TROY – What if you could walk into your driveway, snap your fingers, and convert your vehicle to fit your needs? For moving day, you could reassemble it into a pickup truck, or for a hot date, make it into a sleek convertible.
This sounds like the plot of an episode of “Transformers,” but it’s actually a concept the folks at Michigan-based startup Slate Auto want to bring to life in the form of an affordable EV.
To promote its upcoming vehicles, Slate, backed by Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, recently pulled a stunt where it wrapped one of its EVs in an ad for a fake company called Rockabye Rides. The sides of the vehicle are emblazoned with the word “CryShare,” and the top rack holds six baby carriers. The slogan, “When the baby drives you crazy, we drive them to sleep,” indicated a service that likely sounds like heaven to the exhausted parents of a newborn.
Going to the website shown on the car, RockabyeRides, leads to a countdown page for Slate’s April 24 launch event at Long Beach Airport and a quote that says “Slate is a truck that changes everything.”
Slate Is Michigan-Based Startup
Founded in 2022, Slate has operated in relative secrecy until TechCrunch published a report revealing Bezos’ financial involvement, as well as its plan to price its EV at around $25,000 while encouraging buyers to customize the vehicle to their liking. That base model is referred to as the “Blank Slate” version, according to a trademark application and another person familiar with the company’s plans. Slate has also filed for a trademark for the phrase: “We Built It. You Make It.”
The Autopian’s David Tracy traveled to Venice, California over the weekend where Slate parked a concept version of the truck made to look like a two-door SUV used by a fake business. Similarly, Reddit users posted pictures over the weekend of yet another version of the truck made to look like a hatchback that almost resembles Rivian’s forthcoming R3.
The vehicle Tracy saw up close this past weekend looks just like the two-door pickup truck spotted by a Reddit user earlier this month in Long Beach, but with a hard cover over the bed that gives it more of an SUV shape. The vehicle is covered in a wrap for a fake business called “Rockabye Rides,” which includes a URL that leads to a website that is counting down to Slate’s event later this week.
That makes three different silhouettes we’ve seen of Slate’s truck so far — and that adaptability is something the company has privately touted as it locked down well over $100 million in funding, TechCrunch has learned.
Big Money Backers Behind Slate
Slate’s leadership focused heavily on the “Transformer” metaphor as it wooed investors to fill out its Series B funding round last year, according to a person familiar with the pitches. The company carefully choreographed the meetings around the idea, according to another person familiar with how they went.
This involved showing prospective investors a generic version of the truck, and then leading them to another room while a team quickly customized the vehicle. Then the prospective investors would be brought back to the first room only to find the truck looking completely different.
Those efforts appear to have been convincing. Bezos is not the only big backer on Slate. CEO of Guggenheim Partners and controlling owner of the LA Dodgers Mark Walter is also on board, as is Thomas Tull, lead investor of Re:Build Manufacturing. A public filing from 2023 shows that Slate raised at least $111 million in a Series A funding round that year.
