Last night, a new company called Slate Auto unveiled its first product, a spartan two-seat electric truck with a mere 150 miles of range and a world of possibility. There’s no paint, no distracting infotainment screen, and no stereo or even radio. It doesn’t tower over your average 12-year-old, and it may sell for under $20,000 (including incentives) when it arrives in 2026.
If it arrives, of course. We don’t need to get into the litany of obstacles that lie in the path of Slate’s future success — including a global trade war and a presidential administration openly hostile to EVs — because instead I’m interested in talking about the truck as a possible antidote to our growing obsession with overpowered, oversized trucks and SUVs.
You’ve probably noticed this problem if you have eyes and live in America in 2025. Our roads are packed with these roving land yachts. Sales of SUVs and pickup trucks reached new highs in 2024, accounting for 75 percent of total vehicle registrations. A decade ago, these two segments made up just half of the market. Today, they represent three out of every four new vehicles sold in America.
A world of possibility
These vehicles are bigger and heavier than their predecessors. In 2023, 31 percent of new cars in America weighed over 5,000 pounds (2.27 tons), compared to 22 percent in 2018, according to a recent investigation by The Economist. And with the shift to electric vehicles, many of those vehicles have become even heavier. The Ford F-150 Lightning has a curb weight of around 6,500 pounds, roughly 60 percent heavier than its gas equivalent.
And as they’ve expanded, growing taller and wider on average than vehicles from previous decades, they have also become more deadly to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. The shape of a vehicle, especially the hood, also plays a critical role in determining whether a pedestrian can survive being struck. Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches (about 3.3 feet) and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2013 and 2022, pedestrian fatalities increased 57 percent, from 4,779 to 7,522, NHTSA reports. In 2022, 88 percent of pedestrian deaths occurred in single-vehicle crashes.
The Slate Truck is practically diminutive compared to most other trucks on the road. It’s 69.3 inches tall, 174.6 inches long, and 70.6 inches wide (mirrors included), with a wheelbase of 108.9 inches. Compare that to the 2024 Ford Maverick — often held up as the type of compact truck most automakers don’t make anymore — which is 68.7 inches tall, 199.7 inches long, and 83.5 inches wide, with a 121.1-inch wheelbase. Slate even has a nifty visualizer on its website that compares its truck to the Maverick, as well as the Chevy Silverado EV and — delightfully — the 1985 Toyota SR5 Pickup.
The Slate Truck may come in a smaller package, but as Verge contributor Tim Stevens noted in his newsletter, it is still designed to do all the truck stuff truck owners love. Its cargo area measures 50 by 60 inches, and it can carry 1,433 pounds of payload and tow 1,000 pounds of whatever you’ve got. Most truck owners have convinced themselves that they need more, which is why the 2025 GMC Sierra 1500 offers a maximum towing capacity of up to 13,300 pounds. But when the average Airstream trailer weighs around 3,000–5,000 pounds, it’s unclear what owners are supposed to do with all that added towing power.
Slate’s approach to technology is also refreshingly simple. Instead of a giant central touchscreen, the company includes dash mounts for a smartphone or tablet. Slate offers its own app, but everything else you need to know is available on a smaller gauge cluster screen behind the steering wheel.
The Slate Truck is practically diminutive compared to most other trucks on the road
Research suggests that the shift toward touchscreen-based infotainment systems has accompanied a huge increase in driver distraction, with a AAA study concluding that drivers using touchscreens were visually and mentally distracted for more than 40 seconds when completing tasks like programming navigation or sending a text message. Removing your eyes from the road even for just two seconds doubles the risk of a crash.
Of course, this monastic approach to design helps Slate keep its costs low, which in turn allows the company to sell at rock-bottom prices. When the average new car buyer in America is paying $49,740, which according to Kelley Blue Book is close to an all-time high, then the idea of a low-cost, bare-bones, micro-truck with an all-electric powertrain (think lower maintenance costs, no pollution) suddenly starts to look a lot better than you might think.
To be sure, Slate faces an uphill battle. All the general caveats about starting a brand-new car company in America in 2025 apply. Customers could reject the lo-fi approach or turn their noses up at the idea of all the aftermarket customization. Who wants to do all that work? The Trump administration could kill the federal EV tax credit, which would then nudge the Slate Truck back up to more familiar Maverick territory of around $28,000.
But if it’s a hit, and people start clamoring for more affordable, smaller, right-size vehicles, then perhaps a world not overrun by gigantic, overstuffed, environment-destroying, killing machines is actually within reach.
