Range is said to be 205 mi (330 km), higher than the original estimate. This price is for the basic truck. The SUV configuration is expected to be $5000 more.
I think it’s pretty cool but honestly it’s too expensive. It is so minimalistic I doubt many people will want it in it’s basic form called the “Blank Slate.” Everything is essentially a la carte and many of those upgrades are only available as a kit for the owner to install. For instance, there is no sound system, no power windows, no power mirrors. It’s one color. It can’t go over 90mph. I like this kind of thing personally, but I think normal car buyers will be a bit upset when they find out all the extras add up to the same price as a Chevy Bolt.
Maybe I’m wrong, but their website makes it seem like whatever add-ons you add at time of purchase they will install for you. I was also under the impression that there’s only one stretch of road in the US that has an 85mph speed limit and everything else is lower, so being capped at 90 isn’t exactly a problem.
LOL. You’re not a car guy are you? I don’t do it often but people do go over 90mph.
The other info came from a guy that visited the factory and provided the “kit” info. He was thorough, but I don’t recall when the video was made.
‘Not a car guy’ here. I’m pushing 40 and my entire life idk if I’ve ever driven 90+mph. A car is a point A to B machine and nothing else, ideally without drawing the attention of law enforcement or playing chicken with a tree. Not being able to exceed 90mph is an absolute non-issue.
What is an issue is new cars, especially EVs, being loaded up with with unnecessarily fancy shit that I don’t care about, jacking the price up.
There are some a la carte features that are actually applicable to that point A to B: fuck yeah I want that sound system, I listen to music while traversing A-B. But that’s the cool part about a modular product like this, I can fork out for the comforts I actually give a shit about and go without everything else.
If my wishlist stacks up to an extra $10k then I’m probably better off with one of the dozens of other options that just have the fancy shit built in; but if I can get a basic-bitch EV + an an extra grand from the handful of things I actually want, then sign me up (…in like, 5-10 years once we have a good feel for the build quality of these things and can verify that Bezos’s dick isn’t stuck in the whole op).
It’s the perfect concept for ‘not car people’, which I’d wager is most people. It’s honestly bonkers that things like this haven’t been offered by leading car manufacturers for decades, but I’m sure there’s plenty of marketing strategy geared around “people will pay for loads of stupid shit in their EV if the only EVs on the market are packed with stupid shit!”.
If nothing else, it might prompt other manufacturers to hop on the bandwagon and offer an actual variety of minimalistic EVs.
Yeah, I never understood in a market where people suffer from range anxiety and EV’s weight 4000lbs, they have to put motors on everything; a motor to open the hood, a motor to open the trunk, a motor on every door handle. Been driving for 40+years and have had to shut my own trunk for all of them. What a nightmare!
As a car guy; nobody should go 90 on a public road. This isn’t a race car, it’s a bare bones electric truck.
If I want to go fast I take my sports cars to the track, so if I fuck up it’s only other people who are there for the same reason in harms way. Not a family going to soccer practice.
Wasn’t it supposed to be $15k, or am I misremembering?
It was $20k, but that was with incentives Trump killed.
Inflation. It was always going to be 20k. That’s right, just 25k. So for just 30k you can own this amazing 35k truck.
Etc.
It was originally 20k with the $7500 tax incentive, in other words you’d pay 27,500 for it and get some back at tax time. When the incentive ended they changed it to “mid-20s” and were able to keep it there
I’m interested, despite Bezos’ involvement, but I’m going to wait until I can read up on what it’s like to own one for a while.
Rule of thumb…never buy a new model from a legacy automaker. A new model from a new company? Talk to me in 10 years.
That’s about how I feel too. Worth considering. My hesitation was reinforced, perhaps unfairly, at a prototype/mockup event. It wasn’t very long ago, and prototype had a little too much slap-together feel. I know it was just a prototype, but I was hoping for something that looked a little closer to ‘ready for production’ if not exactly ‘finished’.
New factory, new build methodology, new employees. I’m going to need about a year of consumer feedback, personally. But I’m glad there are more intrepid souls ready to buy now.
As Canadian…
American company?, nope
Owned by Bezos?, hell nah
You’re anti slop but you ctrl P the same comment across every post about this? Bezos does not own Slate.
Hey I create my own slop!
Also, this is why I copy/paste… you see, your comment was also made in other version of the same post and I explained it all there… now I need to copy/paste for you here:
Slate raised at least $111 million in Series A financing, including an undisclosed amount from Bezos. Slate then raised $600 million in 2024 from Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and CEO of Guggenheim Partners, Jeff Bezos, and General Catalyst, a venture capital firm.[5] In mid-2026, the company said it had completed a $650m series C investment round, which took its total capital raised to $1.4bn.[6]
Bezos was seed money AND part of the owner conglomerate that raised all the capital the company started with in 2024. That is enough for me to avoid this like the plague as it will, certain as the sun is hot, be enshitified to the core
If you do not believe me, here is an article explaining how this is all a big Amazon initiative
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
Would you buy a truck from Isis?
