I just experienced the craziest new-car reveal ever. Slate, a new company that — according to a recent article by Tech Crunch — has been secretively engineering a $25,000-ish electric vehicle using funding from Jeff Bezos and other investors, just showed off its new car by hiding it in plain sight. The company put an absolutely absurd wrap on its new SUV and then just parked the SUV on the side of a trendy street in Venice, California, with zero information. No sign, no representative, no press release — just a car that has scores of pedestrians craning their necks wondering: “What the?!” I just drove to Venice; here’s what I saw.
This is not how new-car debuts happen. Automakers are usually obsessed with “messaging.” They spend tens of thousands of dollars hiring photographers to make sure the perfect photos are released ahead of a debut, they make sure they invite the “right” journalists to the reveal event, they stage the cars just so, and they not only send out press releases to ensure the brand is received is a very particular way, but they have representatives at the reveal event say all sorts of brand-ish things (words like s”dynamism” and “soul” are often used) to make you all think the car is maximally cool.
Slate didn’t do that. Slate went wacky and just showed the car off by dropping a design buck on the side of Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a popular shopping destination in always-trendy Venice. And to make sure people pay attention to this mystery machine, Slate has wrapped the car in an extremely strange livery for a fake company that I guess drives your baby around on the car’s roof until the baby falls asleep?
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“Cryshare” in the name of the clearly-fake company, with the message on the back window reading: “When baby drives you crazy, we drive them to sleep.” The baby seats on the roof had more than just a few pedestrians scratching their heads as took these photos.
The binkies/pacifies on the B-pillar and the huge one on the front of the car are bizarre.
I asked a few people about what they thought, and they like the overall shape. “A two-door SUV, count me in!” is (approximately) what one gentleman told me as he asked what I was taking photos of. Sadly, I couldn’t tell him everything I knew, since I’m under a strict NDA, but what I could tell him is that this is the new Slate!
We’ve already written about spy shots of a pickup truck version, and the reason why I even drove to Venice is because this Reddit thread in the “whatisthiscar” community showed a similarly-wackily-wrapped coupe-ish SUV (with an absurd cat-therapist livery!):
Saw this in a tiktok ad, can yall tell what it is??
byu/tough_stough inwhatisthiscar
So now we’ve seen a truck, a coupe-ish SUV, and this boxy one that looks a lot like a Land Rover Defender in profile.
It looks cool, and most importantly, the way this brand new company just showed off its first vehicle has to be the boldest, wackiest thing I’ve seen in my career — I’m here for it!
By the way, those of you who know me are probably wondering if I crawled underneath; of course I did! What I saw were some BFG all-terrains and what looks to clearly be a non-functioning design-buck with no powertrain or real suspension.
Still, this is approximately what you can expect the new Slate to look like, so get excited! The full reveal is coming in just a few days on April 24, and while I can’t tell you anything right now, what I can say is this: Prepare to have your minds blown.
This vehicle is unlike any new vehicle I’ve ever seen not just in my decade as a car journalist, but in my entire lifetime. April 24; get excited!
All Photos: David Tracy
There will be no $25,000 electric SUV/truck, even if the battery is NOT included and you have to rent it separately.
“Slate” is an unimaginative, and unlikely, name for a car company.
It looks under-designed and incredibly derivative.
It it turns out to be real – fine. But there’s a rather large catch I’m certain.
Who cares how imaginative the company name is? The body looks designed just the right amount for a basic, affordable truck. You are greatly overestimating the cost of a simple body on frame vehicle. $25k is a stretch, but your claim that it couldn’t be done even if you had to rent the battery is absurd.
My guess is that the name is meant to imply a “clean slate” as if starting over from scratch. Not certain this particular design meets that goal as there are many familiar lines here. When I think about car company names, I don’t find any that strike me as imaginative as most are just named after their founders. I’d rather consider driving a Slate than a Bezos.
