Slate Auto’s Modular Electric Truck

Last night secretive startup Slate Auto revealed its compact electric pickup truck, dubbed a “blank slate” thanks to how modular it is. Every Slate truck will leave the factory in a single spec — gray with an extremely basic interior and steel wheels — though you can choose between a small or large battery. The truck’s design is optimized to be easily customizable, and Slate will offer more than 100 accessories ranging from vinyl wraps and new body parts to interior features and upholstery options, plus the ability to transform the two-seat truck into a five-seat SUV using a flat-pack kit. You’ll be able to do everything yourself, but the company will have a range of service centers that can install these parts for you, and Slate will also sell “starter packs” that bundle lots of accessories together.

Slate launched a configurator on its website alongside the truck’s reveal, so I set our staff to work designing their dream Slates. Though the company has said the Slate will start at under $20,000 after incentives, which means a price of less than $27,500, but there’s no word on how much any of the accessories will cost, aside from wrap kits starting at around $500. Keep reading to see the Jalopnik’s Slate builds, and let us know in the comments what your Slate would look like.

I don’t need a pickup truck, so I’ve designed my Slate to be like a ‘lil hot hatch that would feel at home in Mini Truckin’ magazine. Sure, it might only have an 8-second 0-to-60 time, but it is rear-wheel drive and should be plenty zippy around town. I love that you can get a lowering kit from the factory, so I’ve added that along with 20-inch wheels with aero covers and low-profile tires. I went for basically all of the exterior styling upgrades, including the different bumpers, wider fenders, roof rack, better lights and a sunset grille design with a cute bear on it. Gray is my nightmare, so of course I added a hot pink wrap, the white “Snow Dog” decal set that gives you a ’70s-style two-tone look, pink and blue stripes running down the top, and some other pink accents.

Slate Auto

Inside I picked every option to add green and brown color to the seats, dashboard and door panels, plus bronze accents to the air vents and climate controls. Crank windows are stupid, so I added the optional power windows and threw in door storage pockets as well. It’s also stupid that the Slate has no built-in infotainment screen, so I chose the tablet mount and row of auxiliary buttons beneath it — at least there will be an infotainment app for your phone or tablet that works with the car. I also selected a center armrest, speakers, and a carpeted floor and floor mats, none of which it comes with.

Slate has some truly wild options in its configurator, so by god I’ll go wild with them. Is this resulting vehicle at all reasonable? Absolutely not! Would it look comical parked on my Brooklyn street, like some sort of rolling advertisement for the vaporwave aesthetic that fell out of vogue years ago? Most definitely! But the world of cars is boring right now, traffic jams are packed with personality-free people movers, and sometimes you gotta skew the average.

Slate Auto

My Slate remains a base pickup, because I refuse to interfere with that bed’s ability to fit a motorcycle. It wears the base wheels and tires, because the turbofan-looking option that’s meant to go with this paint just felt like trying too hard, but every other part of the car just gets the most out-there option I could find. This is an absurd truck I’ve built, and I think it’s one the streets outside my apartment need.

I do still wish you could option a radio, though. Let me listen to FM.

There are at least 9 trillion different combinations you can make on the new Slate Auto online customizer, so it took a hell of a long time to come up with the perfect little electric truck, but I think I did it. I went for a bit of a 1980s-style sunburst yellow look with lots of bright orange accents on the outside as well as a sick-ass retro stripe down the side and some matching wheels. I also went with fender flares and chunkier tires to give it a more off-road look, which I think suits a car as boxy as this. Crucially, I decide to make my Slate an SUV. This was a tough decision, but it came down to the simple fact that I’ll spend a lot more time with more than one passenger in the car than I will with crap I’ll need to haul around in an open bed. I know, it’s a bummer, but that’s just where my life is right now.

Slate Auto

It’s hard to say if the interior I’ve selected will work in real life. It’s brown and green with bronze and orange accents. It looks great in the configurator, so that’s enough for me. I also decided to go with a tablet mount so I can have my tunes and navigation readily available. However, I did stick with the manual crank windows for one simple reason: they’re cool as hell. I know it’s a bit silly, but I don’t care.

That’s my Slate Auto build. I’d ask what you think of it, but I don’t really care. The great thing about what Slate is doing is that it offers nearly endless customization possibilities. It’s truly a “to each their own” vehicle, and I love that.

I have elected to turn my blank Slate into a blurple backless fun machine that prioritizes vibes over practicality. I tried to emulate the vibe of a two-door soft top Toyota RAV4 or Suzuki Vitara, and I feel like the purple and pink color combo is very indicative of that era. I wish there was a wider array of decal choices, because in a perfect world I would put the iconic 1990s teal and pink scribble design that you see on paper cups and plates, but unfortunately that design is omitted from the configurator. Come on, Bezos! I chose to lower the suspension and keep it on standard steelies and street tires, since it is just rear-wheel drive after all, and I figure it would give the lil truck’s already low EV range a fighting chance in the real world.

Slate Auto

I think the Slate’s take on a modern automotive interior is smart, aside from the lack of speakers. Most folks prefer to use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto when they’re in the car, so why not just use your phone or a tablet instead of a clunky car company’s feeble attempt at a user interface? I do think it should be even cheaper given the intense feature omissions, and it’ll be interesting to see how the diminutive truckster handles crash tests, but I am here for cheap and usable vehicles like the Slate, and the whimsy of the customizer is a wonderful thing to see.

