Tesla sells EVs with giant touchscreens, autopilot, and over-the-air updates. Slate Auto wants to sell you the opposite.
The Bezos-backed startup just raised $650 million to build an analog pickup truck with hand-crank windows, physical buttons, and a starting price meant to look nothing like a luxury EV. The bet: plenty of buyers are tired of the software.
Slate's truck strips out the things most EV companies compete on. No infotainment screen. No driver-assist suite. No app-connected gadgets. The pitch is unbundled - buy the truck, add what you want, skip what you don't.
More than 160,000 people have put down refundable reservations. That's a real signal that the anti-Tesla pitch is landing.
The company is spending hundreds of millions renovating a former printing factory in Indiana. Production is set to start by the end of 2026. A new CEO, Chris Faricy, came in earlier this year specifically to convert those reservations into paid orders.
EV demand has been softening across the industry for two years. Ford pulled back on F-150 Lightning. GM cut targets. Rivian is still burning cash. Tesla's growth slowed.
Into that market, Slate just raised more money than most late-stage startups see in a single round. The investors clearly believe the "cheap and simple" thesis holds up where premium pitches are cracking. That's a different read on the EV slowdown - not that buyers don't want EVs, but that they don't want expensive ones.
For public-market investors, there's no ticker to buy yet. But the round signals where capital thinks the next phase of EV adoption happens: in the trucks under $30,000, not the luxury builds above $60,000.
Slate's real test is 2027. That's when reservations turn into revenue or disappear. A pickup without software upgrades has to be cheap enough to be worth it and reliable enough to keep customers quiet. Both are hard.
Bezos has now written two checks. The second one says he still believes the first one.
Source: TechCrunch