Slate Auto, the EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, finally revealed pricing for its bare-bones electric truck today: $24,950 to start. The company opened preorders the same day.
Slate also boosted the base model’s estimated range from 150 miles to around 205 miles, making the price look even better against a US new-car market where almost nothing starts under $30,000.
The cheapest new vehicle in America
The $24,950 figure excludes taxes, title, registration, destination, and documentation fees, so the out-the-door number will be higher. But even with those added, it sits at roughly half the average price of a new car in the US, which now hovers around $50,000.
That positioning is the entire point. The Blank Slate is a two-seat pickup that owners can convert into a five-seat SUV themselves, with the SUV configuration starting at $29,950. Slate showed off its first “Slate University” how-to videos today, walking buyers through everything from the SUV conversion to adding headlight covers.
Everything about the truck is stripped down. It has hand-crank windows, no infotainment screen, and a single gray composite body finish with no paint options. Slate plans to sell customizable wraps instead, which conveniently sidesteps the cost of a factory paint shop, one of the most expensive parts of building cars.
The production truck uses a single 65 kWh LFP battery pack (63 kWh usable) feeding a rear motor with 181 hp, good for an estimated 205 miles. That’s a late change from the two SK On NMC packs Slate previously planned, which topped out around 240 miles — the cheaper LFP chemistry helped hold the price down. Slate plans to sell directly to customers with no traditional dealerships, similar to Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.
Cheap by EV standards — and by any standard
On price, Slate undercuts the field. The Chevy Bolt starts around $29,000 and the Nissan Leaf around $32,000. Ford has been teasing a roughly $30,000 electric truck due in 2027, but it isn’t here yet. Slate’s truck is cheaper than all of them, and it’s cheaper than nearly every gas vehicle on sale, too.
The company has raised about $1.4 billion across three rounds, including from TWG Global, General Catalyst, Bezos’ family office, and former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that Slate granted used-car giant Carvana a warrant to buy its shares, hinting the two could partner on sales.
There’s an obvious caveat here. Slate originally pitched the truck as costing “under $20,000,” but that figure assumed the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. That credit is now gone after policy changes under the Trump administration, which is also why several automakers have shelved or delayed affordable EV plans. The “under $20k” promise is effectively dead, and $24,950 is the new reality.
First deliveries are still expected by the end of 2026.
Electrek’s Take
It is genuinely refreshing to see any new vehicle land at $25,000 in the US right now, electric or not. The new-car market has drifted so far upmarket that a sub-$30,000 starting price feels like an event, and Slate just turned a price reveal into a national news moment. That tells you as much about the state of the market as it does about the truck.
The approach is interesting. Slate is doing the opposite of almost everyone else: instead of cramming in screens, sensors, and trims, it’s stripping the vehicle down to the studs and letting buyers add what they want over time. Crank windows and a single gray body are not a bug in this strategy, they’re the whole cost model. Cutting the paint shop alone saves hundreds of millions in capital.
There are plenty of caveats. The price climbed once the tax credit disappeared, the real out-the-door cost will be higher, range and feature trade-offs are real, and we’ve watched a long list of EV startups promise cheap vehicles and never deliver at scale. Slate still has to actually build these things at volume and turn a profit doing it.
But the bet itself is worth rooting for. If even one company can prove there’s a real market for a simple, affordable, durable EV in the US, it changes the conversation about what EVs have to be. I’m curious to see where this goes.
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