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For years, People have gazed longingly throughout the Pacific at nations the place you should purchase a wonderfully respectable pickup truck for the value of a good used automobile. In Thailand, you’ll be able to snag a brand-new Toyota Hilux for round $20,000. In Australia, fundamental work vehicles are as widespread as Starbucks areas. In the meantime, right here within the land of the free and residential of the $60,000 F-150, we’ve been caught watching inexpensive vehicles grow to be as extinct because the dodo chook.
The numbers inform a sobering story: out of lots of of latest automobiles hitting American tons in 2025, solely two dozen price lower than $27,000. Not a single one is a pickup truck. Not one is electrical. It’s sufficient to make you marvel if we unintentionally regulation-ed our means out of fundamental transportation.
The Nice American Truck Squeeze
Right here’s the factor about low-cost vehicles in America: they’ve usually been regulated into oblivion quicker than you’ll be able to say “rooster tax.” That obscure 25% tariff on imported gentle vehicles, initially geared toward defending American jobs within the Sixties, has successfully saved inexpensive international pickups off our shores for many years. Add in more and more stringent security and emissions requirements (which, to be clear, have saved numerous lives and cleaned our air), and abruptly that fundamental work truck turns into a $40,000 luxurious merchandise loaded with options most contractors by no means requested for.
Whereas different nations get pleasure from easy, no-frills pickups designed to haul stuff and preserve working, American consumers have been compelled into an arms race of leather-based seats, touchscreen infotainment programs, and therapeutic massage features. It’s like being compelled to purchase a tuxedo when all you wished was a pair of labor boots.
Enter the Aptly Named “Truck”
That is the place Slate, a Michigan-based startup, enters with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Their answer? A automobile known as, with refreshing honesty, the “Truck.” No fancy names, no advertising thrives – simply “Truck.” There’s no questioning what it’s, that’s for positive. However such a easy identify additionally pays homage to its general aim of being bare-bones and easy. It’s the essence of a truck.
Slate thinks they’ll promote this electrical pickup for round $25,000. In at present’s market, that’s not simply aggressive… It’s borderline miraculous. To place that in perspective, the common new automobile transaction value in America now hovers round $47,000. Discovering a $25,000 pickup truck at present normally means it’s falling aside and lacking an engine. However the Truck is model new, intact, and able to go.
Slate’s method is brilliantly simple: strip all the pieces all the way down to the necessities, then let clients add what they truly need. Each Truck rolls off the road basically similar – similar grey polypropylene physique panels (hey, Saturn flashbacks), similar black inside, similar single-cab configuration. Need coloration? Purchase a wrap. Need energy home windows? There’s an adjunct package for that. Want an infotainment system? Use your telephone. After all, that may price you.
Slate is sorta like Ikea: fundamental, practical, and customizable. The bottom mannequin offers you 150 miles of vary, 201 horsepower, air con, and the flexibility to haul 1,433 kilos. For a lot of truck consumers, that’s precisely what they’ve been asking for.
The Actuality Verify
Let’s be sincere: Slate faces odds that will make a Vegas bookie wince. EV startups have been dropping like flies, and the graveyard of formidable electrical automobile firms is getting crowded. The corporate should navigate provide chain challenges, manufacturing hurdles, and the truth that revenue margins on a $25,000 electrical automobile are thinner than these on fuel station rest room paper.
However in contrast to a few of their predecessors who appeared to function on vibes and enterprise capital, Slate has precise backing (together with Jeff Bezos), an actual manufacturing unit in Indiana, and a concrete manufacturing timeline. They’re even crash-testing their equipment, which suggests they’ve thought past the Instagram-worthy idea part.
The Slate Truck represents one thing bigger than simply one other EV startup’s Hail Mary cross. It’s a take a look at case for whether or not America can have good, easy, inexpensive issues once more. Whether or not we are able to step again from the function creep that has turned fundamental transportation right into a luxurious buy.
Positive, the Truck received’t tow your boat to Lake Tahoe or impress anybody on the nation membership. It received’t coddle you with heated steering wheels or play your Spotify playlist by premium sound programs. Nevertheless it may simply haul your lumber, get you to work, and do it with out requiring a automobile cost that rivals your mortgage.
In a rustic the place “inexpensive” and “pickup truck” have grow to be mutually unique phrases, Slate’s Truck – even at $25,000 – feels revolutionary. It’s not excellent, and it won’t succeed. However for the primary time in years, somebody is definitely attempting to offer People what they declare they need: a easy, sincere truck at an affordable value.
And truthfully? It’s about time. Let’s see if America steps up and buys it or if residents are realizing why an inexpensive truck is probably not as supreme as they thought it could be.
