A mega billionaire, a recently bankrupt manufacturer, and a plucky startup have all made waves recently with news about interesting EV 4x4s. Perhaps the most intriguing is the alleged sub-$25,000 pickup from the mysterious Slate Auto, which TechCrunch reported earlier this week is backed by the financial might of Jeff Bezos. The once-promising EV concern Canoo went into receivership in January of this year, but its former CEO has been given the green light to buy its assets. And new startup Telo has started taking preorders for its tiny “urban adventure” vehicle.
Slate Auto Come Out of the Shadows
Per TechCrunch’s reporting, the bare-bones single-cab pickup seen in the image below, captured in Southern California by a Reddit user, is likely the design prototype for Slate Auto.
Over the last couple of years, Slate has raised significant capital through venture funding rounds linked not only to Bezos but also to other individuals with close ties to Amazon. Headquartered in Troy, Michigan, with design studios in Long Beach, California, Slate Auto is rumored to be eyeing a production facility near Indianapolis. The rumored low cost of entry suggests a relatively bare-bones base vehicle, and TechCrunch’s Sean O’Kane writes,
Slate plans to supplement the small margins of its low-cost truck by building out a line of accessories and apparel that owners can use to customize their vehicles and their looks… It has filled its executive ranks with former Harley-Davidson and Stellantis employees—two companies that have historically leaned on these kinds of ancillary businesses.
A clean “slate” for customization might be an attractive option to the adventure-minded pickup buyer, and the company has filed trademark protection for the phrase “We Build It, You Make It”. Details about the vehicle itself are essentially nonexistent, but Slate’s low-profile and methodical approach to building the company, along with the deep pockets behind it, may give the new firm a better chance at succeeding than now-bankrupt EV manufacturers Nikola, Fisker, and Canoo.
Canoo Comeback?
Canoo teased us with fanciful renderings of avant-garde EV adventure vans and cab-over pickups for a few years but could never get its head above water even after landing a handful of contracts with the Federal government, including a high-profile fulfillment for NASA. The Chapter 7 proceedings have yielded a single buyer for the remaining $4 million in assets sloshing around in Canoo’s bilge—the company’s former CEO and one of its biggest investors, Tony Aquila.
There hasn’t been any suggestion that Canoo may try to reboot production of its bubbly vans and trucks as of yet. Its history of burning through billions of dollars in record time with Aquila at the helm may create a significant barrier to a genuine comeback. But like Slate Auto, Canoo’s original gambit was also predicated on a huge range of customization and modularity for different lifestyles and purposes. Its crashworthiness and production reliability were both called into question early on, and the brand never was able to paddle hard enough to ramp up large-scale production.
Telo Goes Small
Telo Trucks is a Califorina-based startup showcasing its Lilliputian “urban adventure vehicle” that it says offers Toyota Tacoma capability and Tesla-like range in a footprint no bigger than a Mini Cooper (just 152 inches in length). The company is touting 500 horsepower, 1,700 pounds of payload, and a range of up to 350 miles for its long-range dual-motor 4WD model. Configurations include seating for up to eight and an optional weatherproof camper canopy with integrated lighting for the bed (at 60 inches, it’s longer than the Rivian R1T’s).
The 106 kWh EV battery will also feature 20-minute fast charging, and optional integrated solar panels for the roof, camper shell, or tonneau cover add a smidge more power harvesting to the equation. Renderings of the interior show a fabric-forward design and minimalist dash with a large central screen and a squared-off steering wheel. The space-age exterior pushes the wheels of the Telo to the far corners of the vehicle, giving it a stance that’s more van than pickup truck, and its short snout forgoes the extra storage afforded by the “frunk” found on the Rivian or Cybertruck. The dual-motor Telo will start at $46,000, and a deposit of just $150 will reserve your place in the production queue.
This is a delicate time in the automotive industry for EVs, as many big manufacturers have rolled back their more ambitious electric model lines in favor of new-generation hybrids and even internal combustion engines. High prices, shockingly unpredictable shifts in governmental policy directives, the death of other small EV startups, and even the tepid success of strongly capitalized companies like Lucid and Rivian (which reported its first-ever profits only in the last quarter of 2024) suggest a high degree of uncertainty for the electric car’s place in the current automotive landscape.
Of the three brands we looked at here, it is definitely Slate Auto’s future that seems the most compelling theater for overland adventurers to follow. If Slate can really offer a long-range, functional, and inexpensive 4WD platform with multiple possibilities for custom builds, direct-to-consumer sales, and Amazon cash behind it, we could see a genuine shift in the world of electrified off-roading. Thus far, truly affordable EVs have been something of a chimera—the average price of an EV in the US hovers around $55,000 (a well-optioned Telo will hit that mark easily), so cutting that price of entry by over half will likely be Slate’s biggest challenge.
Images: Telo, Reddit/discostranger09, Canoo
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