Slate Auto draws 160,000 reservations for Voiture électrique pickup
Slate Auto’s Voiture électrique pickup has drawn more than 160,000 reservations, even though the company has not yet shown customers a production vehicle. Each reservation required a $50 deposit, about 47 €, for a truck that Slate once promoted at 20 000 €.
Jeff Bezos backs Slate Auto
Jeff Bezos is among the heavyweight investors backing the startup, which is based in Troy, Michigan. Slate went public in spring 2025 in Long Beach, California, after nearly three years of work in secrecy.
The company says its pickup will be manufactured in Indiana and that deliveries are planned to start at the end of 2026. That timeline now carries more weight because the reservation count is large and the original price pitch depended on a $7,500 federal tax credit that U.S. Congress eliminated under the Trump administration.
Slate’s stripped-down truck
Slate described a two-seat electric pickup with no power windows, no central screen, and no factory paint. The base version is supposed to use a 52.7 kWh battery and a rear-axle motor with 204 hp and 264 Nm.
Slate says that version should reach about 241 km of range, do 0 to 100 km/h in 8 seconds, and top out at 145 km/h. It also described a long-range variant with an 84.3 kWh battery, up to about 386 km of range, and 120 kW fast charging from 20 to 80 percent in half an hour.
June pricing still pending
After the tax credit ended, Slate removed the under-20,000-dollar mention from its website. The company said it would announce the exact price when firm online orders open in June, leaving deposit holders waiting for the number that will tell them whether the truck still lands near the original pitch.
For now, the hard fact is the reservation total. The harder question is whether Slate can turn that number into a real production run without losing the low-price promise that got it there.
