointless coolant flushes.
As an EV, the upkeep schedule for Slate Truck needs to be minimal (most EVs don’t want far more than an annual tire rotation), however for any guarantee issues, the corporate will encourage customers to do the fixes themselves. A minimum of when it’s protected to take action.
“In case you’re not going to interrupt the car and also you’re not going to injure your self, which means excessive voltage, you are able to do service and guarantee service in your car your self and have the movies and the helpline to help you to do this work,” Snyder says.
That help community will likely be known as Slate College and it’ll educate you all the pieces that you must know. Don’t fancy your self a shade tree mechanic? Or perhaps you don’t have a tree to park beneath within the first place? Slate has a partnership with already-established nationwide service facilities, the place house owners can take their vehicles for any wanted fixes. Upgrades may be carried out right here as properly, together with putting in an extended-range battery that may deliver the truck’s most vary as much as 240 miles.
“At begin of manufacturing, we may have protection throughout the nation for servicing your car,” Snyder says. Snyder declined to say who will present the service, however it appears affordable to count on one thing alongside the traces of a Midas, Monro, Meineke, or maybe another nationwide service chain that begins with the letter M.
And at last, how are you going to purchase one? It ought to come as no shock that Slate will observe Tesla’s footsteps by providing direct gross sales. No nationwide community of dealerships is deliberate. As a substitute, a restricted set of pickup facilities will pop up as wanted primarily based on preorder information. Or, in the event you don’t thoughts paying just a little extra, house supply will likely be obtainable.
Preorders value simply $50 on Slate’s web site, and deliveries are anticipated to start out in late 2026. Slate hasn’t stated precisely how a lot the truck will value, solely that it’ll be lower than $20,000 after federal incentives — assuming these incentives are nonetheless in place in 18 months’ time.
The larger query, although, is whether or not customers will really be into such a simplified imaginative and prescient of what a automobile may be. The Slate Truck is a rolling rejection of the present, bloated state of American motoring, however it’s shopper demand that’s pushed the market down this darkish alley. Are these customers prepared for a rolling digital detox?
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