Word of a brand-new electric-vehicle startup might call to mind the strange days of the COVID era, when headlines were jam-packed with all sorts of Tesla wannabes. Some went public without an actual product or a dime in revenue. Not surprisingly, most never quite took off. Some straight-up crashed and burned. 

Slate emerged on Thursday as a very different kind of EV startup: one focused on bringing affordability back to America's car market. That starts with a back-to-basics, highly customizable two-door pickup truck that Slate claims will cost less than $20,000 after applying the federal EV tax credit. 

"The heart of the market that we're going into is more the wage earner, the mass population," Chris Barman, Slate's CEO, told InsideEVs. "There's a massive population out there that is looking for that affordable vehicle."

The startup was founded in 2022, and one could argue its timing couldn't be better. Car prices in this country never recovered from the supply squeeze of the pandemic and have remained way out of hand. A record share of American car buyers—nearly 20%—now sign up for 84-month car loans. The average monthly payment for a new vehicle has stabilized at around $750. 

The average battery-powered ride, meanwhile, will set you back an eye-watering $60,000. That's a huge drag on efforts to break up with gasoline. Tesla talked about a $25,000 EV at some point, but like a lot of that automaker's lofty promises, it hasn't materialized. 

What Is The Slate Truck?

I checked out Slate's new truck during a preview event in Los Angeles last week. The company's novel approach to building an EV business goes deeper than just making a dirt-cheap set of wheels. Here are the basics.

It's refreshingly compact, sitting at 174.6 inches long or over two feet shorter than a Ford Maverick. It reminds me of the two-door pickups of a different era—before Toyota Tacomas and Ford Rangers got super-sized. It has a five-foot bed, a seven-cubic-foot frunk and a simple, utilitarian design. 

It uses a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive setup with around 200 horsepower. With the included 52.7-kilowatt-hour battery equipped, it'll return a projected 150 miles of range—not great, but Slate says this is meant to be an around-town vehicle more than a road-tripper. 

"We recognize that it's not a vehicle for everybody, especially if you have to go long distances," Barman, a longtime Chrysler executive, said.