A few changes have come to the upcoming Slate truck, but we now know its price for certain.
While a leak in the company’s own retail site hinted at the new Slate truck’s price last week, we now officially have the starting MSRP as Slate Auto’s inaugural model made the rounds in California. The “Blank Slate”, as it starts, will kick things off at $24,950 before any destination charge, taxes and fees. Factoring the destination fee into the mix, we’re looking at just over $25K, but that gets you a brand-new electric vehicle with up to 205 miles of range and a standard NACS charging port.
From there, you can effectively customize the Slate to be whatever you want. The company is bypassing the traditional dealer model and brick-and-mortar stores, going directly to the consumers with a plethora of options. You want a pickup? That’s the baseline option, but you can also get a five-seater SUV with a traditional box shape or a sloped roof. Wraps, tires, a two-inch lift or a lowering kit are all on the table, though we don’t have pricing on the suspension kits just yet.
The “Squareback” SUV, as the more conventional SUV option, comes in at $24,950 to start (again, before destination). The Fastback SUV is another $2K, coming in at $31,950. There will be an open air kit available, too, if you want to do some Wrangler or Bronco cosplay with your small electric SUV.
Underneath, the new Slate truck gets a larger 63-kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack. That’s good for the aforementioned 205 miles, Slate says, while the NACS port enables Tesla Supercharger access. Now, for $25-$30K you’re not going to get blazing fast charging speeds, but the company did mention up to 120 kW, which should top up the battery pretty quickly (think about 30 minutes from 10-80%). Using the onboard 11-kW Level 2 AC charger, you can top up in about four hours from a completely drained battery, provided you have an appropriately beefy home charger installed.
A single electric motor at the rear powers the Slate truck. You get 181 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque, which puts it in nearly the same ballpark as a Ford Maverick Hybrid. It’s not a speed machine, obviously, but you’re also not paying speed machine prices for the privilege. And speaking of “privilege”, you get no equipment whatsoever for that base $24,950. You get four wheels, some seats, basic climate controls…and that’s pretty much it. If you want speakers, an armrest, a tablet mount (because you don’t get an infotainment system), you’ll have to tack some money onto that price tag.
The 2027 Slate truck gets you a MacPherson strut suspension setup up front, with a De Dion axle in the back — a setup using half-shafts with the differential connected to a frame rather than a more conventional solid-axle approach with the axle and differential integrated together in a single tube.
Payload capacity is seriously respectable for a truck this size, coming in at 1,550 pounds for the base truck (or 1,263 pounds if you go for the SUV). It also packs a five-foot-long bed and you can even tow up to 2,000 pounds. Not that folks are going to swap out their full-size truck for an arrangement like this anytime soon, but that at least lets you cart around a bit of extra gear if you need to.
The 2027 Slate truck will finally roll out in the fourth quarter of this year. So far, Slate Auto says it has more than 180,000 reservations (you can toss your name in here for a $300 reservation fee). Eventually, the company says it can ramp up production to 150,000 units a year. We’ll have to see how many of those reservations actually translate into full orders, but at any rate, there’s a good chance you’ll see one of these tiny trucks on the road very soon, if you aren’t pulling the trigger yourself.
