Slate has put a price on its minimalist electric truck, and it is the number the company has promised from the start: $24,950. At the Los Angeles launch, the Munro Live host walked the vehicle with Sandy Munro and Slate engineers, who describe a deliberately basic EV that buyers build up with accessories rather than trim levels. The same vehicle can be a two-door pickup or, with bolt-in parts, an SUV in squareback or fastback form. Slate also confirmed updated specs in the video: a 205-mile range from an LFP battery, 1,550 pounds of payload, and a 2,000-pound towing capacity. The team leans on customization, pointing to more than 200 wraps and a rail system for tie-downs, bike racks, and covers. The pitch is the cheapest new EV in America, sold as a platform you customize over time.
The price is the story, because it undercuts almost everything else on sale. Most new EVs in the US start well above $30,000, and even the cheapest mainstream models sit in the high $20,000s before options, so a sub-$25,000 sticker puts Slate in territory normally held by used cars. The catch is what gets removed to reach it: the team in the video confirms manual windows and unpainted composite body panels you wrap rather than paint. That is a real trade, and it is the same bet several low-cost car efforts have made and lost before. The deeper idea, which the engineers spell out, is a business model rather than a technology: accessories and conversions sold separately, so the customer buys the bare truck cheap and adds capability on their own timeline. Whether American buyers will accept a stripped-down new EV at this price, rather than a better-equipped used one, is the open question the video does not try to answer, and the answer will likely come down to how much the conversion kits and accessories add once a buyer actually builds the truck out.
On the engineering, the propulsion engineer tells Munro the truck uses a rear-mounted motor making 181 horsepower, a single-speed drive, and a 0 to 60 time of about 8 seconds, with a De Dion rear suspension and MacPherson struts up front. The exterior panels are injection-molded glass-filled polypropylene, which the team says resists dents and can be replaced individually if cracked. Slate says it wanted drum brakes and a beam axle to cut cost but could not source them, so the truck uses discs and a PTC heater rather than a heat pump. The engineers also walk through the SUV conversion: a roll cage and curtain airbags that bolt into the bed, an error-proofed assembly order, and seats on a track that slide forward for rear access. Munro, who says he has ordered two, praises the cabin space and a roughly seven-cubic-foot front trunk the team fought to enlarge. The engineers also describe heavy reuse of tooling, with the same molded parts serving multiple roles to hold cost down, and a charging port set up for the North American standard connector. The specs are as presented by Slate at the event.
Bottom line: Slate has done the hard part, holding a radical price through development, which most startups quietly abandon. If it ships at $24,950 with 205 miles of range, it fills a gap no one else is serving: a brand-new EV cheaper than many three-year-old ones. The risk is the familiar one that has sunk bare-bones cars before, that buyers say they want simple and affordable, then reach for creature comforts once the cash is on the table. If Slate reaches production on these numbers, it earns the attention. Until trucks are in driveways, the price is still a promise.
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