A bare-bones electric truck got 160,000 people to raise their hands. It has hand-crank windows and no paint.
Now comes the hard part, which is getting them to pay.
Slate Auto just set the date. On June 24 the Bezos-backed startup will reveal its price and open preorders.
Slate built its whole pitch around being cheap. The base model is a two-seat truck.
For an added cost, it turns into a five-seat SUV. The firm once said it would start "under $20,000" after a federal tax break.
That math changed fast. Congress and the Trump team killed the $7,500 tax break late last year.
So Slate now says the truck will start in the mid-$20,000 range instead.
Slate wants to sort real buyers from window shoppers. It is asking fans to put down $50 now to hold a spot, then $300 next month to preorder.
The catch is that the $300 can't be refunded. So this is the moment buyers show how serious they are.
We break down the moves worth watching in Market Briefs, five minutes a day, plus a free investing class when you sign up.
Slate isn't short on cash. It raised $650 million in April, which brings its total to about $1.4 billion.
Much of that came from Mark Walter's firm TWG Global. Walter also owns the LA Dodgers.
Jeff Bezos joined the early funding. The startup now runs under Peter Faricy, who used to lead Amazon Marketplace and took the top job in March.
A lot of Slate's leaders come from Amazon, which fits a firm trying to sell a simple product to a huge crowd.
The truck is four years old as a project. It came out of hiding in 2025, and the no-frills design struck a chord right away.
Here's why the look even matters. A cheap, simple EV is a rare thing, and that's the whole draw. The truck has hand-crank windows and no paint, and buyers seem to love how plain it is.
First trucks are set to ship late this year. So June 24 kicks off a tight stretch, with a price, paid orders, and real trucks all landing within months.
The 160,000 reservations are still refundable for now, which makes them a soft yes. The $300 order is the firm one, and that's the number Slate's backers will watch.
Reservations are the easy part. Every EV startup of the past decade learned a hard truth.
A free signup and a paid order are two very different things.
June 24 is when Slate finds out the answer. How many of those 160,000 hands stay up once there's a real price and a real deposit attached?
If you want updates like this each morning, sign up for Market Briefs and get a 45-minute investing course for free.