You’ll notice that the word “about” is always in close proximity to the number 25,000 in these statements. “About $25,000” can mean whatever they want it to mean.
It’s about $25k*
*After mail in rebate. Batteries not included. See store for details.
Oh like “Ford”, “Lexus”, or “General Motors” are any better? What would be an “imaginative and likely” name for a car company then?
I’d certainly like an explanation for the name but nothing appears obvious. It seems random, as if chosen because someone liked the sound. And no, I don’t believe that a Bezos funded / supported start-up can build a vehicle for any price, much less $25,000, without bleeding cash forever. I don’t believe that any company anywhere, no matter how well positioned, can make money on a $25,000 EV, unless it’s mostly just a glorified golf cart.
The obvious one to me is referencing a “clean slate”, where they designed for cost from the ground up, rather than starting with an existing platform. That or it’s a “slate” that you can draw anything you want on, so the platform is versatile for lots of uses, like a piece of paper. Not sure if either of those are the true answer, but that’s what seems obvious to me.
Well China is, for one. Yes, the government invested heavily into the EV market, but apparently, they have been drawing back subsidies as brands establish themselves. The modern Chinese EVs (not the $1000 Chang Li’s) aren’t glorified golf carts either. I remain skeptical of the actual profit margins those Chinese brands are achieving, but it’s no secret they have massive economies of scale in battery manufacturing compared to the rest of the world. They have also been making their own chemical advancements in battery tech, increasing power density and lifespan, while lowering cost.
I see it went jeep on the front suspension. Less death wobble though.
Sounds like they have a fun PR team at least. David, does that NDA allow you to tell us if the company looks legit?
It seems a bit like another “oh we meant $25k in 1980 money” to me / too good to be true but I hope I am wrong.
Based on the engineering talent at Slate, it’s VERY legit.
Oh, if only the quality of an automotive company’s output was dependent soley on its engineering talent. What a wonderful world that would be!
Preston Tucker would like a word.
25k EV? Sign me up. Especially with those looks. The mostly silence from them seems like a great way for people to assume it’s not just some vaporware that will never exist.
Didn’t think it would be another 10-15 years before I’d see multiple EVs that I like/make sense for me on sale, but I’m all for it. When I get moved up to WA any of my range concerns are out the door (because it becomes much cheaper to fly home than drive and I’d just need a daily) and this makes me happy. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mazda 3, but an EV as a daily and eventually rotary swap that and just drive for fun sounds like the best of both worlds.
I don’t think relative media quiet (there has been press, after all) is much of a guarantee of eventual production. Still waiting for that Bollinger SUV.
Same principle applies to the assertion that having a good engineering team means it will be produced, or produced in the form (and price point) promised.
Fucking awesome! I absolutely love it. Everything about it. The vehicles, the guerilla marketing genius, the cost effectiveness, the fun, all of it.
2 doors will kill it stone dead, and the boxy shape’ll hurt its’ all-important range number too much. This is made to get internet car guys excited and I’d expect the production model to be slipperier and a 4-door.
It might just be total vaporware. Or more likely nonsense-ware.
If it’s meant as a city vehicle shape won’t matter much.
Or, the 2-door is a clever ploy to officially offer a $25K vehicle, knowing a 2-door won’t sell well. You want the 4-door version? Oh, that’s $15K extra.
As for aerodynamics, there are subtle tracks that can be played to make a flat-faced vehicle more aerodynamic than it appears. Granted, it won’t be challenging the Iconic 6 for best Cd, but they could possibly do well enough.
so that’s about $7500 per door?
Yeah, about.
Lemme get one.
Right on, one order for 4 door.
No, no no, a one door model……
Electrified Isuzu Trooper II!!
That license plate is awesome.
Hm. I might just sell someone’s kidney to get one of these. Especially if it is a full EV and the interior isn’t a Tesla.
