- Slate has announced that it has processed more than 150,000 orders, all fully refundable but non-transferable.
- The company plans to start production in late 2026 and ramp up to full production by the end of 2027, when it hopes to build 150,000 trucks.
- Slate remains optimistic despite flattening EV demand and a strong rival in Ford's 2027 electric pickup.
Slate Auto is set to launch its affordable electric truck next year, and if all orders placed so far materialize, it will effectively have a sold-out full-year production run.
The company recently revealed that the reportedly $25,000-ish Slate Truck has surpassed 150,000 orders, which is exactly how many vehicles it plans to build annually once it ramps up production to full capacity.
Production is set to begin toward the end of next year and will continue ramping up through 2027. The plan is to reach this peak annual production target by the end of 2027, though it remains to be seen how many of these early orders will ultimately translate into purchases.
Slate published a video earlier this week where CEO Chris Barman it answered questions from potential buyers. It picked a handful of queries out of the over 4,000 that it says it received, and the video appears optimistic, even though EV sales in the U.S. and elsewhere have declined after incentives were cut or scaled back.
But amid a year when autonomous vehicles, robotaxis and automated driver assistance systems had a big showing, Barman answered a burning question from one customer: Will a Slate Truck have any self-driving tech?
"No," Barman said simply, before moving right along.
That certainly makes sense. The big draw with the Slate Truck was always its price. The Amazon-backed company’s goal was to sell the vehicle at around $20,000, but that factored in the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which ended on September 30 of this year. It now expects to sell the pickup somewhere in the mid-$20,000 range, likely around $26,000 or $27,000. Adding any sort of advanced autonomy features would no doubt hike its price tag well beyond that.
On the plus side, the end of the tax credit doesn’t seem to have affected demand for the Slate Truck, and the company still cites “huge demand” in the recent video. However, general demand for EVs in the U.S. has slowed, and larger and more expensive vehicles like electric pickups have been especially hard-hit.
Ford announced it was pulling the plug on the F-150 Lightning, Ram cancelled its fully electric 1500 and Tesla is finding it difficult to sell Cybertrucks. Scout also revealed earlier this year that the majority of reservations for its upcoming electric trucks were for the Harvester extended-range version, not the pure BEV variants.
Ford hasn’t completely given up on the idea of selling an electric pickup in America, but it’s banking on a smaller, cheaper model built on a new bespoke EV architecture. The upcoming Ford electric pickup will become the Slate Truck’s main rival, even if it arrives on the market around one year later.
But it won’t be much more expensive—it should start around $30,000—and it will surely come better equipped as standard. Offering a vehicle with manual windows in 2026-2027 seems a bit mean, and people have been poking fun at this no-equipment approach ever since the Slate Truck was revealed. Someone even made an electric window winder complete with a 3D-printed hand that attaches to the handle in the Slate EV, reminding everyone how ridiculous that is.
There is an acute lack of affordable EVs in the U.S., and even with the end of the tax credit, the sheer shock value of the Slate Truck’s low price tag will draw buyers. But once the Ford electric truck enters production in 2027, even though it will be more expensive, it will also offer more in the way of equipment, performance and outright capability. Ford really needs it to sell.
Interestingly, as similar as the two trucks seem on paper, Slate doesn’t see the upcoming Ford as a direct rival. According to one Slate exec, his company’s truck will win over buyers with its broad range of customization options and the promise of easy and cheap repairs. The company is also banking on state EV incentives to lower the vehicle's price and help more people afford it.
While this many orders is undoubtedly an impressive achievement for a brand-new company with no prior track record, the loss of the tax credit and the new Ford truck will make things more difficult for Slate. At least the company promises there will be no markup on any of its vehicles, reassuring potential buyers.
