Ask just about anybody, and they’ll tell you that new cars are too expensive. In the wake of tariffs shaking the auto industry and with the Trump administration pledging to kill the federal EV incentive, that situation isn’t looking to get better soon, especially for anyone wanting something battery-powered. Changing that overly spendy status quo is going to take something radical, and it’s hard to get more radical than what Slate Auto has planned.

Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be, and yet it’s taken three years of development to get to this point.

But this is more than bargain-basement motoring. Slate is presenting its truck as minimalist design with DIY purpose, an attempt to not just go cheap but to create a new category of vehicle with a huge focus on personalization. That design also enables a low-cost approach to manufacturing that has caught the eye of major investors, reportedly including Jeff Bezos. It’s been engineered and will be manufactured in America, but is this extreme simplification too much for American consumers?

Simplify, Then Embrace Damage

If you haven’t seen the leaks and the reports of weirdly wrapped trucks hiding in plain sight, the Slate Truck is the first product from Michigan-based Slate Auto. Think “American kei truck” and you’re not far off. It’s a machine designed to be extremely basic, extremely customizable, and extremely affordable. Those are not your typical design goals, but then the Slate Truck isn’t the fruit of your typical design process.

Wander through any automotive design studio anywhere in the world and you’ll inevitably come across a mood board or two, sweeping collages of striking photos meant to align the creative flows of passers-by. They’re a tool for helping a disparate design team to create a cohesive product, but where many such mood boards feature glamour shots of exotic roads and beautiful people, front and center in the Slate’s mood board was something different: a big, gray shark, covered in scrapes and scars.

“It looks like a shark that has definitely been in more than one brawl and clearly has come out ahead because it’s still swimming,” says Tisha Johnson, head of design at Slate and who formerly spent a decade at Volvo. That aesthetic, of highlighting rather than hiding battle scars, is key to the Slate ethos.

Instead of steel or aluminum, the Slate Truck’s body panels are molded of plastic. Or, as Slate calls them, “injection molded polypropylene composite material.” The theory is that this makes them more durable and scratch-resistant, if only because the lack of paint means they’re one color all the way through. Auto enthusiasts of a certain age will remember the same approach used by the now-defunct Saturn Corporation, a manufacturing technique that never caught on across the industry.

Slate continues the theme through to the upholstery, too, a heathered textile that was designed to get better looking as it wears. The idea is to lean into the aged aesthetic.

But not everybody will dig the shark theme, and so the Slate Truck is designed to be customizable to a degree never seen before on a production vehicle. Johnson says this is in contrast to the overly curated experience offered by many brands.

She says over-curation by automotive designers results in situations like premium, luxury cars that are only available in a palette of disappointingly bland colors: “There’s usually only a fraction that you actually want, and those are always more expensive,” she says.

Disparaging other brands for offering limited color choices might seem disingenuous coming from the designer of a vehicle available in a single shade. The Slate Truck, though, was designed to take advantage of the current trend of vinyl-wrapping cars. Its simple shape and minimal trim pieces mean that even amateurs can do the job. Slate will offer DIY kits that newbies can slap on in an afternoon and replace just as quickly based on mood.

However, the biggest benefit of this monochromatic thinking might come in production.

Bare-Minimum Manufacturing

It’s probably no surprise to you that building cars is expensive. Elon Musk loves to bemoan just how complicated the process can be whenever Tesla is late shipping its next new model, but he’s far from alone in that assessment.

What is a little less commonly known is just how expensive it is to paint those cars. Creating a facility that can reliably, quickly, and cleanly lay down a quality coat of color on automotive body parts is a complicated task.

That task has only gotten more complicated (and thus expensive) in recent years, with greater environmental regulations and consumer expectations forcing manufacturers to find ways to offer more vibrant hues with less ecological impact. Mercedes-Benz just announced it’s building a “Next Generation Paintshop” at its Sindelfingen plant in Germany, and estimates place the thing’s cost at nearly $1 billion.

By eliminating paint, and thus eliminating the paint shop, Slate’s manufacturing process is massively simplified. So, too, the lack of metal body parts. “We have no paint shop, we have no stamping,” says Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s chief commercial officer who formerly led Tesla’s global business efforts.

Vehicle factories tend to have high ceilings to make room for the multiple-story stamping machines that form metal body parts. Injection molding of plastic is far easier and cheaper to do in limited spaces — spaces like the factory that Slate has purchased for its manufacturing, reportedly near Indiana. “The vehicle is designed, engineered, and manufactured in the US, with the majority of our supply chain based in the US,” Snyder says.

The simplification goes simpler still. Slate will make just one vehicle, in just one trim, in just one color, with everything from bigger battery packs to SUV upgrade kits added on later.

“Because we only produce one vehicle in the factory with zero options, we’ve moved all of the complexity out of the factory,” Snyder says.