Maybe it’s only 25k because the drivetrain and suspension are sold separately? Like why spend all that money developing a car that functions? That just adds to the cost! The people want a 25k car. Give the people something that is both 25k and technically a car. If they actually want to drive it somewhere, they’ll figure it out.
You joke, but this was initially the pricing strategy of Smart USA when it first launched its EV! $25k got you an electric Smart, but the battery was an $80/mo lease. Sure, the lease meant getting an unlimited mile battery warranty, but also meant you didn’t actually own the pack. If you didn’t want to do the lease, the price was about $3,000 more expensive.
Electric Smarts didn’t get battery upgrades, nor did they get battery-swapping ability. You were just more or less paying monthly for the lower initial purchase price and for an extended warranty. Thankfully, that strategy changed later on.
Basically what Nio is doing in the European and Chinese markets, too. Batteries are leased, which gives you access to their battery-swapping stations.
Actually, that sounds like a pretty great idea. The battery is the part that will crap out before anything else, so why not lease the part that will be changing/dying/evolving and buy the part that could be improved by better battery tech later on?
My problem with Smart’s application of the battery lease program was that it seemed cooler on paper than in reality. The standard battery warranty was 8 years or 80,000 miles (10 years/150,000 miles in California).
In theory, the battery lease program should have provided long-term assurance beyond the standard warranty and even battery tech upgrades as they became available. However, there were no upgrades, and then Mercedes-Benz USA eventually canceled the whole program. So those who paid $80/mo for years never really enjoyed the proposed benefits. MB USA could have chosen to keep the battery program going, even after Smart was discontinued in the USA, but it decided not to.
Functionally, all the battery lease program did was artificially lower the price of the car to $25,000 by making buyers pay for the battery separately.
That’s my biggest concern with battery leases or other schemes where you don’t fully own the product that you buy. There’s nothing forcing the company to keep its end of the deal. Sure, you can sue them for the breach of contract, but that just means you’ll get paid, not the benefit/warranty you paid for.
Admittedly, part of it is my disdain for the current state of tech, where you buy a device, but you don’t own the software that’s on it. The Spotify Car Thing should have just mirrored Spotify from your phone, but it was designed to depend on Spotify’s service. The second Spotify stopped caring, all Spotify Car Things became bricked. New DJI cameras don’t work unless you register them on a website. What’s going to happen 5+ years from now when that webpage is down?
Ahh, okay, so yeah, definitely poor implementation.
I completely agree with you on the problematic aspect of not fully owning the product you buy. All these subscription models can generally fuck right off.
That said, I was more so thinking about the fact that EVs are currently a thing that really only makes sense to lease, and I prefer to buy. So if I could buy the car, but lease the battery with the possibility of future updates to better tech as it becomes available (while still being supported by the manufacturer) that seems like an appealing option.
Hopefully the SUV and coupe SUV are caps for the truck just like an old school 4runner or Nissan pulsar
“When baby drives you crazy, grab a 12-pack and smoke a lil hazy…..”
This feels like a stunt based on the fact that the spy shots were leaked via r/whatisthiscar — ensuring that it got posted to the same subreddit.
Do we think David actually got invited to see the ‘event’ by Slate themselves?
A reader sent us the tip! Whether that reader has anything to do with Slate, I’m unsure, but I don’t think so.
Ah ok, so you’re NDA’d separately!
I do not envy the amount of careful navigation you all need to report on things that you have already been briefed on.
(For the casual reader: David is allowed to report on things that he has learned under NDA, but only if sourced separately from the briefing.)
Hate to be a party pooper but if this is supposed to be electric in any way the range is gonna be trash because of the aerodynamics; that coupeish version in the reddit post won’t be much better. Its gas mileage will likely be comparable to a Bronco Sport. Not sure how they’re gonna make an EV version at $25k hit even 200mi, so it’ll have to be an EREV/PHEV at least.
It would have to be a Briggs and Stratton range extender and used only on days when you don’t plan to mow your lawn. And it would still cost more than $25,000.