The modular approach is very appealing to me, even though I have little use for a pickup truck. For example, I read that the SUV configuration moves the back glass to the end of the SUV shell when you install it. That makes the SUV top lighter and cheaper.
Oh, that explains why the fastback is more expensive than the squareback. I’d been wondering about that.
There must be a range difference. That’s how I’ll talk myself into the fastback, not just because it looks cooler.
I’m torn because the fastback looks cooler but it has less cargo capacity (both inside and on the roof rack).
Then again, I also really like the “open air kit” which apparently requires the squareback, so maybe the decision would be easy.
Owneddirectly funded by Bozos who will gain majority the moment it is opportunisticNo it isn’t.
Fixed for those that don’t understand these are basically the same
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I just looked it up and he’s just an investor, not the owner.
He’s still involved with the company though but I wanted to clear that up so we aren’t accidentally spreading misinformation 👍
Yes but the company is Amazon through and through, its being led by ex-Amazonians
Someone else posted this link in this thread:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
It’d be surprising if he wasn’t a majority investor
And if it is successful, how long before he sits on the board?
Yup. No thanks.
Such a bummer because its perfect otherwise
I know
Had my attention until realizing this. Don’t need to find out this thing has a subscription to unlock the doors or something.
Yep, I expect they wait for success then flip a subscription switch
There’s basically nothing in this vehicle that could have a subscription. It’s pretty barebones
However, this price doesn’t include the destination and delivery fee that’s baked into the cost of every new vehicle because it has not yet been finalized.
I’ve always wanted to go electric but the tracking in modern cars was a nonstarter for me. This is a huge step in the right direction, thank you for sharing!
LOL at thinking Bezos isn’t tracking every breath you take in this thing.
Point to the doll and tell us where Jeff touched you.
The telematics is literally an add-on as others have said. If you must insist on being a smugass, at least be a correct smugass :(
Hopefully any tracking would be easy to remove, I mean it doesn’t even have a stereo so wiring should be pretty simple, of course unless its baked I to the ECU or something
The telematics module is an optional extra-cost accessory! It doesn’t come with it by default!
You have to pay extra to give them free data to mine and sell for profit? What? Why would anyone buy that?
I’m hoping the low price will incentivize jail breaking and hacking these things if needed. We need OSH vehicles (like local motors promised but never delivered). EVs should make it a lot more possible for kit cars to exist, but maybe soon.
So now that this thing is coming when do we get the hilux?
The Toyoya Hilux EV is available in most parts of the world, except USA, because of tariffs.
It’s not particularly interesting though. The range is short and reviews aren’t too positive. I think Toyoya needs to offer something more than a pickup shaped SUV to get a foot down in that market.
This looks really promising. I never drive more than 30 miles a day outside of a couple of annual road trips. I’ll have to see a video of what the SUV config looks like as I have kids but this would probably work for my lifestyle. It’s a rarity that I have to drive anywhere outside of my town.
That’s my driving pattern too. Probably averaging <5mi since I don’t drive most days, but yeah, 30 is as far as I’m likely to go when not on a trip.
You might also want to check out the Telo truck. It’s a little more biased toward passenger space. It has 4 doors and a bed in the footprint of a Mini.
I wish the Telo was a bit more modular like the Slate design, with easily replaceable parts. And currently their rear glass is structural, so you can only remove the lower part of that rear partition when you put a shell over the bed, making it less like a normal SUV. I am also a bit more nervous about their viability/capitalization. Will they be around for a decade or more? Hope so, but not sure.
Telo is still vapor.
Is it gonna happen??
This would be an awesome deal and I would buy one, but… 1) There is no way it will actually be $25K. Low price points are always announced and never met; and 2) This vehicle will be full of spyware collecting all your data to be sold. Yes, Tesla does it to, but I’m not buying a Tesla either.
Have you actually read anything about this truck? It hasn’t even got an entertainment console. No GPS tracker. Hell, it doesn’t have power windows in the base model. What spyware do you think it has?
Jeff Bezos sits in a small compartment in the front, naked.
He doesnt have to be naked, but he insists upon it anyway
It’s not an entirely analog experience, though; a Slate smartphone app can manage settings, change drive mode, and provide range and charging info. But only when connected locally to the car—there’s no embedded modem, so forget about remote access. And the company says that while it may use data from the app to improve its products, it won’t sell that data.
“We pinky swear that we will not sell any of the massive trove of data we’re collecting on you and your driving, especially not to insurance companies.”
Yes, but the truck wont track your data. An app will, but thats completely optional
You don’t need the smartphone app at all which you’d know if you had continued to read the article.
Security and privacy are diametrically opposed to convenience. Don’t want the app and tracking by the company then just leave the app off your phone. It’s not rocket science.
The Slate does even have speakers. I don’t think it’ll have network connectivity.
