Over the past few weeks, there’s been some hype around Jeff Bezos-backed Slate Auto and its plan to build a $25,000 electric pickup truck in America. While few details have been released around this vehicle so far, a Reddit user spotted a strange small pickup truck on American soil, and it doesn’t quite look like anything we’ve seen so far.
Posted to the r/whatisthiscar subreddit by user discostranger09, this compact-looking pickup truck on a flat bed drew other users’ attention. The original poster added a bit of context to the photo in the comment section, responding to a question about where this vehicle was spotted with:
South of Los Angeles. To add some more context, there were 2 men filming/taking pictures as well. Suggesting that whatever it was, it was “special.” I’m also 100 percent positive that it’s an EV. Never heard an ignition or exhaust note when they pulled it off the flat bed.
You know what startup has a presence in Los Angeles? Slate Auto. Could this be the cheap, reportedly $25,000 electric pickup truck that Jeff Bezos is backing? It’s entirely possible, but let’s take a look at the evidence.
Despite being a completely undisguised vehicle, this pickup doesn’t quite seem to have an immediately identifiable styling language we can link with any automaker in North America. Instead, it’s an amalgamation of various elements. The arches are very Land Rover Defender, the front bumper has shades of Ford, the deep character line down the flank almost feels retro, and the simple headlights seem unusually utilitarian.
At the same time, the form factor seems about right for an entry-level model. It’s not some huge machine, it has a fairly small bed and a single cab, and hardware like the marker lights, door mirror, and what appear to be bolt-on fenders with external hardware appears to fit a low price point. They don’t necessarily look cheap, but they look like they’re designed to be cleverly inexpensive.
Keep in mind, Slate has stated that it wants to launch an electric two-seat truck next year, and a proof of concept is said to exist. With the form factor and location lining up, there’s definitely some plausibility here.
Whether this thing’s a Slate or something else, if it comes to market at a reasonable price and has decent specs, people are going to buy it. This is exactly the form factor fans of old Ford Rangers and Chevrolet S-10s have been craving, so let’s sit on this spy shot and see where it goes.
Update: TechCrunch reports that this is indeed exactly what we think it is. As the outlet wrote:
The truck pictured is, in fact, the one Slate Auto has been working on, according to a person with direct knowledge of Slate Auto’s vehicle design who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This person, whose identity is known to TechCrunch, said the truck is likely one of the concept vehicles the startup has created to show to potential investors — like the controlling owner of the LA Dodgers — at its design studio in Long Beach, California.
Well, I’ll be. If this is just our first glimpse at the project, the future of Slate Autos looks pretty exciting.
Top graphic credit: Reddit/discostranger09
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
Slate Auto Is Reportedly Going To Make A $25,000 American EV Pickup Truck With Jeff Bezos’s Money
-
The TELO MT1 Is A Mini Cooper-Sized Electric Pickup That Promises F-150 Payload For Under $50K
-
The Toyota EPU Compact Electric Pickup Truck Concept Deserves To Be Built For Real
-
An Electric Toyota Hilux Is Coming Next Year
-
You Can Buy Ford’s First Attempt At An Electric Truck, But It’s Busted
Please send tips about cool car things to tips@theautopian.com. You could even win a prize!
Doors & windshield look vaguely Range Rover-ish
It’ll be interesting if they sell them like Hyundai does on Amazon. Imagine being able to buy a small, EV pickup truck overnight and financing it through Amazon. Truly we’ll have hit the singularity.
I detest Bezos for so many reasons, but somehow, I still dislike auto dealerships even more. The fact that manufacturers generally can’t sell a car to a buyer in the US w/o a dealership in the middle of the transaction (excepting maybe Tesla, in some situations, maybe?) is, itself, a bit of a travesty to me.
The future of Slate looks exciting? Who’s buying a 2-seat EV pickup truck, exactly? And, why would they buy that from a startup when a Ford Maverick exists at basically the same price, while every town has a dealership and service center for them?
