Slate Auto’s super-simple electric pickup truck starts at $24,950

Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has finally revealed the starting price for its electric truck: $24,950.

This does not include taxes, title, license, registration, government fees, destination fees, documentation fees and any optional equipment, according to the company. Slate began taking pre-orders for the truck on Wednesday.

More importantly, Slate also said it has boosted the estimated range of its base model from 150 miles to about 205 miles.

Aggressive pricing — half the average cost of a new car in the United States — puts Slate in a position to grab a share of the lower end of the new-car market, which has less gas and fewer electric options these days. The Chevrolet Bolt is one of Slate’s closest EV competitors in terms of price, starting at about $29,000, while the Nissan Leaf starts at about $32,000. Ford has been teasing a $30,000 electric pickup truck scheduled to launch in 2027.

The pricing reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from stealth. Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the very basic electric convertible, which starts out as a two-seat pickup truck, but can be modified into a five-seat SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday.

The conversion can be done by professionals or by the owners themselves, Slate said. And on Wednesday, it finally showed off some of the first how-to videos from its “Slate University,” which walks people through the steps of doing everything from converting an SUV to adding headlight covers.

Everything else about the truck is straightforward, although it is customizable. It has manual windows, lacks the infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle. This could potentially help eliminate a major cost center, where factory paint shops can operate in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The company did not provide further details about the purchase. Slate said it “will not have traditional dealers” and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other electric car companies such as Tesla, Rivian and Lucid Motors.

Earlier this month, TechCrunch first reported that Slate Auto had given online used car giant Carvana a warrant to buy its stock, suggesting the two might collaborate on selling the low-cost truck. Carvana recently revealed plans to sell new cars, changing its current business model. (One of Slate’s major investors, Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, is a major shareholder in Carvana.)

Slate has promised the car will be priced in the mid-$20,000 region before it comes out of stealth, as TechCrunch first reported early last year. The company’s goal is to create something like Ford’s Model T, or Volkswagen’s Beetle, and a starting price of around $25,000 has long been the goal.

But the path to achieving these goals has become complicated due to the second Trump administration and Republican control of Congress. The policy changes loosened emissions standards and removed the $7,500 federal tax credit on electric vehicles. As a result, several major automakers have delayed or postponed their plans to produce new electric vehicles in the United States

The startup has raised a decent amount of money in pursuit of these ambitious goals. So far, investors have thrown about $1.4 billion into Slate across three major funding rounds. The company has been tight-lipped about those backers, though we know that, along with Walter’s TWG Global, the cap table includes General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos’ family office, VC firm Slauson & Co., and former Amazon CEO Diego Piacentini, as TechCrunch first reported last year.