Whatever You Asked For, Slate Auto’s Electric Pickup Truck Did It Across Eight Cities

Two weeks, eight-ish cities, and one pre-production Slate pickup rolling from Indiana toward California with no script and no spare day to get ready. Slate Auto framed the You Asked For It Tour as a working road trip rather than a victory lap. Followers sent tasks by comment and direct message. The crew took the next one that landed, loaded the truck, and left.

The Slate made its premiere in Warsaw, Indiana, at the old catalog company that is now producing trucks. Robots are welding body-in-white shells, and parts are building up in a corrosion tank, while on the other side, seats are being assembled. Even as they work on fine-tuning the exact vehicle that will be used for the remaining miles, they keep that truck on the factory test track, driving over articulating humps, cobblestones at full lock, and even screeching to an ABS stop from 45 mph. Only the camera equipment was creating a noise.

Indiana then asked the vehicle to do a favor for an intern named Michelle. She was returning to school with all of her belongings from the summer, and the crew simply added a hitch, filled up the bed and a trailer, and sent her on her way, covering 103 miles in about two hours, with the backup camera coming in help when they got stuck in some tight locations. In fact, she was the first person to benefit from a Slate’s carrying capabilities, as the odometer read 17 miles when they started it up.

In Chicago, the pickup was sent out on a business drive for Yianni, a bowling alley restorer. Paint cans, a gumball machine, a commercial slushy unit, and spare bowling pins were among the items packed inside this small truck. They even managed to put some extra items in the trunk, and by the end of the day, the bowling pins had miraculously remained where they belonged. In the end, this little truck’s small stature was more useful than any horsepower they could have put at it in the city lanes.

The same stretch of road led them to some nasty pavement, a few extra donuts, and two folks who’d reserved a Slate but hadn’t bothered to pay a deposit. One of the prospective owners wanted to check if this small vehicle could make a full circuit at an empty intersection before returning to a driveway with a light pole directly in the way. Another was curious to see whether this city truck could take a few scratches and still have some soul.

St. Louis added even worse road and another donut, but none of this will ruin your attitude on a ‘polished press tour’. Four hundred miles down the road, the vehicle arrived in Tulsa with a flat tire and more than a thousand miles on it. They repaired it on the side of the road with a reamer, rubber cement, and a stopper. Nick and Liv from a DIY channel came along with a family in need of a variety of items, including mattresses, school supplies, clothing, food, and a wheelchair ramp for a daughter who needed to go to the hospital for surgery. The midgate hooks and straps handled the added weight, chainsaws and weed eaters cleaned up the yard, and when they departed, the house looked completely different.

Sulfur, Oklahoma wanted to know if an electric pickup truck might work on a bison ranch.Dusty from Cross Timbers needs to relocate his herd from one pasture to another. The Slate electric vehicle came in helpful because it could pull a sled across a water crossing, move hay, and even transport mineral blocks in the back. According to all reports, the bison, notably a big ol’ fella named Big Joe, were more interested than angry with the strange machine. The silent motors proved to be a tremendous blessing, even more so than you might anticipate, especially when dealing with animals who can detect even the slightest noise, and the best part is that after all that use, the truck still looked like a regular old truck.

The California demo rides are held at the far end of the same pre-production vehicle. Preorders are still open, and delivery windows are quickly filling up. People are still invited to provide any ideas they may have for other chores the truck could undertake. The tour featured a $25,000 rear-drive electric pickup with crank windows and a claimed range of 205 miles, and its ability to haul everything from intern furniture to bowling equipment and even donated mattresses without the need for a second truck was eye-opening. The goal behind all of this was to test the waters and see what people wanted this device to do.