• Slate finally shared its starting price, a year after the truck's first unveiling: $24,950.
• The company initially said the truck would start under $20,000 with US EV incentives — but those are gone.
• Slate thinks it'll win over shoppers who don't need a tech-filled daily driver.

Slate has finally put a price on its tiny electric truck.

The startup's base two-seat pickup will start at $24,950, excluding taxes and fees. The two-door SUV versions with a second row of seats will start at $29,950.

Slate says that makes its pickup the "most affordable truck in America." The first deliveries will hit customer driveways by the end of 2026, the company said.

The startup — which received early funding from big-name backers like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter — is trying to squeeze into one of the strangest gaps in the US auto market: low-cost, low-tech cars.

To keep prices down, Slate is taking a sharp turn away from the modern truck arms race. Its base model has manual crank windows, tactile controls, no touchscreen, and no stereo system.

It is also betting that it can become the automotive equivalent of Build-A-Bear. Slate wants owners to start with a bare-bones truck and add what they want later, choosing from more than 200 accessories. Buyers can add a second row of seats, a stereo, seat covers, roof racks, light covers, key-fob clips, and wraps in more than 100 colors.

"Slate gives customers the freedom to buy only what they need today and personalize their vehicle as their needs change tomorrow," Peter Faricy, Slate's recently installed CEO, said in an email.

The truck is tiny by American standards. Slate says the pickup is 174.6 inches long, or about 14.5 feet. That puts it closer in length to a Toyota Camry than a Ford F-150.

Its specs are modest, too, with an estimated 205 miles of range, a 1,550-pound payload capacity, and a towing capacity of up to 2,000 pounds.

Slate says more than 180,000 people have placed $50 reservations, though EV reservations have proved to be a shaky measure of real demand. (Just look at the Ford F-150 Lightning, which collected around 200,000 reservations before it hit American roads. The EV pickup lasted just four model years before it was discontinued.)

Demand drop, more competitors

For Slate, its launch timing could be tricky. The company first unveiled its product in April 2025, when Washington still offered the $7,500 federal tax credit for shoppers who opted for American-made EVs. The company initially said its pricing would start under $20,000, with incentives.

Those tax credits ended in September, and EV sales have slumped since.

Slate is also entering a more crowded EV market. It is launching in the same year that several automakers are unveiling models that are cheaper than their first EVs — including Rivian's R2, Toyota's C-HR, and Lucid's Gravity-based Cosmos.

Still, in recent years, very few Americans have experienced that new-car smell for under $25,000.

Edmunds says just 4.7% of new vehicles sold in 2025 were priced lower. Whether that is because shoppers have reset their expectations or because automakers largely stopped serving that segment is anybody's guess, analysts say.

"Our data show the market quietly walked away from that price years ago, so this is a real test of how much affordability still matters to today's buyers," Ivan Drury, Edmunds' director of insights, said.