Meet the Amazon Fundamentals pickup.
Slate Auto, a brand new Michigan-based startup partly funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in the present day launched a compact electrical truck with a goal value below $20,000 (after federal EV incentives).
Slate’s first product, the creatively named Slate Truck, is as naked bones as transportation will get in 2025. It even options hand-cranked home windows (one thing absent from the automotive world since Jeep eliminated them from the bottom Wrangler this yr).
But it’s set to enter essentially the most underserved a part of the automotive market, it is going to be made in America, and you’ll reserve one in the present day for lower than the price of takeout for a small household. A spot in line prices simply $50.
The corporate hasn’t revealed when manufacturing may begin.
The Drawback: No Low cost Vans
There’s a gap within the automotive market, an enormous section of drivers it not serves.
New automobiles get extra sophisticated and costlier yearly. Established automakers have all adopted the identical technique, chopping cheap automobiles from their lineups and introducing costlier fashions for wealthier prospects. A bevy of latest electrical car (EV) startups is following one other sample that doesn’t assist, constructing costly automobiles first and hoping to make extra reasonably priced fashions later.
That leaves consumers searching for a reasonable automotive virtually helpless. For below $25,000, consumers can head to the used automotive lot or make do with one in every of a handful of subcompact automobiles and SUVs just like the Nissan Versa, Kia Soul, or Chevrolet Trax.
Should you want area to haul one thing, you’re totally out of luck. America’s least costly new truck, the Ford Maverick, begins at $28,590 however is difficult to search out at that value. The typical Maverick bought for $32,862 final month.
The Resolution: A Child Electrical With a DIY Soul
“The definition of what’s reasonably priced is damaged,” says Slate CEO Chris Barman. “Slate exists to place the facility again within the fingers of consumers who’ve been ignored by the auto business. Slate is a radical truck platform so customizable that it may remodel from a 2-seat pickup to a 5-seat SUV.”
Electrical car (EV) know-how theoretically offers automakers the possibility to construct cheaper automobiles. EVs journey on “skateboard platforms,” which pack all of the mechanical elements of a car into an almost flat unit that matches between the wheels and below the ground. Automakers can construct new designs on a skateboard platform simply by altering the physique.
Slate has designed a radically easy one which doesn’t attempt to be every thing to everybody. It’s compact, with a 52.7 kWh battery pack (tiny by present requirements) and a focused vary of simply 150 miles. Slate says it may recharge in a single day plugged into an atypical family outlet, and carry a payload of 1,400 kilos (bear in mind, driver and passengers depend as payload).
Plugged right into a DC quick charger, it may cost to 80% of its capability in “below half-hour,” Slate says.
An out there accent battery pack pushes vary to 240 miles.
A single electrical motor drives the rear wheels and makes 201 horsepower. Slate says it may go from 0-60 mph in 8 seconds.
That’s respectable, nevertheless it gained’t win any races. That is the right truck for working errands round city, loading with gardening provides, or transporting a few mountain bikes to the trailhead.
How Easy? Assume “Flat Pack SUV”
The Slate Truck is available in a single configuration — as a single-cab, short-bed truck meant for 2.
However you possibly can flip it into an SUV your self, if a truck doesn’t fairly meet your wants. “The flat-pack accent SUV Equipment turns the truck right into a 5-seat SUV, with a roll cage, airbags, [and] rear seat,” the corporate says. It’s easy sufficient to do your self, although Slate will construct it for you should you choose.
The flat pack aesthetic continues into the truck’s cabin, the place flat surfaces and easy-clean artificial textiles dominate. Screens? There’s a cellphone holder if you wish to convey your personal.
It has a full suite of recent security tech, together with computerized emergency braking, ahead collision warning, and “as much as” 8 airbags.
Direct-to-Client Gross sales
Like many EV startups, Slate will promote on to patrons and not using a dealership community performing as a go-between. Slate press supplies say homeowners can “discover service places in your neighborhood,” however don’t clarify how upkeep and restore will work.
It’s Early, however This May Work
The Slate Truck created a bit of pleasure among the many Kelley Blue E book editorial group.
Automotive journalists are exhausting to impress with an costly automotive — we’ve seen all of them and, in any case, how exhausting is it to construct an ideal automotive for a six-figure value? Cynical after too many Mercedes occasions, automotive writers usually get extra enthusiastic about hand-crank home windows and cheap value tags. That is telegraphed to our pursuits.
Slate is making an attempt one thing genuinely new and concentrating on an actual gap out there. It would discover buy with small companies making deliveries (not for nothing does the corporate brag about how simple it’s to get a vinyl wrap on the Slate). It could be an ideal workhorse second automotive for these with a pastime to feed. The Slate Truck would possibly even work nicely for younger individuals or empty nesters who’ve extra use for a small truck mattress than a rear seat.
A little bit of skepticism is so as. Launching a brand new automaker is brutally exhausting as a result of it requires immense outlays of money earlier than you ever make your first dime. Ask Lordstown Motors how exhausting it’s to begin an electrical truck firm.
However Slate has the backing of one of many wealthiest individuals alive, a group filled with logistics consultants with Amazon expertise, and a gaggle of engineers drawn from everywhere in the automotive business.
They’ve a shot.
