You need to know what the Slate Truck is. 🚛 We tell you about it 👉 Find it here
Shortly after I showed up at a Los Angeles studio space to take a sneak peek of Slate’s debut vehicle last week, the startup’s reps pulled a black sheet off of a charming, two-seat pickup truck. I thought it was refreshingly small and liked its clean, boxy look. And the claimed price tag of under $20,000 after federal incentives is hard to argue with, especially for an electric vehicle.
But the most compelling part about Slate’s first model is that by the time I left the event, it had transformed into something entirely different: a five-passenger SUV. How? Let me explain.
This American EV company broke cover on Thursday with a focus on two things that it argues are missing from the car market: affordability and customizability. Its truck will arrive in late 2026 in just about as bare-bones a form as you can imagine, sporting crank windows, no radio and steel wheels. That helps with the former. To achieve the latter, Slate says it will offer a dazzling array of interesting upgrades for owners to pick and choose from.
That laundry list of accessories includes kits that turn one’s pickup into an SUV. Pretty wild stuff.
How Does Slate’s SUV Kit Impact Range?
Before I get into how the kit works and how it looks, allow me to flag one unexpected benefit of installing one. Eric Keipper, Slate’s head of engineering, told InsideEVs you’ll actually get a bit of extra range. And you may want every mile you can get, since the Slate’s standard battery pack delivers a manufacturer-projected range of only 150 miles. The optional bigger battery is rated for 240 miles.
“The aerodynamics effect that you get from the SUV actually outweighs, so to speak, the weight that you add,” he said.
In other words, the SUV’s seats, structure and roof make it heavier, increasing energy consumption. But its streamlined shape also makes it slice through the air more efficiently. At the end of the day, you can expect a “small percentage” more driving range in the SUV, Keipper said.
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