Slate Auto: Everything you need to know about the Bezos-backed EV startup

In April 2025, a caller institution called Slate Auto came retired of stealth and shocked the car industry. Not lone was this startup focused connected making an ultra-cheap, customizable electrical pickup motortruck with backing from Jeff Bezos, but it had besides been operating successful concealed for 3 years successful Troy, Michigan — the backyard of large automakers similar Ford and General Motors.

TechCrunch was archetypal to the story, reporting successful aboriginal April astir the company’s existence, its engagement with the Amazon founder, and its funny and unsocial concern model. The weeks betwixt our study and Slate’s authoritative coming retired enactment successful precocious April provided a whirlwind of news, with prototypes of the startup’s motortruck popping up astir California.

Slate is an aberration successful the U.S. EV sector, wherever bankruptcies, failed merchandise launches, and pivots person go commonplace. And portion its existent backers, enforcement lineup, archetypal product, and concern exemplary supply a compelling way forward, the roadworthy is inactive riddled with imaginable hurdles arsenic it pushes toward accumulation successful precocious 2026.

Here’s a timeline that charts retired everything you request to cognize astir Slate Auto, from its root communicative and backers to its product, concern model, and accumulation plans.

April 8 – After a year-long investigation, TechCrunch published a communicative revealing that a secretive EV startup called Slate Auto had been operating for 3 years with the fiscal backing of Jeff Bezos and LA Dodgers proprietor Mark Walter.

Unlike different EV startups, Slate had been moving connected processing an highly low-cost electrical pickup motortruck that would commencement astatine astir $25,000. This motortruck would beryllium profoundly customizable, leveraging the acquisition of galore erstwhile employees from Harley-Davidson and Chrysler, 2 companies that person extended accessories and aftermarket parts businesses.

April 10 – One time later, a photograph of a nondescript electrical motortruck started circulating connected the r/whatisthiscar subreddit, with Redditors speculating it could beryllium Slate’s enigma EV.

TechCrunch was capable to corroborate the photograph was, successful fact, of a prototype of Slate’s motortruck parked extracurricular the company’s Long Beach, California plan center.

April 21 – Slate began putting conception versions of the Slate EV connected nationalist streets to make selling buzz up of its planned motorboat lawsuit connected April 24. Curiously, immoderate of them appeared to beryllium styled much similar SUVs oregon hatchbacks, not conscionable pickup trucks.

TechCrunch was capable to corroborate the institution had developed the EV to person “Transformer-like” modular capabilities, and that this stunt was a mode to tease this customization.