Oh my goodness if they introduce ANOTHER SUV and not a nice tiny truck, I will f-ing lose my shitballs.
I like the slightly extended homage to SUVs like the original Bronco (or “4x4s” as they called Broncos before the term “SUV” was invented).
Not sure I’d use a launch opportunity to emphasize the worst use case for a 2-door SUV (or any other 2-door vehicle, really), which is placing a kid into, and retrieving said kid from, a child seat in the rear compartment. Parents will just love being reminded of the fun of hoisting 20-pound Junior over a folded front seat several times a day.
It seems like there’s space to engineer rear doors on the larger version, so maybe that’s coming in the future.
I’d be OK with a mutli-tool like the old Bronco / 4-Runner. Popular cars. For the right person.
20-pound, he said.
I struggle with the 2 doors with kids don’t work take. I had 2 kids in boosters and 1 in a car seat all at the same time. I also drove a 2001 Honda Civic coupe and honestly I thought it was easy enough getting them in and buckled. With the front seat folded forward and the larger coupe door I found it simple and smashed my head on the top of the door frame way less than the ford Taurus my wife was driving. If a kid was having a rough day and putting up a fight, there was room for me to climb into the rear and get them buckled.
I admire your obviously strong and healthy spine, and it’s probably for the best that you’re having kids (instead of me) so you can pass those good genes along. 😉
This is just one more reason I am loving the Big Kid Years of parenting. My kids can climb their happy asses in and out of the backseat on their own! Huzzah!
Sidenote: When my kids were really little, I was wrestling a screaming toddler into her carseat while the baby cried in her seat. A mom pulled up in her topless Wrangler. Two boys, maybe 8-10 years old unbuckled, jumped over the doors and ran for the playground. She smiled at me and said, “It gets easier, I promise!” Thank goodness she was right. 🙂
Definitely read this as “a mom pulled up topless in her Wrangler” and was like where is this going.
“Dear Penthouse, I was at the park with my kids …”
Hey David… A couple of questions:
1) How did they not get hassled for trademark infringement by Slate webzine people? (Does he own them too?)
2) What are you doing working on Easter Sunday? (Yes, Venice is a nice place to brunch on a sunny Sunday. Maybe you were killing two birds/doves? with one trip.)
Anyway, God Bless
No, Graham Holdings owns Slate the magazine. Confusingly, Graham Holdings also used to own the Washington Post, which is now owned by Bezos.
This would be the best auto trademark infringment case since Mead Corporation (maker of the LEXIS legal database system) sued Toyota (maker of Lexus automobiles). Toyota won, BTW.
The Lexus Diner in Newburgh , NY existed wayyyy before Lexus the Toyota brand . Toyota sued and won . It is now the Alexis Diner . True story …
Amazon has a little slate/tablet thing called the Fire and…. Well probably that’s a non starter as a name too.
Although Renault had the Fuego , so who knows?
My favourite is the deals between Apple Records (as founded by a bunch of obscure scousers) and Apple Computers (founded by a couple of obscure Californians).
Initially in the 70’s Apple Records had all the money and clout, so they sued Jobs and Woz for trademark infringement. They got $80k, and signed a deal agreeing that the computer company would stay out of music, and the record company would stay out of computing, which at the time probably sounded pretty safe to both sides.
Then in the 80’s, Apple Computers started selling MIDI adapters and recording software, which lead to them getting sued again, for $25M this time, and an agreement that they could sell devices and software for recording and playing music, but not sell physical music etc.
Then in the 2000’s Apple Computers wanted to sell music via iTunes, and after lots of legal wrangling, helped by the fact that Apple Computers now had much more money than the record company, they eventually came to an agreement where Apple Computers own all the trademarks, and Apple Records have a license to use the name.
I guess it just goes to show that if you have enough money, you can probably use any trademark you like.
Trademark infringement only applies if you can argue that customers would be confused. In this case, a car and a website are not in the same product category.
