Slate's $25,000 electric truck bets small beats range

Electric vehicles account for under 10% of new-vehicle sales in the US, and the share is falling. Slate Auto is betting that the fix isn't a bigger battery, it's a smaller, cheaper truck, MIT Technology Review reported.

The Slate is a two-door pickup shorter than a Honda Civic. The base model uses hand-crank windows, and its lithium iron phosphate battery holds 65 kilowatt-hours, good for a quoted 205 miles of range. The most basic Tesla Model 3 tops 320 miles. Customers can add a Bluetooth stereo, vinyl wraps, or power windows, but even upgraded, the truck stays well under the roughly $50,000 average price of a new US vehicle.

The company is betting against an approach that already failed. Ford announced the F-150 Lightning in 2021 as the vehicle meant to lead US EV adoption. It shipped in 2022 at roughly $40,000, needed a battery about twice the size of Slate's to reach almost 300 miles of range, and saw its price climb past $54,000 before Ford discontinued it in December 2025, four years after launch. The second Trump administration's cuts to EV tax credits didn't help, but the truck's cost had already been climbing on its own.

The range chase behind that cost may not match how people drive day to day. The average American puts under 35 miles a day on the odometer, and nearly 90% of personal-vehicle trips run 20 miles or less. One study found EV owners use less than 20% of their vehicle's range on a typical day. Roughly half the country is struggling to cover basic costs like gas and groceries, and 95% of Americans say they're living through an affordability crisis, according to a recent Harris poll, a backdrop that makes a sub-$25,000 EV harder to dismiss than it would have been a few years ago.

• Slate base price: under $25,000, range 205 miles
• Ford F-150 Lightning final-year price: over $54,000, range near 300 miles
• Average daily US driving distance: under 35 miles
• China 2025 average new-EV range: 247 miles, vs. 329 in the US

Other markets already show cheaper, shorter-range EVs can sell at scale. China has over 40 million EVs and plug-in hybrids on the road, and roughly half of new vehicles sold there run electric, with an average range of 247 miles in 2025. The US average sits at 329 miles and Europe's at 281, both built around the range-first assumption Slate is now testing directly against American buyers. Tesla's own numbers this year show what happens when an EV maker's growth stalls, a reminder that even the market leader isn't immune to a slowdown.

Slate starts delivering preorders in late 2026, with factory capacity for 100,000 trucks in the first year and 150,000 soon after. Investors including Jeff Bezos have put nearly $1.4 billion behind that bet across three funding rounds, and Ford is already building its own answer, a small electric truck due in 2027 at around $30,000. Whether Americans buy a short-range truck for the price is the test the Lightning never had to pass, because it never offered one.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.