That is what I was thinking. Ford could collapse this company tomorrow by announcing a steelie-spec middling-range Maverick EV made of the parts shelf.
Starting a new car company to build a small cheap electric truck en esta economia is a brave business decision. I applaud it, mind you, but brave…
I don’t know if I want to support Bezos but this is exactly the sort of truck I’ve been wanting. No way it will be $25,000 but we can hope.
Real question… Why? What does this provide that a Maverick doesn’t?
Pure EV?
Also, it allows buyers to avoid Ford. Even if you don’t care about their penchant for recalls/issues, iffy electronics and transmissions, etc… the way that Ford botched the rollout of the Maverick is sufficient to keep me from wanting to be their customer in the future. Provided the Slate truck met my needs for a small truck, I’d rather reluctantly make Jeff Bezos a little richer than reward Ford with my business.
Pure EV. Two doors. No dealer rape charge.
I am with you Dan. I want to stop burning dead dinosaurs and want an EV replacement for my old beloved Toyota base-spec std cab w/ 7′ bed that I used to own for my weekend projects. I would buy this tomorrow if it were available, as much as I realize Amazon/Bezos is bad news. Lots of us who don’t need/want 4-door/extended cab w/ tiny beds.
I’m all for cheap utilitarian vehicles, but I’m wondering who the target demo for this vehicle is supposed to be. It appears so small that the bed won’t be particularly useful to people in the trades. It’s an EV and also has a short wheelbase, so it won’t be good at towing. It’s a single cab, which means that it won’t work well as a daily driver “regular” vehicle for the general public. To me, it seems like it’s basically just a CUV with the roof cut off, but without much of the versatility of a CUV.
And if I was showing this to a group of investors, I would have painted it something other primer gray.
People like me who want something utilitarian to throw a load of mulch in the back or a box too big for my hatch or gear to go cycling or a load from home depot but have a second family car for, you know, family things. Problem now is cars have venn-diagramed themselves to the point where it is a perceived sin to do one or two things good enough instead of trying to do all things. Utilitarian build? Whelp, better extend the cab so it can family too! I miss cars that unapologetically do a thing and fail at the rest.
You want a Toyota Town Ace.
Our parks and rec guys are starting to drive Mavericks today – generally with only one person in the vehicle. No reason a regular cab with a 6 foot bed wouldn’t work to drive around and fix sprinklers, toilets, etc.
Bingo!
Short bed single cab is perfect for fleet vehicles, especially something like a municipal fleet. You are pretty much always only going to need the two seats, and the short bed is perfect for the limited number of tools you have to carry. Generally hauling plywood or lumber or piping or whatever will be left to the specialists/contractors, but having someone who can show up with shovels, or welding equipment, or a generator and do basic service is extremely valuable. Combine with low capital cost up front, easy maintenance, and cheap power at municipal rates you have a large potential market.
What does it being a single cab have to do with not being suitable as a daily driver? Have you looked around? The VAST VAST VAST majority of vehicles of every size, shape, and description seem to mostly be driven about with one, or at most two people inside. And a single cab minitruck can carry one or two people, no problem (unless they’re Billy and Benny McGuire (nee McCrary)) in which case, a Ford Super Duty is warranted.
Maybe in Stepford, Connecticut all vehicles always require seating sufficient for a nuclear family, complete with 2.5 young’uns, but in reality, most road miles getting covered appear to be by vehicles with just one or two people inside.
I definitely agree about the primer grey choice though… like WTF? Primer/Nardo grey and the like have been tired automotive cliches for years now. You know what appeals? Blue. There, I said it! Blue is good for trucks. Paint it some happy shade of non-metallic blue, and let it be photographed being driven by a decent-but-not-overtly-GQ-looking guy with a medium sized dog.
Then manage to make enough trucks to avoid dealer markups and excessive wait times (or better yet, somehow avoid dealers altogether) and actually sell base models at $25K.
That’s marketing. 😉
Not my cuppa, but I would like to live in a world where this is a common vehicle.
