Plastic Fantastic? 100,000 Clams Down for a $20k Electric Truck
Image Credit: Slate.
Seems a plucky little upstart, going by the rather unimaginative moniker of "Slate," has somehow managed to convince one hundred thousand folks to slap down fifty of their hard-earned American dollars for a yet-to-be-released electric truck. One hundred thousand! That's more people than live in my moderately sized town, let's put it that way.
In a world where electric pickups seem to cost more than a small mortgage – I'm looking at you, you shiny, overpowered behemoths – the idea of something tipping the scales at under twenty grand (after Uncle Sam potentially chips in, mind you) is enough to make a grown man weep with joy. Or at least raise a skeptical eyebrow and mutter, "There's got to be a catch."
Image Credit: Slate.
And you'd be right to be suspicious, wouldn't you? This isn't some luxurious land yacht we're talking about. Think more along the lines of a modern-day interpretation of those charmingly basic runabouts of yesteryear. Plastic body panels, they say. Plastic! It sounds like something my nephew builds with his Lego bricks. And the options list? It's longer than my list of things I'd rather be doing than parallel parking. Speakers? Optional. Good heavens. Next thing you know, they'll be charging extra for the steering wheel.
I think Slate is onto something. Remember the fanfare around Ford's little Maverick hybrid, promising affordable trucky goodness? The price of that thing has gone north quicker than a startled squirrel. This Slate contraption, however basic, undercuts pretty much everything else with a plug, and even a fair few things without one. Suddenly, that twenty-thousand-dollar mark doesn't look so shabby, does it? It's almost… reasonable.
Image Credit: Slate.
Of course, a fifty-dollar reservation doesn't exactly mean a guaranteed sale. We all remember the saga of that angular, stainless-steel oddity from California. Millions of reservations, a grand unveiling that left most of us scratching our heads, and now these things are filling up the parking lots with no buyers wanting even to have a closer look. Slate needs to learn from that. Promise the moon, deliver something vaguely lunar-shaped but significantly cheaper, and you might just have a winner.
The folks at Slate are talking big numbers – a production capacity of one hundred and fifty thousand units a year by the end of 2027, built right here in the good ol' US of A, in Indiana no less. That's ambitious. Very ambitious. But if they can pull it off, they might just shake up the establishment. The big boys in Detroit, with their leather-lined, gadget-laden electric leviathans, might just have to take notice. Because it seems there's a rather large chunk of the population who just want a simple, affordable way to haul their bits and bobs without guzzling gallons of dinosaur juice.
Image Credit: Slate.
And I must confess, as someone who appreciates the compact charm of those tiny Japanese kei trucks and the silent surge of electric power, this Slate truck has a certain appeal. That sub-twenty-thousand-dollar price tag puts it squarely in the "hmm, maybe I could…" category, rather than the "you've got to be kidding me" territory occupied by so many other EVs.
If Slate manages to avoid the fate of those other electric dreamers who promised much and delivered… let's just say they didn't deliver, then this could be a real turning point. It suggests that the future of electric vehicles doesn't have to involve remortgaging your house. People are willing to forgo the fancy bells and whistles if the price is right. Twenty grand seems to be the magic number that makes folks sit up and say, "Alright, I'm listening."
Image Credit: Slate.
One hundred thousand reservations in just over two weeks. That's a statement. It shows there's a hunger out there for an electric vehicle that doesn't require winning the lottery. Slate just needs to turn those tentative fifty-dollar handshakes into firm sales. And they need to deliver a truck that, while basic, doesn't feel like it was cobbled together from discarded Tupperware. The next couple of years are going to be interesting, that's for sure. Will Slate be a flash in the pan, or will they carve out a real niche for themselves in the burgeoning electric landscape? For now, they've certainly got our attention.
