Slate Auto Opens Preorders for Its Electric Truck on June 24
Slate Auto Opens Preorders for Its Electric Truck on June 24
Slate Auto will let people reserve its first vehicle starting June 24. The company will also announce prices that day for what it calls the Slate Truck — an electric pickup that can also work like an SUV by changing its shape.
The startup is based in Troy, Michigan, and has received money from Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon) and Mark Walter (who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers). Slate Auto is joining a growing market of electric trucks that already includes Ford's F-150 Lightning and Rivian's R1T, along with other newer companies and traditional automakers.
What makes Slate Auto's truck different is that it can switch between two layouts. You can use it as a pickup truck one day and as an SUV another day. How exactly this works, though, hasn't been explained in detail yet.
Who Started the Company and Who's Backing It
Slate Auto started in 2022 as a side project within another company called Re:Build Manufacturing. Three people founded it: Miles Arnone, William Barker, and Jeff Wilke. In 2024, they got funding from wealthy investors and investment firms, including Bezos and Walter. This is a common pattern right now — rich investors and big investment companies are betting that electric vehicles will change the car industry.
Leadership Changes
The company's leader changed recently. Chris Barman was the original CEO, but Peter Faricy took over. Faricy used to work at Amazon. This kind of leadership shift happens fairly often in startups as they grow from building prototypes to making actual cars.
The Truck's Design
The Slate Truck is designed to do two jobs instead of one. Instead of making a separate pickup truck and a separate SUV, Slate Auto is building one vehicle that can do both. This can cut down on how complicated manufacturing is and how much inventory the company has to keep.
Electric trucks are typically expensive, so a single vehicle that works as both a truck and an SUV might appeal to people who want options without buying two vehicles. But a vehicle that changes shape introduces extra moving parts and systems that could need maintenance. Whether this actually works well in the real world remains to be seen.
Where It's Built and Designed
Slate Auto works from two places. Manufacturing happens in Troy, Michigan, which gives the company access to auto suppliers and factory experience. Design work happens in Long Beach, California, where technology companies cluster. This split approach — doing manufacturing in the industrial Midwest while keeping design teams near Silicon Valley — mirrors what Tesla and other electric car startups have done.
The electric truck market has matured. Early startups had to prove that electric drivetrains could work as well as traditional engines. Now the competition is about software, how the vehicle feels to use, and new features like Slate's convertible design. Where startup trucks once competed mainly on power and speed, they now compete on practicality and innovation.
Whether adding the ability to change shapes actually makes a difference to buyers is still an open question. People shopping for electric trucks are increasingly focused on reliability and access to charging stations rather than novel features.
Pricing and Competition
June 24 is a crowded time in the electric truck market. Big automakers are investing heavily in electric vehicles, and factories are ramping up production. Supply chain problems that slowed early launches have mostly cleared up, but now there is intense competition for buyer attention.
Electric trucks face particular challenges. Commercial and fleet operators — companies that run delivery fleets, for example — have started buying them because they can plan their charging around predictable routes. Regular consumers, though, still have concerns about whether these trucks can handle everyday use and whether charging stations are available wherever they need to go.
When Slate announces its price on June 24, that will send an important signal about where the company is positioning itself. Electric vehicles generally cost more than traditional gas vehicles, but prices are dropping as manufacturers make more of them. Slate's price will show whether the company is targeting wealthy buyers, everyday consumers, or somewhere in between.
Making the Vehicles and Scaling Up
Slate Auto has said when preorders will start, but hasn't announced when the truck will actually roll off the factory line or how many it can make. The company's connection to Re:Build Manufacturing suggests it has access to factory know-how, but getting from a working prototype to mass production is a difficult step that has tripped up many startups.
Building cars is expensive and heavily regulated — much more so than building software or apps. Slate Auto will need to prove it can handle manufacturing, quality control, customer service, and software updates all at once. The June 24 announcement will be an early test of whether the idea actually appeals to people, but real success depends on executing all of those harder parts.
A truck that changes shape is genuinely different from what other companies are selling. Whether that difference matters enough to justify the added complexity will depend on what customers think once they see the price and specifications.
