Slate Auto, the Jeff Bezos-backed electric truck startup, has now amassed more than 150,000 refundable reservations for its low-cost EV that is expected to go on sale in late 2026.
The company shared the amount in a new Q&A video with CEO Chris Barman, where he answers questions from those reservation holders about the company’s plans for self-driving (there aren’t any) or whether owners will be able to install a car seat in the optional rear seats (they will).
Reservations are a somewhat useful metric for gauging general interest in a new car, but they are by no means a surefire indicator of success. Time and time again in recent years, we’ve seen EV companies tout booking numbers only to collapse, either because they couldn’t get through the difficult process of standing production or because they weren’t ready to have cars on the road.
For Slate, it’s promising that the number has continued to grow, meaning new bookings are coming faster than any attrition the company might see. That said, Slate surpassed the 100,000 booking mark by May, right after it came out of stealth, so it took seven months to grow the list by 50%. And looking ahead, Slate plans to build 150,000 of these EVs annually at the plant it’s renovating in Warsaw, Indiana, so it’ll need to attract a lot more buyers if it plans to succeed in the market.
Any continued enthusiasm for the Slate EV should be a reassuring sign for the company, given the state of electric trucks overall these days. Just yesterday, Ford announced that it is ending production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning, the first battery-powered large truck that hit the US market a few years ago. (It’s being replaced by a version with an attached gas generator.) The company said the Lightning just wasn’t making enough money—a fact compounded by how Ford could never sell more than a few thousand per quarter. Sales of other electric trucks, such as Tesla’s Cybertruck and General Motors’ Silverado EV, have also struggled to stay above that mark.
Of course, the Lightning was something of a Frankenstein’s monster vehicle, with Ford incorporating EV technology into a design originally intended for gas engines. The Slate truck is designed from the ground up to be an EV, and the company is hyper-focused on selling it at a price in the $20,000 range. Dropping offers from Ford and others may help pave the way for the Slate to find early success — that is, until Ford’s real shot at a low-cost EV hits the market in 2027.
