Overview
- Slate is selling a minimalist two-door electric pickup starting at $24,950 with company‑claimed specs of about 205 miles of range and roughly an 8‑second 0–60 time.
- Journalists who drove prototypes found the truck to be “truck‑like” in feel and composed on the road but noted aggressive regenerative braking, rattles, a nonfunctional range display, and a hill‑hold quirk that let the vehicle roll back briefly.
- Slate opened preorders in early July and lists about 180,000 nonbinding reservations plus roughly 10,000 people who placed nonrefundable deposits, a mix that creates uncertainty about how many will convert to final sales.
- The company plans to use LFP battery packs from Gotion assembled in Illinois and to build the trucks in a converted plant in Warsaw, Indiana, with a long‑term stated capacity of about 150,000 vehicles per year.
- Slate is banking on an accessory‑driven model that sells wraps, speakers, storage and conversion kits rather than recurring software fees, a strategy that could boost revenue if the startup can resolve prototype issues and scale production in a crowded, failure‑prone EV market.