PLLLLLLLEEEEEEAAASSSSSEEEEE Be a 6 foot bed. I have an almost 30 year old small 4-banger Tacoma with a 6 foot bed that I bought new. Nobody makes anything like it. Sorry Maverick- not fooling me. Anyway… I will probably keep it until I die or it somehow explodes. But… I would absolutely possibly buy one of these if its at all like my current truck. Sucks that its funded by Jeff Bezos, who is a major prick
mother of god I want
I wish it could be a cabover with a real 8′ long bed. Like a giant Kei truck. But oh well.
That truck exists, from Toyota…
If it comes to fruition at this price point and looks like this, I wouldn’t mind dipping my toe into the EV market to have a little run about. I still miss my old Rangers/B-series trucks with the extended cab and 6′ bed, which unfortunately this doesn’t look to have
Doesn’t Bezos currently have a deal with Rivian for their vans? Isn’t this just a half-scale Rivian van with the back half of the body cut off?
His deal w/Rivian for vans is no longer exclusive… he renegged on his commitment to buy X number of EV vans, which freed them up to sell them to anyone who wants to buy one: https://rivian.com/fleet The GM/Brightdrop EV van is also nice, and a bit cheaper (plus meaningfully discounted too): https://www.chevrolet.com/commercial/brightdrop
I don’t think this Slate EV pickup is related in any significant way to the Rivian van…I mean, maybe there’s some battery/drivetrain tech using stuff they learned, but it’s all gotta be an order of magnitude cheaper this time around… so it’s gotta be pretty different.
Steel wheels would be nice. Hope they forego all the usual EV nonsense like motorized door handles, etc… and just make a small truck that just can do small truck stuff and gets maybe 200 miles of range in base/standard trim. As long as the AC and radio also work, I personally don’t need much else, and I want it to be cheap so I can and will actually buy it (not some fictional $25K thing that always winds up topping $40K by the time it’s out the door).
I heartily endorse that last paragraph. Basic, functional, cheap—and I’ll seriously consider it.
Basically, I just want the $400 Mazda B2200 I had back. Minus the rust.
Twould be awesome, and this looks 1000X better than the mockup in the other article.
I think that mockup was mostly just a crudely photoshopped image of the Thai-built Toyota Hilux Champ TBH. I happen to like the so-ugly-it’s-cute looks of the Champ (plus it’s only US$15K in most places where you can buy it (not in the US of course)) and TBH, given a choice between $15K worth of Toyota Hilux Champ w/a 2.4 liter diesel and a manual tranny, or $25K worth of an EV minitruck from a startup called Slate, I’d personally opt for the diesel Toyota and drive it until the sun dies.
If it has 200 mile range I am in. I have an 03 s10 which has a longer bed than most pickups.
To me it looks like the love child of a first generation Ranger and a Comanche.
i too am getting a jeep vibe from it as well.
I was thinking the same.1st gen ranger front clip with a Renegade face and Comanche cab. I actually even get a J10 vibe from the cab/bed.
I like the size, shape, and price (if all turn out to be production realities). I’d hate to give Bezos any more of my money than I already do, but I guess I could hold my nose. If they really bring this to market for $25K, Telo (with whom I have a deposit) is going to maybe have to have a bit of a rethink.
I don’t understand. I can already order my garden mulch and compost on Amazon and have it here the next day.
Clearly. Some of us aren’t just a homeowner
“Just a homeowner?”
Having business use
Slate gray?
Looks great, but I can’t tell from the photo if the bed is separate from the cab or not. For repairability and replacing it with a flat bed etc. I hope it is.
Well, a separate bed would also provide for modularity (different bed lengths, a flat bed w/drop sides, a box truck, etc…) and that would be great, but if they’re trying to make it as cheap as possible, I could see them doing it like the Maverick, Ridgeline, Avalanche… and just have a unibody. These things would be for light commercial use if/when they’re used commercially: handymen, pool cleaners, gardeners, deliveries, etc… NOT for the kind of heavy-load workhorse stuff that warrants a big, sturdy, body-on-frame vehicle.
