Slate can still undercut Ford’s $30,000 EV pickup. Here’s how

When the Slate Truck was announced in April, it made some big waves in the auto industry, a business that had, by and large, abandoned small trucks. With each successive generation, stalwart workhorses like the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado gained a few fractions of an inch here, a centimeter or two there, packing on extra weight all the while. Consensus was that this was based on consumer demand, but the massive success of the Ford Maverick showed there was still interest in something smaller. The huge buzz around Slate just sealed the deal.

And for good reason. Who wouldn’t be excited about a small, electric pickup truck that could be had for as little as $20,000? That was an amazing initial pitch. No surprise, then, that the company quickly logged 100,000 pre-orders, but since then Slate’s been taking a bit of a beating.

The first was the elimination of the $7,500 federal rebate for American-made EVs, which Slate had factored into that original price tag. Suddenly that impulse-buy $20,000 truck looked a lot more expensive. The second blow came more recently, with Ford promising to launch its own electric truck priced at $30,000. How can Slate, a low-volume startup hope to beat Ford on price? It comes down to a fundamental frugality that was designed into Slate from the very beginning.

Slate Truck: What is it, again?

The Slate Truck is a tiny, electric, rear-wheel-drive machine. At 174.6 inches long, it’s actually about six inches shorter than that iconic Ranger of the ’90s. That’s more than two feet shorter than a modern Maverick, yet its bed is six inches longer. It has just 201 horsepower and a range of about 150 miles, but you can add on a bigger battery pack with 90 extra miles if you need more.

It seats only two by default, but here’s where things get interesting: If you need room for five, the Slate converts into an SUV. You’ll be able to buy a kit adding rear seats and a cover over the bed to completely change the shape and functionality of the machine. It’s a Transformers-like conversion process that you can do at home with basic tools.

Customization like this is a huge aspect of the Truck, which is only available in one color: slate gray. The idea is that you’ll apply vinyl kits to make it look however you want. You can customize the interior as well, even 3D print your own accessories if you want, and you’ll need to, because the Slate’s radical simplicity is extended to extreme lengths inside.

Power windows? Yeah, no, there be cranks here. There’s no sound system either, nor even a touchscreen — cuts that all serve a very specific purpose.

Frugal design

Eliminating typically standard features like power windows and stereo systems is obviously a big part of how the engineers at Slate made the Truck as affordable as possible, but this isn’t just a case of saving money by going basic. There’s some multifaceted frugality going on here.

Take the lack of a touchscreen, for example. There’s certainly money to be saved by not including an automotive-grade display panel in the dashboard, but that’s minor in the grand scheme of things. The true saving in deleting that screen is not having to develop the software to run it.

Modern manufacturers spend millions building software teams to write all the applications and interfaces that run in a modern car. In the end, they wind up paying again thanks to the negative feedback they get when people have issues with those software systems.

Cut the display and you not only save the cost of the screen, but the cost of the software, and the subsequent support for the software that everyone hates to use.

It’s those secondary and tertiary impacts that really drive down the cost of the Slate. It’s the same story for the paint — or the lack thereof. Again, the Slate Truck will only be available in gray, a color provided by molded gray plastic body panels. This has big implications and cost savings.

While paint itself isn’t terribly expensive, the process of applying it is. Businesses spend millions of dollars building expensive paint shops adjacent to their factories, buildings that keep out the things that can ruin a paint job (dust, pollen, humidity) and keep in all the toxic fumes generated by the process.

No paint? No paint shop, and no money spent to build one. There’s also huge savings to be had by making those body panels out of plastic. Steel or aluminum body panels require massive, expensive stamping machines, plus giant factories to house them.

By sticking with injection molding, Slate is able to build the Truck in a far smaller, more streamlined facility. To that end, the company bought a former catalog print shop, with a much smaller footprint and lower ceilings than anything a modern Ford is built beneath.

Streamlined business

More and more car dealers in the United States are adding a little on top of the cost of desirable cars. Euphemistically called “Market Adjustments,” they’re a way for seedy dealers to make a little more on a given sale.

But even those dealers who don’t engage in such unsavory practices are charging on average 3.9 percent on top of the cost of a car, money that goes to keeping the machines stocked with stale coffee at your local dealership. On a $30,000 car, on average, the dealer is getting a little over $1,100.

That’s an unfortunate premium to pay for the privilege of working through a dealer sales process that everyone hates. Slate will skip all that. The company will sell directly to you online and deliver your Truck directly, and everyone who’s ever seen an infomercial knows what happens when you cut out the middleman.

Challenges (and opportunities) ahead

All those factors and more are fundamental to making the Slate a feasible reality, a modern truck that is admittedly bare-bones but also extremely focused on functionality and practicality. The net result is an automotive business with unprecedented leanness, a sharp contrast to a company like Tesla, which lost hundreds of millions of dollars annually nearly a decade before finally turning a profit.

But that isn’t to say that the road ahead is smooth for Slate. Again, the company took a major hit from President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which eliminated federal EV credits. That credit would have cut $7,500 from the cost of the Slate, a massive discount on such a low-cost vehicle. Indeed, what was to be a $20,000 truck is now marketed as “priced in the mid-twenties.” Regardless of your budget, that’s a painful increase.

There’s also the increasing uncertainty within the EV market. Sales of battery-powered machines are still increasing, up 1.5 percent in the first half of 2025 over the first half of 2024, and they’re expected to soar in the third quarter ahead of the federal incentive disappearing. After that, demand is sure to wane at least for the short-term, and it’s anyone’s guess what happens next year.

But the biggest challenge ahead comes from Blue Oval. Ford hasn’t released all the details of its upcoming, $30,000 electric truck, except to say it’ll be roughly Maverick sized and won’t skimp on standard features like touchscreens and stereo speakers.

So, a full-featured electric from Ford or a smaller, leaner machine from an unproven startup for a few thousand less? That’s a tough sell, but Slate does have the first-mover advantage, pledging to launch its Truck in 2026, with Ford’s aiming to arrive in 2027. Also, Slate’s embracing of the DIY community could earn it enough die-hard adherents to build a tasty business. After all, if Slate can capture even a tiny fraction of Ford’s truck market, that would be a huge win.

Slate’s success is far from guaranteed, but its fundamentally lean structure and focus mean that I’m not giving up on it yet. I’m also more than a little hopeful that the Slate Truck’s potential success could lead to a more comprehensive rethinking about what American consumers really want, and how big their vehicles really need to be.