Slate Auto’s radically simple electric truck starts at $24,950; also, Valor Equity Partners looks to raise a $2.5B Fund VII

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Narrator: Jeff Bezos EV startup Slate Auto has finally revealed the starting price of its electric truck, coming in at $24,950. Uh, that's excluding taxes, title, license, registration, governmental fees, destination charges, document fees and any optional equipment, according to the company. Slate started taking pre orders for the truck on Wednesday. Crucially, Slate also said that it has boosted the estimated range of its base model from 150 miles to around 205 miles, although that comes at the cost of abandoning plans for a larger 240 mile battery pack. Um, the aggressive pricing, half the average cost of a new car in the U.S. puts Slate in position to capture a share of the lowest end of the new car market market, which has few gas and fewer electric options these days. The Chevrolet Bolt is one of Slate's closest EV competitors on price starting at around $29,000, while the Nissan Leaf starts at around $32,000. Ford has been teasing a $30,000 electric truck that's due in 2027. The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from stealth. Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the extremely basic, which starts as a two seater pickup truck but can be modified into a five seater SUV. The SUV version will start at 29, 9:50, Slate said on Wednesday. Slate has said the conversion can be done by professionals or by owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed off some of the first of its Slate University how to videos, which guides people through the steps of doing everything from the SUV conversion to to adding headlight covers. Everything else about the truck is bare, though it's customizable, it has hand crank, windows, lacks an infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material with no paint options. As Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle, that likely helps cut out a major cost center, as factory paint shops can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The company did not offer more details about the buying process. Slate has said it will not have traditional dealerships and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid Motors. Earlier this month, TechCrunch first reported that Slate Auto has granted online used car giant Carvana a warrant to purchase its shares, suggesting the two might collaborate on selling the low cost truck. Carvana recently revealed plans to sell new cars, shaking up its existing business model. Slate has been promising the vehicle would be priced in the mid $20,000 range before it came out of stealth. As TechCrunch first reported early last year, the company's goal is to create something like Ford's Model T or Volkswagen's Beetle, and a starting price of around $25,000 has been the target for a long time. But the path to those goals has been complicated by the second Trump administration and Republican control of Congress. Policy changes have loosened emissions standards and removed a $7,500 federal EV tax credit. As a result, many major automakers have delayed or shelved plans for new EVs in the US the startup has raised a fair amount of money as it chases these ambitious goals. So far, investors have thrown around $1.4 billion into Slate across three major funding rounds. New details have emerged about valor Equity Partners Fund 7, which last year filed paperwork with the U.S. securities and Exchange Commission to begin raising capital. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the fund is targeting at least $2.5 billion in capital, a portion of which has already been set aside for further investments in SpaceX. This may not be a surprise, given that the firm and its founder Antonio Gracias, are long term supporters of Elon Musk. According to Bloomberg, Valor Equity Partners owns around 4% of UM SpaceX, which recently debuted on the public markets. It's not entirely clear what the fund's thesis will be, but past investments likely offer a clue. Aside from backing many Musk projects, Valor has also cut checks to military technology maker Anduril and news sharing site Reddit. As Bloomberg noted, Valor's funds typically focus on helping companies scale, especially at the growth stage though it has raised capital to provide more early stage support. Valor previously announced the closing of Fund 6 for $2.35 billion in 2024, mainly focused on operational growth investments. That's all for now. For the latest in tech news, go to techcrunch.com.