Slate Truck Just Revealed Its $24,950 Price And It Is The Cheapest Truck In America
Slate Auto revealed the price of its electric pickup truck on Wednesday and opened preorders the same day. The number is $24,950.
That is lower than the Ford Maverick XL, which starts at $27,145 and is currently the cheapest truck sold in America.
It is roughly half the average price of a new car in the United States, which now hovers around $50,000. It does not have a radio. The windows are hand-crank.
The exterior comes in one color, gray, with no paint options. There is a phone mount where a navigation screen would normally be.
This is what the Slate Truck is. The question it is asking the American car market is whether affordability, delivered at this level of deliberate austerity, is something people actually want or just something they say they want when surveyed.
More than 180,000 people have put down a refundable $50 deposit on the truck. That is a meaningful data point in the direction of actually wanting it.
The Truck Itself And What Was Deliberately Left Out
The Slate pickup is a two-seat, single-cab, subcompact electric truck with a small cargo bed. Total length is 174.6 inches, shorter than a Toyota Corolla.
The body panels are injection-molded plastic in a single gray composite color, which means Slate eliminated its paint shop entirely.
That is not a cost-cutting corner, it is a manufacturing decision that saved hundreds of millions of dollars in capital expenditure and gets passed directly to the buyer in the form of a $24,950 sticker.
The powertrain delivers 205 miles of estimated range, upgraded from the 150 miles originally promised, though the original plan for a 240-mile long-range battery option has been dropped.
Two thousand pounds of towing capacity. Air conditioning is included. So is automatic emergency braking.
The windows are hand-crank. There is no radio. There is no navigation. There is a mounting point for your phone.
The steel wheels are standard. The left and right headlights and taillights are identical parts, a deliberate engineering choice that reduced the component count across the truck from the more than 2,000 individual parts used in a comparably sized conventional pickup to approximately 800.
Every decision in the Slate Truck's design either reduces the price or enables the owner to add something later. The baseline is designed to be stripped. The margin is designed to come from the accessories.
The Business Model That Is Built Around What You Add Later
Slate's CEO Peter Faricy, a former Amazon Marketplace executive, has described the customization marketplace as the company's real profit driver from the beginning.
The Slate Marketplace launches with more than 175 accessories, more than 80 of them priced under $500. Roof racks. Stereos. Seat covers. Light covers. Colorful wraps to replace the gray composite exterior.
The conversion kit that turns the two-seat pickup into a five-seat SUV, which Slate is selling as the Squareback and Fastback variants starting at $29,950, but which buyers can also add after their initial purchase, either themselves using the Slate University how-to video guides or through a professional installer.
The idea is the Model T applied to an era when the average American cannot afford a new vehicle. You buy the truck.
You add what you need when you can afford it. The company owns the relationship with you across the entire ownership experience, the truck, the accessories, the potential DIY repairs, the eventual resale.
They are betting that the margin foregone on the $24,950 entry price comes back in every subsequent transaction.
Slate is also selling directly to customers without traditional dealerships, a model that Tesla, Rivian and Lucid have used.
The company has granted Carvana a warrant to purchase its shares, suggesting a potential sales partnership with the used-car giant that recently announced plans to sell new vehicles.
Why The Price Is $24,950 And Not Sub-$20,000
The original Slate pitch, made before the company emerged from stealth, was a truck priced "under $20,000." That figure assumed the $7,500 federal EV tax credit that the Trump administration eliminated in 2025 when it rolled back clean energy incentives.
The credit is gone. The under-$20,000 promise is effectively dead. $24,950 is the new reality, and Slate has been transparent about why.
The EV market the Slate Truck is entering is not the one that existed when the company was founded. New EV sales fell 27 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2026, down to approximately 216,400 units according to Cox Automotive.
Ford ended production of the electric F-150 Lightning in December 2025, with CEO Jim Farley saying it was not profitable.
Multiple major automakers have delayed or shelved affordable EV plans. The removal of the federal tax credit was the direct cause of most of those decisions.
Edmunds director of insights Ivan Drury put the challenge plainly after the price reveal:
"This is a real test of how much affordability still matters to today's buyers. The base pricing is the headline, but the entry-level price point is paired with an unconventional build and a powertrain that is proven harder to sell today. The real question is whether the enticing price alone can overcome that."
Who Is Behind It And Where It Gets Built
Slate Auto has raised approximately $1.4 billion across three major funding rounds. The investors include TWG Global, General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos's family office, VC firm Slauson & Co. and former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini.
Bezos is not the sole investor, but he is the headline name and the company has not objected to being described as his venture.
The trucks will be assembled at a reindustrialized plant in Warsaw, Indiana. Slate says the facility represents nearly $400 million in investment, will create more than 2,000 jobs and is projected to contribute up to $39 billion to Indiana's economy over twenty years.
The plant is not a greenfield build, it is a reindustrialized facility, which means Slate is reviving manufacturing infrastructure rather than building from scratch.
First deliveries are expected in the fourth quarter of 2026. To convert a reservation to a preorder now costs $300, or $250 for the more than 180,000 people who already put down the $50 deposit.
The 10-year, 110,000-mile battery and powertrain warranty is part of the pitch. So is access to more than 3,000 RepairPal shops for service and the Slate University program for DIY repair guidance.
The Bet
The cheapest truck in America is an electric two-seater with hand-crank windows, no radio and a gray composite body that you can wrap in whatever color you want after the fact.
The company making it is backed by the founder of Amazon. It has 180,000 reservations. First deliveries are four months away.
The Slate Truck is either going to prove that there is a mass market for genuinely affordable American vehicles or it is going to become another entry on the list of EV startups that promised affordable and delivered complicated.
The preorders are open. The price is $24,950. The crank windows are not negotiable.