Slate Truck is an outrageously sensible pickup

Slate promises to revolutionize the pickup truck market with its new single cab BEV.

With backing from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the Michigan company has revealed the ‘Truck’. An ultra-affordable interpretation of everything the market and forum lurkers have been pining for: an essential and affordable BEV with a loadbed.

Industrial designers and engineers at Slate have applied the matrix of essentialist product development to this single cab pickup, which is smaller than a Ford Maverick and classes as a global sub-compact pickup.

Think of this new BEV as more of a Ranger/Hilux single cab rival, although it’s shorter than either, with a bumper-to-bumper total length of only 4.4m. That compact overall length should make it much more agile than other pickups in congested inner-city traffic conditions or when edging into delivery zones.

Can become an SUV – when needed

The design is disarmingly simple, without superfluous finishes like faux chrome garnish or styling creases. There’s also a modular kit, which evolves the single cab to a multi-passenger SUV.

Charming and rugged, Slate’s Truck has some clever design features. Its taillights and front turn indicators feature protective grille coverings. Experienced commercial single cab pickup drivers know that corner lights are usually the first vulnerabilities when navigating unfamiliar terrain, or a dark warehouse marshalling area, at night.

Very low low rating

Does the Truck’s utilitarian appearance equal real-world hauling ability? It might be smaller than Ford’s Maverick, but Slate’s carries nearly the same payload, with a peak rating of 650kg. That’s significantly less than the standard 1t payload capacity that most global market single cab pickup trucks regard as a minimum requirement.

Towing? That appears to be a legitimate weakness of Slate’s single cab. This BEV pickup is only rated for hooking-up 450kg of trailering. It’s a bizarrely low tow rating for a pickup truck. And it’s not a question of powertrain, because the Truck has a peak torque rating of 400Nm. Globally, several diesel-powered single cabs with less than 400Nm of torque can tow a 3500kg braked trailer…

Two range options

What about performance and range? The Truck is only available in rear-wheel drive, with a 150kW motor drawing power from two battery pack options: 52.7kWh or a more potent 84.3kWh pack. Respective driving ranges are 240- and 380km.

Top speed is limited to 150km/h, to conserve battery range. With the fixed gear set-up, 0-100km/h acceleration is 8-seconds, entirely decent for a compact single cab work truck.

Ride quality and stability should be terrific across diverse road surfaces, from highways to unsealed, corrugated dirt tracks. Like most contemporary pickups, front suspension is an all-independent MacPherson strut configuration, with a De Dion semi-independent rear axle set-up.

Slate has steelies

The standard wheel option is a steel 17-inch, rolling 245/65 all-terrain tyres; a terrifically sensible standard wheel and tyre specification. There are options to inch-up, but with the steelies being so durable and harmonizing so well with Slate’s design language, why would you?

Beyond the terrific exterior design, the cabin is clever, too. Cost containment means no annoyingly oversized infotainment screen, power windows or horrible haptic HVAC. There are no technical spec typos; this is a new BEV with manual window winders.

There are three primary physical dials for HVAC and an integration slot for your tablet or Smartphone, without any foundational infotainment. It doesn’t even feature wired speakers, although those are optional.

Project managers might have deleted all the infotainment and screens, but safety adherence means the Truck will have factory-fitted airbags, autonomous emergency braking and forward-collision warning.

Potential price hero

Slate’s commitment to the theme of functional execution, means the Truck is being targeted for a customer delivery price of less than $28 000. That’s the promise, although the company doesn’t yet have a commissioned assembly facility. There’s mention of a revived legacy Midwestern plant being used.

With average new vehicle pricing in the US market hovering uncomfortably near $50 000, the idea of a built-to-purpose single cab BEV pickup, at just over half that price, is what many new vehicle buyers and small business owners want.