The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

Is the market ready for a four-wheeled digital detox?

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.”

BYOD

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.