this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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As Canadian…
American company?, nope
Owned by Bezos?, hell nah
Bezos was one investor, not the owner
source
Bezos was seed money AND part of the owner conglomerate that raised all the capital the company started with in 2024. That is enough for me to avoid this like the plague as it will, certain as the sun is hot, be enshitified to the core
If you do not believe me, here is an article explaining how this is all a big Amazon initiative
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
I would truly not be surprised that this would be an attempt to take over there ev truck market, but manufacturers should have been paying attention. There's a huge market for small ass trucks, no one is catering to it
While I'm sure they'll try to enshittify, the downside to that plan is that they need to make sure no one takes their place and they need to have something people want that they can enshittify. The benefit of simplicity is that it makes it simpler for another manufacturer to pick up the slack.
I drove a small truck at one point. Think a late 90s Tacoma, Ranger, or something like that. I don't want an F250. I don't want a Ram 3500. I just want to be able to haul a bed full of bikes to the MTB trail and help my friends move a washing machine.
Slate has a size comparison widget on their website. You can show it with the silhouette of a current full size pickup and a circa 1985 small pickup. It's almost exactly the same size as that generation.
That's cool. 99spokes does that for bicycles and I've found it useful in that respect. Would be cool to compare all of the cars I ever had like that.
Exactly mini-truck FTW! They used to be everywhere. Now you can't find one.
I really love my hybrid Maverick. It is still bigger than I want, but it works really well and averages about 40mpg. I can also fit it in a normal parking spot, which is nice.
I wish the Maverick was body on frame and had better tow capacity. It’s almost what I want.
Absolutely correct. The American car makers keep on saying "we only want big trucks" but that is complete BS, there is plenty of demand for smaller trucks which is why they have lobbied the gov to all but ban any possible import
While this is true in theory, in practice it rarely shows up. If these trucks do deliver a good, simple experience at $25K, others would not be able to just copy it and catch up. It would be easier for any of the big guys to just buy the company.
If the company is not for sale, then they would have the monopoly on small trucks and thus, freedom to enshitify
Blame a 62 year old law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
I had this badboy in the 90s and it was the most practical vehicle.
I agree, but without the complications of a combustion engine, it makes it a lot easier. You can buy ev conversion kits for around $15k, so there's also an "I'll make my own, with blackjack, and hookers" option.
Ford is. The Maverick is selling like hotcakes (not the 60s coupe). And they have an electric small truck coming soon as well. There's also Tello.
Same as a European, I do hope it succeeds though and as much as I hate bezos if he's backing shit like this my opinion of him has increased by about 3.83%.
Hmm? We have much better options available in Europe
With this much modularity and a simple-by-design approach?
For the life of me I don’t know why we don’t develop something like this in Canada. It’s so frustrating, we have the people, the manufacturing space, the materials, we could do this.
Whenever something about Canada making vehicles gets brought up, all the nay sayers climb on immediately saying how it can’t be done. I’m sick and tired of them. Nothing worth doing comes easy, if left to these naysayers we’d all be still living in squalor.
We need to move away from the U.S. entanglement, the American public can’t be trusted to elect a proper government.
Building our own low cost, modest feature vehicles would be an excellent start. How many features of a car do people use for a normal commute to work, or such? I’d love a truck like the Slate, except it has to have 4 wheel drive ability. After having Hondas with all wheel drive, I’ll never go back to an older 2 wheel drive vehicle.
Ive had TWO vehicles that were manufactured in Canada. They were both fine. What weirdos are saying canada cant build cars?
Before the current political chaos, you would have made a mint. A little ingenuity and affordable value, along with the worlds second biggest car market next door would have been huge
It's never going to be released. Zero prototypes and being pushed by a billionaire.
At this point I think there's a high likelihood that production will start close to their plan of late this year. As the other commenter said, you can go watch multiple videos of test drives. Pre-orders opened yesterday. But what do I know?
They've been promoting it recently and have several working prototypes that they've been driving influencers around in. There was one video with Marques Brownlee and they even let him drive it himself.
Sounds like it's your chance to pull an Edison (like the Canadian Edison semi trucks).
Ew Edison...
But yes, some other poster also was surprised something like this could not be started up in Canada
I know our government here is also crappy and has tried to squash related initiatives before but I should look into it more
Is your issue with the man or the company? I actually don't know much about Edison trucks beyond that they exist.
The man... Edison was last century Jobs, best that can be said is that he had a good eye for business but basically just took other people's work, milked them and toss them aside making a profit for himself in the process without regards to the harm he was knowingly causing
Yes I'm aware of his story. The Canadian company named themselves such because they were stealing Tesla's (Elon musk's company) idea for the electric semi namely because they never delivered and the guy really wanted one so figured he may as well make one himself. They seem like a pretty decent company, although very small.
oh wow, that I did not know (the company's backstory), thanks for sharing
New Chinese EVs will be hitting the streets soon. Much cheaper and higher quality.
I heard that Bezos left the company as an investor. I don't blame you for disliking anything American, but Slate Auto seems alright so far...
He was never "in it"; but he put up the seed money, then participated in the main round of fund raising and placed a ton of his people in the company. So even if his is not personally involved, he has all the strings he needs to pull it where he wants it to go (which, IMO, means Slate will be enshitified to the full the moment those little trucks start selling)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/08/inside-the-ev-startup-secretly-backed-by-jeff-bezos/
If they enshittify in the future, then you can just not buy one of the enshittified trucks. The old ones will still be out there, rolling around fine, without any internet connection that the company could use to remotely sabotage them.
What I wonder is how exactly are they going to enshittify it? It's extremely barebones and modular in a way that anyone can design add-ons and accessories for it. I can see them doing subscriptions and the like for various add-ons but you can always just get the base model and get add-ons elsewhere.
They can betray the customer in many different ways... I am not willing to pay $25K to find out
Generally yes, but with a modular and simple-by-design vehicle... how though?
They could simply stop producing certain parts, sneak a specific custom piece somewhere, provide no diagrams or documentation for third parties to produce repairs. They could simply design parts that fail just after warranty. There is an app that goes with it, right there they have the chance to scan and sell your data, push ads to you, track your driving, etc.
I don't know exactly but there are more ways they can enshitify a product than my imagination allows.
You see, greedy people do not enshitify for sport, they do it for greed as enshitification means more money for them. So unless you are convinced Bezos put money here to help people and not make as much money as possible back, the only logical conclusion is that he wants to milk it as hard as possible, this is what he does.
I think my desire for a small electric pickup truck might override my caution in this case, we'll see if I get burned. At the very least I'm not going to preorder and will wait for real critical reviews after it's released.
that's honestly a good approach… I'd do the same