PCWorld isn’t a site about cars or trucks, so I thank my editor and you for indulging me in this story. To be clear, I’m a Texan who’s been raging at gigantic 20-foot-long F-150 pavement princesses for more than a decade now—and yet, my desktop PC-building heart is going thump-thump-thump for the Slate electric pickup truck.
Slate is an American electric vehicle (EV) startup, and it’s far from the only one. We’ve seen almost every company that tried to follow in the footsteps of Tesla stumble and fall, dealing with the realities of a hugely competitive market that’s very difficult to break into. But Slate has the eye of the car-buying press because it’s shooting for a small, low-cost pickup truck, something that American buyers have been desperately missing for a long time. It probably doesn’t hurt that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a high-profile investor—that’ll get you some headlines.
The Slate pickup, with a name the same as the company, is aiming low. And I mean really low. The base model is expected to debut at $27,500 or so when it hits the streets in 2026, which would make it $20,000 if the US federal EV tax credit holds. (That seems like a long shot at this point.) But even without the credit, it would be cheaper than the Ford Maverick, the least expensive pickup truck on the US market right now. (Miss me with the “it’s not a truck” arguments. Again, the site is called PCWorld.) And it would be the cheapest electric pickup by far, with the F-150 Lightning starting at around $50,000.
How does Slate plan to do this? Well, again, it’s a very small pickup truck. By length it’s shorter than the Maverick, only a little longer than the 2-door Jeep Wrangler. This is the kind of teeny pickup Americans haven’t seen since the 80s, and enthusiasts have even taken to importing teeny-tiny “Kei trucks” to get their fix when all they can buy at dealers are giant gas guzzlers. Slate is well aware of this hole in the market and leaning into it, combining it with electric guts for maximum appeal to small truck fans, tech nerds, and those who just want something affordable.
But Slate is more than just a name. It’s a philosophy. See, the Slate is kind of like the truck version of an ATX desktop or a Framework laptop. When you buy the base model, it is indeed a base model. It has manual, wind-up, wind-down windows. It has no interior entertainment system and no speakers. It only has a tiny LCD screen for the speedometer and instrument cluster. It does have a phone holder, because it expects you to navigate and get your tunes from the phone in your pocket. This thing doesn’t even have paint—it only comes in slate gray (ha) and will wrap its big, flat external panels if you want something else.
The Slate’s interior comes with a phone charger and not much else, not even power windows. You can add in all the electronics yourself, from Slate or your own gear.
Slate
There’s the rub. Slate is both rejecting the car trend of upselling you tons and tons of extras, and embracing customization options at the same time. You can configure the Slate in near-endless ways. You can add a rear roof and an extra row of seats to make it an SUV. You can order a lift kit to make it more capable off-road (though sadly there’s no AWD or 4×4 option at launch). You can add extra range with a bigger battery. You can add in all the extra little creature comforts in the exterior that’ll bring it up to modern standards, including speakers and power windows.
And here’s the crucial thing that gets me excited: you can add all of these elements to the truck yourself. Slate will sell the parts directly to you and give you videos on how to install them. While this was generally an option for modern cars, it’s far from easy, and plenty of installations require some advanced knowledge or tools. Slate plans to make it easy for anyone with a basic home tool box and access to YouTube, and it’s calling the instructional videos “Slate University.”
Slate
While Slate will be happy to sell you all these customizations pre-installed, you can also buy them and install them yourself at any time, even swapping them out to reconfigure the truck for specific purposes. Suddenly got a new family member and need an extra row of seats? Just order the SUV kit and break out the ratchet set. And since it’s all designed to be as accessible as possible, even for non-greasemonkeys, I imagine that the aftermarket parts makers (especially those that are already selling gear for pickup trucks and Jeeps) are going to have a feeding frenzy.
Again, the variability and invitation to tinker remind me of the wide-open possibilities when building a desktop PC. And this “customize it however you want” approach is pretty much exactly what Framework is doing with its excellent laptops, right down to the modular USB-C ports that can be swapped almost instantly. Granted, shifting a bog-standard Slate pickup to a full SUV would take a lot more time and effort. But it wouldn’t take a trip to the dealership, and that’s the appeal for me.
Slate
Slate is currently taking reservations for its initial deliveries, planned for late 2026. A refundable $50 deposit saves your spot, and in the meantime you can use Slate’s very fun customization tool to tweak your little dream electric truck to your heart’s desire.
There’s a lot that can happen in the next year and change—just ask anyone who’s trying to run a US-based PC business right now. I wouldn’t bet more than fifty bucks on Slate making that timeline in the current chaos, or keeping to that low starting price. But for the first time in a long time, a new car has me genuinely excited. Just get me that AWD option before too long, please, because a rear-wheel drive pickup is not going to get up a gravel driveway in five inches of snow.