Well, separating the functions of the frame and the body allows the design to be pretty primitive. On the other hand, finite element analysis is pretty cheap these days as is stamping big sheets of steel, so probably an adequately strong unibody is cheaper than body-on-frame, but durability, reparability, and versatility suffer.
Of course, lack of durability and reparibility after the warranty runs out is a feature not a problem for manufacturers these days. versatility would sell though.
The Datsun 720 we had was pretty light weight. If the vehicle is lighter weight, it doesn’t need to be as strong. It bent plenty of times but never broke. Plenty of patches in the frame where it bent by the time it wore out, because my dad would put two or three times the rated load in the bed.
With a locking cap, this is the ultimate paramedic chase car.
Drywall is 4×8 or 4×12
I have recently learned that there is also the ridiculously large 4×16 sheets of drywall. That said, the big box stores where most people shop sell primarily 4x8s.
In my dim and distant past, I hung drywall and we often bought 4×10 sheets for all the reno jobs in old buildings with 9 foot ceilings. Don’t they make that anymore?
Cross your fingers, but don’t hold your breath. I want it to be true. The angle it’s sitting on that flatbed looks all wrong. Who would load it cockeyed like that? I don’t care if it runs on kumquat juice, bring it to market at $25000 and take my money.
Can someone explain to me why 6′ is the only measure of a pickup some people have? Surely not every single one of you is putting up drywall sheets that often
Yes, but honestly, if I’m dealing with 2 doors and 2 seats, a 6 foot bed is the absolute minimum I would be willing to accept if I’m spending 25 grand.
I agree: visually and functionally, a short cab with a six foot bed fits a LOT of use cases.
To be sure, if you’re a tradesman and you’re hauling full 4×8′ sheets of building materials every day, you’re gonna want an 8′ bed, but at that point, you’re probably looking for a full-size truck and not a small EV truck anyway.
Most guys I know are having 4 x 8 sheets in any kind of quantity delivered. Although if I do need to get stuff in my tiny little truck lol fits in that 6 1/2 foot bed without a whole Lotta issue.
And though I like the idea of a smallish, single cab truck with an 8′ bed (like the odd older Ford or Toyota) they’ve gotta have a wider turning radius just due to the wheelbase.
I don’t haul too much of anything anymore due to a bad back so a shorter bed is fine for me. 🙂
For most of those things you just need a small hatchback and a can-do attitude 😉
Oh, and some ratchet straps.
You just need a crescent wrench or screwdriver and a can-do attitude to hammer smaller nails and tacks, but I’m still grabbing the hammer.
I’ve done “Ma and Pa Kettle” loads with sedans and hatchbacks plenty, and that’s why I have a small pickup with a 6′ bed.
I have a 2 door 6ft bed pickup, it’s brilliant. Sizable bed that fits pretty much everything I want to put in it, though it is a bit narrow between the wheel wells at 43″. It is easy to drive because it isn’t large, and the bed floor is also low enough that I can reach anything just standing on the ground. I’ve brought home 4×8 sheets in it many times, have had it loaded to the brim quite often as well. I don’t have a need for a 4 seat pickup, so I’d rather had the utility.
S10. Yeah
Actually, for me, an eight-foot bed is the ideal. You can put in both a washer and dryer in the bed with the tailgate closed, move more furniture with less trips, throw in the railroad ties to build that Rose Garden you never promised but make to show your love, load up a yard of nice loam from the nursery or stone store, roll in bicycles or a motorcycle and shut the tailgate, same with a couch, a ton of non folding chares needed for a wedding or holiday…
Yeah. I miss an 8 foot bed.
I have an S-10 with a regular bed, and I can fit more stuff than the F150. The capacity is kind of a joke, really as far as needing more.
It looks a lot better than they Cyber Truck.
Agreed, but that’s setting a low bar though? 😉
I loved the irony of Jason releasing a review of the Cyber Truck right after I made the comment.