It’s kind of funny to me that such a brand spankin’ new truck tried to grab us with all these retro stylings. If you can do something funny, do that, so I put the “throwback” decals every where I could. It’s my little electric store-brand Bronco. I don’t really need a pickup personally, but I do need back seats for hauling around dogs, so SUV body style for me — the blocky kind. First off, we’ve got to go with a two-tone wrap style. I’m thinking something that’ll match some of the more retro elements Amazon is providing for the slate. I got it as close as I could, but in an ideal world the orange up top would match the magna orange in the throwback stripes and the magma stripe on the rocker panels. Of course, the “throwback” stripe decals will look sick with the “throwback” wheels. Fog lights and a taillights upgrade completes the ensemble. I’m also going to lower mine, as I have no illusions of off-roading this truck and again, better for big dumb dog ingress and egress.

Slate Auto

On the interior you better believe those throwback stripes are running the length of the doors. I add auxiliary buttons but not really anything else. The lower dash is getting that magma stripe as well as the HVAC controls. I feel like I can buy a decent JBL speaker to sit in the “bring your own” speaker port and you better believe I’m cranking those windows down by hand. In a truck with this many “throwback” elements, it seems wrong to add a power window option, plus I’d rather had a dedicated place for my sunglasses to live as I am constantly losing them and this would be a great solution, or at least give me a first place to look for them. Of course, the key fob is getting the magma treatment as well.

All in all, I kinda love this truck. It’s straight-forward, functional and fun in ways modern cars just aren’t doing it. Amazon saw a huge hole in the market and snatched it up. I think the Slate will likely be a hit, if quality can meet cuteness.

On a truck with this many options, you either want to keep it simple or go hog wild. I wouldn’t necessarily want a truck that screams for attention in real life, but I would love a nice green little guy. I’m not trying to make a tiny truck look tough, either, so I don’t need the upgraded bumpers, but it never hurts to add fog lights. While I tried to keep the rest of the exterior relatively subtle, all things considered, I couldn’t resist adding a little color to the wheels. That’s kind of the opposite of what you normally see, so why not have a little fun? Oh, and obviously, I’ve got to lower it.

Slate Auto

Inside, I also kept it simple, even if I added plenty of upgrades to add a mix of green, brown and bronze wherever I could. I’ll skip the tablet mount, mainly because I don’t actually own a tablet and don’t want to have to buy one for my car. Speakers seem like a good idea, even if there’s no telling how they’ll sound in real life. I definitely could have gone further, but at the same time, if I were to ever give Bezos money for this truck, it’s pretty much exactly the one I’d want to drive daily.

The joy of a simple truck is that it should be as bare bones and simple as possible. I do not want for much in a new utility vehicle, and as such would not fit it out with any of the extravagant accessories Slate has developed for these machines. I’ll take the standard two-seat pickup truck in the annoyingly-named “Best of the Zest” yellow. I’ll take as many brown interior panels and bronze accents as I can get for whatever the minimal additional cost might be, and choose the standard 17-inch wheels with the suspension lowering kit. The one little concession to fun I will accept is a single “Slatelet,” and being a proud Michigander it has to be the state bird icon and sign of better weather, the Robin.

Slate Auto

This is almost exactly the new vehicle I have been begging automakers to produce for the last decade. It’s cheap and cheerful, has plenty of utility and none of the extraneous junk you don’t need. I don’t even want this truck to have speakers or electric windows or whatever, it’s pretty much ready to roll with a phone mount and a steering wheel. Let’s go.

While I understand it takes a lot of money to start a company like this, the fact that it’s bankrolled by billionaire cult of personality Jeff Bezos does give me pause, however. At the risk of being labeled too woke, I will wait to see if Slate secures a contract with the United Auto Workers union before placing my order.

My wife and I are outliers, especially in Detroit — we’re a one car/five motorcycles household. My wife runs a transit advocacy non-profit so she’s fully mass transit-pilled and I do most of my traveling by Ural, so our solitary Kia Soul is perfect for our needs (although scheduling can be a bit tricky in the cold months). Sometimes, though, I wish I had a little truck of my own for zipping around town and hauling motorcycles. What passes for a “small truck” these days is a joke. I don’t need a four-door, short box Ranger that’s bigger than my old mid-’80s F-150. I had been looking at importing a Kei truck, but then the Slate dropped and changed my mind.

Slate Auto

So, here’s my Slate. I don’t need much, just a cab to keep the weather off and a bed big enough to haul a ’70s-era small-displacement motorcycle. I like this thing’s simplicity, I like the fact that it doesn’t have a touch screen or fifteen driving modes or massaging seats or a billion electronic nannies lulling me to sleep in the driver’s seat while I should be paying attention to the road. Most of all I like how it looks. It looks like a truck, not a crew cab El Camino that got stung by a bee. My only real complaints here are the fact that there’s no option for a sliding rear window (manual, of course) or a sunroof (also manual). I reckon that’s what the aftermarket is for, though.