Electric pickup startup Slate Auto had a good start to the week. This morning, it announced that it has raised $650 million in its latest funding round.
The Slate is a refreshing benchmark among new electric vehicle OEMs. Lucid has debuted its intended electric sedan continue the game Tesla Model S Rivian said: “What if (we had) supercar suspension and a smiley face for an EV serious off-road skills?” Almost both succeeded. Sony Honda Mobility wanted to make the EV a true digital content hub, at least half way through this joint venture. time has called-who knows how this project would have turned out, although I suspect sales would have been low.
But Slate, launching in 2022, is doing things differently. It doesn’t start selling for anything close to six figures; far from it. Repeal of the federal clean vehicle tax credit was certainly inconvenient — with it, A starting price below $20,000 was possiblebut even in the “mid-$20,000s,” the Slate Truck should match or undercut the Ford Maverick XL, the cheapest pickup truck currently on sale in the US.
Slate takes over radical approach to meet this price. It will be assembled from only 600 parts, which is one tenth of the usual pickups. The body panels are plastic and unpainted, so no stamping or paint shop is required. Each truck will be built at the company’s factory in Warsaw, Indiana, in the same bare-bones configuration: two doors, power windows, no infotainment system and no touchscreen. People on the internet have been saying they want something simple and bare-bones for a while now, and the Slate Auto takes them at their word.
