Slate Accidentally Reveals Its Upcoming Truck Price: Promise Kept, After All

Slate has just had its "oops" moment as it accidentally leaked the price of its budget truck before anyone outside the company was supposed to know it. The good news is that the firm is keeping its promise and rolling out an affordable truck, which sits in the mid-$20,000 range.

What we are looking at is not an actual information leak, but a comment accidentally (or do you think it was on purpose?), included by a web developer in the page’s code. Sure, it may not mean much to those who haven’t spent their lives among website codes and metadata, but look at the numbers:

And that is it, now we all know what Slate wanted to keep as a secret until the moment of the official launch. So, the budget EV will hit the market with a starting price of $24,950, and the internet found out thanks to a keen-eyed reader of the automotive news outlet The Autopian, who dug into the source code of Slate Auto's public "How to Preorder" page. In the meantime, Slate deleted the page and the code with it.

With Ford inching closer to the moment it will debut its own affordable electric truck, underpinned by the newly developed Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) architecture, the Slate truck might give it a run for its money. The Ford electric truck is expected to drop in the $30,000 price range, which means the Slate model is going to undercut it by roughly $5,000.

Pricing is still a secret, so it stays between you and me (right!), but those interested in getting a budget truck home can already reserve it on the company’s website for a reservation fee of only $50, which is fully refundable in case they change their mind. The deposit is entirely non-binding and simply holds your spot in line until you are ready to make a formal decision.

So, what do you get for the money? The upcoming Slate truck is a back-to-basics, highly modular electric vehicle, with a focus on affordability and DIY customization, allowing future owners to easily swap between a compact pickup and a two-door SUV body style, using bolt-on accessories for the transformation.

The EV's body panels made from molded polypylene remain unpainted as the vehicle is offered in either Slate Gray or Primer Gray. Slate will offer interchangeable wraps in case the owner gets bored with the look.

Expectedly, it is no Tesla Cybertruck Cyberbeast. Slate equipped its upcoming EV with a single permanent-magnet synchronous motor mounted on the rear axle, producing 201 horsepower (204 metric horsepower) and 258 pound-feet (350 Newton meters) of torque.

The Slate EV accelerates from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 kph) in 8.0 seconds and tops out at 90 mph (145 kph). The powertrain has to pull a vehicle that tips the scales at 3,602 pounds (1,602 kilograms). A towing capacity of 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) is part of the plan.

Slate will offer two battery options. The tiny 52.7 kWh unit will store enough energy for a drive of up to 150 miles (241 kilometers), while the EV with the larger 84.3 kWh battery pack will be able to drive as far as 240 miles (386 kilometers) before it needs to be plugged in again. Slate will offer Level 3 C fast charging for up to 120 kW using the Tesla NACS port, which will enable the model to charge from 20 to 80% in under 30 minutes.

The cabin follows the minimalist design and lacks a built-in screen in an era in which we are all addicted to our smartphones, so drivers will be able to connect their phones and install it in the special mount in the dashboard. To keep manufacturing costs under control, the firm will bring the EV to the market with manual crank windows and simple rotary HVAC.

The start-up will build its trucks at a former paper plant in Warsaw, Indiana, built in 1958 and shut down in 2023. The site is being tool-equipped to handle a maximum output capacity of up to 150,000 vehicles per year.
Backed by Jeff Bezos, the company is on track to create over 2,000 jobs in the area once production reaches full capacity. Peter Faricy, a former long-time executive under Jeff Bezos, who spent over 12 years at Amazon, serving as Vice President of Amazon Marketplace, is the CEO of Slate Trucks.

Furthermore, Slate Auto has poached several key former Tesla employees, specifically targeting veterans from Tesla’s manufacturing and production divisions. For instance, Rich Schmidt, Head of Manufacturing, was an early manufacturing director at Tesla, while Tom Harrington, Product Manager, spent over seven years at Tesla working across engineering and hardware product management.