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Sooner or later, it seems that every automaker eventually leaks a critical detail about an upcoming car by prematurely posting something to its own website. Apparently, Slate decided to get things out of the way early (like, before-producing-a-single-car-early), and spectacularly, by leaking the starting price of their bare bones electric pickup: $24,950
This was spotted by a reader of The Autopian, and apparently it wasn’t buried all that deep. It seems somebody forgot to double-check the metadata on Slate’s preorder page, because it was published with the following text in it:
The Slate Truck has all the essentials for the CONFIDENTIAL price of $24,950 (reminder: we’re all still under NDA and prohibited from sharing this).
Obviously, this isn’t official, but considering we’re only a week away from Slate’s official pricing announcement (slated for June 24th), it is pretty credible. It’s also a lot more money than Slate originally promised, but its original sub-$20,000 price point factored in electric car incentives that are no longer in the picture.
Unfortunately for Slate, that’s not the only momentum shift that will be working against its new, inexpensive pickup truck. Ford is promising something more full-featured for only a little bit more money, and on top of that, Slate will also have to compete with the growing surplus of off-lease used EVs that will soon be saturating the market.
We’ve reached out to Slate for comment on the apparently unintentional disclosure. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com.
Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