And even then, with enough money and lawyers, that can be overlooked. See ‘Prime trucking vs Amazon Prime trucks’ for example…
A software company I worked for was sued for TI because of a product that didn’t even have the exact same name (off by a couple of letters) by an airport parking company. They just changed the name of the product to avoid litigation.
re: Easter; David has been previously described on this site as a devout Catholic, so I’m pretty sure it was on his calendar. But point 2 was meant more as a joke. I should know better than to joke about religion. Sorry.
A company I worked for (back before I joined) temporarily stymied the might of Sony, because they’d already trademarked “PSP” in the UK. It seems no one at Sony bothered to check that they could get the trademark in all countries before they decided on the name of the Playstation Portable. As my company wasn’t actually using the trademark, I think they just sold it to Sony.
Yeah, sometimes threat of litigation is used as blackmail. Successfully, unfortunately. Even if you’re sure you’d eventually win, capitulation is the better option to bankruptcy.
Counterpoint – religion, like every other institution, deserves being made fun of, at a minimum. An organization that has protected & defended child rapists for decades deserves much more than just that.
Thank you; I went to church with the fam, then had brunch, then heard about this (thank you tipster!) and just HAD to check it out.
Has a strong Ranger / Bronco II vibe . I LOVE IT .
If this doesn’t turn out to have a Xtronic, then you’ll be the biggest liar in Autopian history, David, because you got to witness the release of the most sophisticated transmission ever built, the Jatco Xtronic CVT. Nothing can top that and you know it.
Factory rumored to be in Indiana. Anybody got the scoop?
Nobody I know has any info on it. Musk and Scaringe started with existing defunct assembly plant sites and lots of state gravy.
I can’t think of any defunct sites in the areas I normally travel, and not I, nor any of my fellow engineering buddies have been contacted by anyone via recruiters or LinkedIn. So while that’s no definite sign it’s not in Indiana, it does make it less likely.
(Not saying I’m some kind of required hire for a new factory, but with my wife and I both being engineers, and with my current role being automotive, we both tend to get a decent number of recruiters calling, and speak with a lot of other engineers.
And if I am wrong… This looks like it could be a fun way to change things up in my career!
There was some interest a few years back in building electric vehicles in Mishawaka, first by AM General on behalf of now-defunct startup Bright Automotive and then by a Chinese company. Could that be the plant?
Certainly a possibility. Indiana loves to throw taxpayer money at big projects like this. They’d have a difficult time keeping the UAW out in that area though.
Mishawaka’s only about 3 hours away from Detroit, though, if the LinkedIn verbiage is to be believed. I can’t think of anything regional that could be spun up to build cars by 2026 unless they’re planning on co-locating with Subaru in Lafayette? Cincinnati’s also four hours away, but again, no idea what site would be ready in time.
Designing and manufacturing and testing a suspension, engine, and interior in 4 days seems like an unrealistic schedule.
Unless its already done and the design buck is a red herrring.
Or a pink herring.
Pink Herring Club?
Ni
for 25k, I would take any of the above! Im hoping for 2 or 4wd, 200 mi range, and COLORS
Honestly for 25k I would have not-more-than-2nd thoughts about some rattle can shenanigans.
This is exactly the kind of style I want. Simple. Basic. Minimalist.
The vehicle presents a clean slate for the owner to make what they want from it.
If I can get a Defender shaped 2 door with 300 miles of range for 30k I might actually be an EV believer
I like it. Make mine with a 2.0L turbo, a stick, and a minimally screened interior with real buttons and gauges, and I will buy one.
I am not holding my breath.
Considering this is an EV, I would say a 2.0 turbo is unlikely.
Porsche makes “turbo” EVs!
Exactly why I am not holding my breath.
At the moment, it isn’t powered by anything.
It accelerates at 9.8M/S squared.
0-60 depends on how high you drop it from.