While most buyers will rightly fixate on the cost of the truck, the bigger story here might just be this radically simplified approach to manufacturing. “From the very beginning, our business model has been such that we reach cash flow positivity very shortly after start of production. And so from an investment standpoint, we are far less cash-reliant than any other EV startup that has ever existed, as far as I know,” Snyder says.

As Slate tries to dash to production without tripping over the headstones of failed EV startups that litter the countryside, that leanness is key. It’s helped them attract some major investors. “The greatest industry magnates to invest in our company,” Snyder says. He declined to name names, but according to a TechCrunch report, one of those magnates is Jeff Bezos.

“We don’t have a direct connection to Amazon,” Snyder clarified, but he didn’t rule out some corporate cooperation. “Who knows? Who knows if you’ll be able to purchase on Amazon? I don’t know.”

Those vinyl wraps are literally just the first layer of what Slate’s designers are positioning as a, well, blank slate. They want owners to personalize every aspect of the vehicle, including its silhouette.

Need room for more than two passengers? Slate has an SUV upgrade kit that will bolt onto the back of the truck, adding extra rollover crash protection and rear seats with seat belts to match, all in a package that’s easy to install at home.

No, this isn’t a Subaru Brat redux. The seats will be forward-facing, and the whole setup is supposed to be strong enough to meet crash test regulations. In fact, Slate’s head of engineering, Eric Keipper, says they’re targeting a 5-Star Safety Rating from the federal government’s New Car Assessment Program. Slate is also aiming for a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

This will be, in large part, thanks to a comprehensive active safety system that includes everything from automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection to automatic high beams.

A mandatory part of today’s safety features is a digital rear-view camera. Typically, this view pops up on a modern car’s central infotainment screen, but the Slate doesn’t have one of those. It makes do with just a small display behind the steering wheel as a gauge cluster, which is where that rearview camera will feed. You’ll have physical knobs for controlling the in-cabin temperature controls plus the typical turn stalk and other switchgear, but that’s about it.

The truck not only lacks a touchscreen for infotainment duties, it lacks any form of entertainment at all beyond whatever fun you can get from the 201-horsepower, rear-drive configuration. There’s no radio, no Bluetooth, and no speakers of any kind beyond for those required to play basic warning chimes.

Many will consider this a cost-cutting step too far, but the interior was designed for ease of upgrading, with easy mounting space for anything from a simple soundbar to a full sound system.

There’s an integrated phone mount right on the dashboard, but there’s nothing stopping you from bringing something even larger. I expect the low-cost Android tablet and 3D-printing communities to have a field day coming up with in-car media streaming solutions.

The rather extreme omission of any kind of media system in the car is jarring, but it, too, has secondary benefits.

“Seventy percent of repeat warranty claims are based on infotainment currently because there’s so much tech in the car that it’s created a very unstable environment in the vehicle,” Snyder says.

Eliminating infotainment, the theory goes, necessarily boosts reliability. And reliability will be key because Slate is taking DIY to new extremes on the maintenance front, too.

The right to repair your devices is a massively important topic for everyone from smartphone users to smart tractor operators. Traditionally, auto manufacturers haven’t exactly gone out of their way to make DIY maintenance easy, partly because their dealers make so much money hawking cabin air filters and unnecessary coolant flushes.

As an EV, the maintenance schedule for Slate Truck should be minimal (most EVs don’t need much more than an annual tire rotation), but for any warranty concerns, the company will encourage users to do the fixes themselves. At least when it’s safe to do so.

“If you’re not going to break the vehicle and you’re not going to injure yourself, meaning high voltage, you can do service and warranty service on your vehicle yourself and have the videos and the helpline to support you to do that work,” Snyder says.

That support network will be called Slate University and it’ll teach you everything you need to know. Don’t fancy yourself a shade tree mechanic? Or maybe you don’t have a tree to park under in the first place? Slate has a partnership with already-established nationwide service centers, where owners can take their trucks for any needed fixes. Upgrades can be performed here as well, including installing an extended-range battery that will bring the truck’s maximum range up to 240 miles.

“At start of production, we will have coverage across the country for servicing your vehicle,” Snyder says. Snyder declined to say who will provide the service, but it seems reasonable to expect something along the lines of a Midas, Monro, Meineke, or perhaps some other nationwide service chain that begins with the letter M.

And finally, how can you buy one? It should come as no surprise that Slate will follow Tesla’s footsteps by offering direct sales. No nationwide network of dealerships is planned. Instead, a limited set of pickup centers will pop up as needed based on preorder data. Or, if you don’t mind paying a little more, home delivery will be available.

Preorders cost just $50 on Slate’s site, and deliveries are expected to start in late 2026. Slate hasn’t said exactly how much the truck will cost, only that it’ll be less than $20,000 after federal incentives — assuming those incentives are still in place in 18 months’ time.

The bigger question, though, is whether consumers will actually be into such a simplified vision of what a car can be. The Slate Truck is a rolling rejection of the current, bloated state of American motoring, but it’s consumer demand that’s driven the market down this dark alley. Are those consumers ready for a rolling digital detox?