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Slate Auto raises $650M for affordable electric trucks

As Tesla sales slump, an underdog seeks to disrupt the EV market with bare-bones pickup trucks.

Jeff Bezos-backed electric vehicle startup Slate Auto has raised another $650 million as the company prepares to put its first affordable pickup trucks into production by the end of 2026. The carmaker said Monday that the Series C funding round was led by TWG Global, a firm run by Guggenheim Partners chief executive (and Los Angeles Dodgers owner) Mark Walter and investor Thomas Tull.


The new round means Slate Auto has raised roughly $1.4 billion to date. Previous investors have included General Catalyst, Jeff Bezos' family office, VC firm Slauson & Co., and former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini, as TechCrunch first reported last year. The company is also loaded with Amazon DNA, co-founded by Amazon's former Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke.


The company’s Series C comes at a turbulent moment for the electric vehicle market in the United States. Major automakers are pulling back plans to launch electric vehicles here, especially after the loss of the $7,500 federal tax credit last year. Tesla's overall sales have declined two years in a row. Newcomers like Rivian and Lucid Motors have struggled to reach scale, though both of those companies are launching new, more affordable models this year.


Slate Auto is targeting the extreme low-end of the market with a bare-bones electric truck that is expected to start in the mid-$20,000s. Customers will be able to customize the truck in various ways for more money, including adding an SUV conversion kit for around $5,000.


The company has drawn a fair amount of interest even with the loss of the federal tax credit. The company has racked up more than 160,000 refundable reservations for its EV. The company recently said that it tapped Faricy as its new CEO in part to get working on converting these reservations into paid orders. Slate's also spending a few hundred million dollars renovating a former printing factory in Indiana where it plans to build the EVs.

Original source:  https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/13/slate-auto-raises-650m-to-fund-its-affordable-ev-truck-plans/
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