The Affordable EV Truck Dream Is in Trouble

🌟 Editor's Note

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This Week’s Big Charge

🛻 Slate Truck's $20K Dream Is In Trouble, Thanks to Vanishing EV Tax Credits

I call it the Great Squeeze-Out. It’s happening everywhere, but it’s especially pronounced for us Americans.

We work longer hours than ever, with less upward mobility than we’ve had in decades, all while we struggle with the costs of everything from groceries to car insurance to streaming services. We’re squeezed out in almost every area of our lives.

I think that’s why Slate Auto’s electric truck got more hype and attention than any new vehicle debut I’ve covered since … well, probably the Tesla Cybertruck. (Which, in case you forgot, was supposed to start around $39,900, but we all know how that turned out.)

That’s because the truck from the Jeff Bezos-backed startup seemed like a rare respite from all that squeezing, thanks to its ambitious starting price tag: $25,000. Or below $20,000 with electric-vehicle tax credits, as the company promised.

Granted, what you get is a bare-bones affair, with roll-down windows (yes, really), a flat gray exterior color, no radio or speakers, and only 150 miles of range on its standard battery.

But hey—it would be new, and cheap! The kind of small and utilitarian truck Americans can’t even buy anymore, like the Chevrolet S-10 or the old Toyota truck that was so basic it was just named “Truck.” A capable little zero-emission vehicle for a landscaper or a small business, or even a retired couple. Not bad at all, when the average new EV price is still more than $50,000.

“We are building the affordable vehicle that has long been promised but never been delivered,” Slate Auto’s CEO Chris Barman said at its launch event.

But then politics had to get in the way. President Donald Trump’s signing of the Big Beautiful Bill ends the $7,500 tax credit for qualifying EVs on Sept. 30. That means the Slate Truck, pegged to go into production toward the end of 2026, will be more expensive as a result.

Is the Slate Truck the first real victim of the Trump administration’s rollback of policies that supported EV growth?

🛠️ Here’s what we know:

• TechCrunch was first to report that the company dropped the “under $20,000” language from its website. It now says, somewhat more awkwardly, that it starts in the “mid-twenties.”

• Slate Auto has largely been silent on what the loss of the tax credits means for its overall business, but it has also not announced that its strategy is changing.

• As my colleague Tim Levin reported at InsideEVs this week, jumping into the mid-$20,000 range puts the Slate Truck in contention with the hot-selling Ford Maverick compact truck—which has window buttons, a radio, two extra doors, and can do a lot more than 150 miles because it runs on gas.

Put simply, losing the EV tax credits could be a real blow to the Slate Truck’s value proposition. But the situation goes deeper than just more EV doom-and-gloom, which, for the record, is not how I wanted to launch this newsletter.

📊 More Context:

• The Slate Truck is due to be built at a factory in Warsaw, Indiana, using U.S.-made nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries.

• That’s a lot of jobs supporting both efforts. Are they at risk here if the truck ends up being less of a bargain?

• Around the time Trump was signing the bill into law, Toyota, Nissan and Honda all announced delays to new EVs. This tells you how much was riding on the tax credits (and tougher emissions rules), and what’s at stake with their reversal.

A bigger question we should all be asking now is this: Is the United States still a reliable manufacturing partner when our elected leaders hit reverse on major policy decisions every few years?

After all, an entire battery industry was supposed to spring up around the Biden-era climate policies, and now, here we are. So, how is anyone supposed to plan for this kind of uncertainty?

🧠 My Take:

• I don’t believe the Slate Truck is DOA. I think it’ll still come to fruition. But the company must have planned for this, considering that Trump campaigned on a promise to end the tax credits.

• Considering the attention the company got when it launched (including a spread in Newsweek), the company would do well to explain what its backup plans are.

• This is also a good reminder that people in China can buy great EVs all day long for well under $20,000. But here in America, the squeezing continues.

📰 More Stories That Matter

• Ford’s $3 billion battery plant in Michigan, which uses technology licensed from China’s CATL, will keep its federal tax credits after those were kept in the Big Beautiful Bill. That’s a huge cost savings for Ford’s future EV plans.

• Because 850 horsepower somehow wasn’t enough, Rivian is now rolling out its updated Quad Motor R1S and R1T with power boosted to 1,025 hp.

• Meanwhile, CEO RJ Scaringe has tough love for the so-called “traditional” car industry: he says most of them wish “this whole EV thing would just go away.”

• The charming but expensive Volkswagen ID. Buzz may have landed with a thud because of one of VW’s oldest problems: its struggle to design cars for the American market, the Wall Street Journal reports with insider accounts.

• Many car companies are trying to make in-car AI assistants, and I’ve experienced some very impressive examples of this in China already. But next week, Tesla’s cars get the xAI-developed Grok—right on the heels of the chatbot praising Hitler on X and the departure of that company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

• Speaking of AI, my former colleagues at The Drive have been all over Hertz’s use of AI-powered scanners to send out expensive bills for minor rental car damage. Ouch.

🔍 On My Radar

• What happens to America’s push for electrification if tax credits disappear? That question may define the next phase of this transition.

• But many industry sources I’ve spoken to say it’s a moment that will reward the serious players in the long term; a “proving ground moment,” as one called it; “No more participation trophies,” another said.

• I’m especially curious about what the Hyundai Motor Group will do next, after it made big plans for U.S. EV production. And what this situation (and tariffs) means for its more affordable electric models, like the Kia EV3 and Kia EV4.

• Meanwhile, the used EV market is surging, and that’s one of the few places where you can still get a great deal. I’ll be keeping an eye on prices and supplies, especially before the $4,500 used EV tax credit runs out.

• One other casualty of the Big Beautiful Bill: the de-facto loss of regulatory emissions credits, which made Tesla $595 million in the first quarter of this year alone.

🔌 Charging News

There’s actually loads of good news in the charging space lately.

• New York State is catching up to California on charging infrastructure. The state just awarded millions in grants under its Vehicle Grid Integration Program, including for lamp-post chargers.

• Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging will roll out more than 500 ultra-fast charging stalls at outdoor malls owned by real estate giant Federal Realty starting in 2026.

• Ford will keep throwing in a free home Level 2 charger and covering installations until the EV tax credits run out on Sept. 30.

• In the United Kingdom, Octopus Energy and BYD are bundling new cars and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) home chargers—meaning they can also put energy back to the grid when needed. Imagine if that became an industry standard.

• One under-reported story: public charging in the U.S. is getting more powerful, rolling out more quickly and with more stalls per location than ever before.

🤖 Autonomy News

• Tesla is now trying to expand its fledgling Robotaxi service to Arizona, TechCrunch reports. San Francisco is also on the horizon, the company says.

• Meanwhile, Waymo sets its sights on the worst place to drive in America: New York City. But it has lots of hurdles to clear first.

• Vehicles from General Motors’ shuttered Cruise robotaxi service are back in testing, this time to develop autonomous technology for cars that consumers can buy.

• Is OpenAI the dark horse in the autonomy race? “We have some new technology that could just do self-driving for standard cars way better than any current approach has worked,” CEO Sam Altman said on a recent podcast.

📤️ Spread the Charge

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❓️ How’s My Driving?

This is my first outing with Route Zero! What do you think of the format and content so far? This is a work in progress, so all feedback is welcome. Send me your thoughts anytime.

💡 Did You Know? EV tax credits have been around longer than you may think, and they haven’t always been so hotly partisan. The first ones were introduced in 2005—by the George W. Bush Administration, if you can believe it.

Until next time,

—Patrick George