Slate Has IKEA Vibes, But Only Battery Module Swapping Can Save It From Its Shortcomings (2025)

I'm talking here about battery modules and not battery packs because they are way more flexible than the battery pack swapping model. Their stations can serve vehicles of different sizes because modules can fit into all of them. On the other hand, battery packs will only suit models of similar sizes – with a minimum wheelbase. A battery pack designed for a large battery electric vehicle (BEV) won't fit into a compact one. At the same time, a compact pack would give a large vehicle a low range.

Currently, Ample and CATL are pursuing battery module swapping. If the US were not promoting its trade war, Slate could have made a deal with CATL to adopt the Choco-SEBs the world's largest battery manufacturer has developed. They will soon power NIO's Firefly vehicles, which means they are already on a production scale. However, they are from China. America may prefer to develop its own battery module standard.

Slate may be backed up by Jeff Bezos, but the startup fell into some pretty obvious traps. The first is that it is not as affordable as it claims to be. Just like Volkswagen with its VW ID.Every1, the Slate BEVs will charge quite a lot of money for what they offer.

The smallest battery pack available will deliver 52.7 kWh, which will only carry these BEVs through 150 miles under the EPA test cycle. That's the second trap Slate did not avoid. Its battery pack is small, consequently dropping its range to a level that falls below the minimum for most customers. They want at least 300 miles (483 kilometers) of range.

This problem reinforces the first one. A car that does not seem to cost too much but offers too little will never be a bargain. If Slate's BEVs tow anything or are fully loaded, their smallest battery packs will reduce that 150-mile range even more.

Slate said its pickup truck will cost"under $20,000 after federal incentives."Considering these tax credits amount to $7,500, $27,500 is what they should cost with no government help. Let's suppose Donald Trump decides BEV incentives are "bad for America" and kills them. Who would be willing to pay $27,500 for a vehicle with such range limitations? Mazda learned the hard way with the MX-30 that very few will do so, even with the federal incentives included.

That's far from affordable, especially for a vehicle that will not run more than 150 miles (241 kilometers) on a full charge and will demand at least 30 minutes to recover only 90 miles of range, according to Slate.

The startup said its BEVs will need a 120-kW fast charger, which is not often available. When it is, and it can deliver all its power, 30 minutes is what the cars will need to go from 20% of the state of charge (SoC) to 80% if everything goes according to the plan. That's 60% of the battery pack's capacity, equivalent to 90 miles.

By the way, charging times are the third trap the company has not managed to avoid. They will be long and only tolerable to those who want to "save the planet" with a BEV. On top of that, they will deliver a very low range. How viable can such a vehicle be, even if it promotes a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach?

All things considered, we have to agree with Slate's CEO, Chris Barman. She is quoted in the company's press release as saying,"The definition of what's affordable is broken."Indeed, but she should have realized that her company hasn't fixed that before conceiving something that only proves this very point.

Slate will sell a larger 84.3-kWh battery pack, but it has yet to disclose how much the component will cost. Even if it is not that much more, it will offer only 240 miles (386 km) of range, probably for the pickup truck. The SUV derivatives may be more aerodynamic but will also be heavier. In other words, there is no way to know how much further they will travel compared to Slate's main model. Sadly, none of them should ever reach 300 miles.

How BaaS could save Slate

If these BEVs were sold without a battery pack, they would depend on a Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) monthly subscription to run. NIO's vehicles get significantly cheaper with that option. Although that depends on the sizes of their battery packs, the price reductions range between the equivalent of $7,000 for the smallest and $18,000 for the biggest.

Suppose the Slate BEV could cost $7,000 less with BaaS. It would theoretically be sold for under $20,000 regardless of federal incentives. We'll only be sure about that when the vehicle is ready to be delivered. In the video below, Barman states that this should happen by Q4 2026. Slate BEVs will be made in Indiana, but there is no mention of that in the company's press release. It is ok for the vehicles to be basic, but the startup's main communication tool should be anything but.

Let's be honest: if people had not heard that Jeff Bezos was one of Slate's investors, they would have treated it with a high degree of skepticism. The Amazon founder gave it credibility it would not have otherwise, regardless of what it promotes. We have already seen plenty of BEV startups with curious ideas that did not make it to production or did so only for a short while.

To make things worse for Slate, we live in very unstable times. Counting on federal incentives that may be revoked all of a sudden to present a future vehicle as affordable is quite a risk. That said, the startup can only say its cars will cost under $20,000 if it truly finds a way to sell them at such prices. If BEV tax credits are still valid when deliveries begin, the electric pickup truck would cost even less – around $13,000.

That would be undoubtedly affordable and would depend solely on ditching the traditional battery pack for a battery module swapping model. Keeping a battery pack will make Slate BEVs expensive in more than one sense.

Ten or fifteen years after deliveries finally start, these cars will need new battery packs. That's inevitable because nobody ever conceived a rechargeable battery that lasts longer than that. At that point, these Slate cars will be used BEVs, which have been depreciating a lot these days (precisely because of their most expensive components).

When replacement time comes, the new battery packs will still cost a fortune. That will lead these used BEVs straight into junkyards as total losses because fixing them will not pay off, regardless of the fact that they would still work fine if the repair did not cost more than the BEV itself.

Battery module swapping would keep these vehicles running for decades. The fact that Slate does not seem to have autonomous pretensions would help it down the line. As vehicles that are not software-defined and do not want to be, Slate's BEVs would not become outdated or require computer replacements to work. If any of these machines ever need to be replaced, the company's DIY approach may help with that.

Just like the startup will sell any equipment for you to install in your BEV yourself, such as power windows, you may be able to upgrade infotainment units and even electronic control units (ECUs) in the future. It would be great to learn how Slate plans to deal with the warranty for items installed by the owners or even how that will affect the BEV warranty as a whole.

Apart from keeping these vehicles on the road for more time, battery module swapping would kill the range and convenience issues the Slate BEVs will have with their small – and expensive – battery packs.

Should you need to travel more than 150 or 240 miles on a given day, just replace the depleted modules. That should take less than five minutes. The replaced modules will come with 100% SoC, not 80%, and the whole process will take around five minutes – a sixth of the time a battery pack would demand to recharge. It is comparable to filling up a tank.

When you did not need to travel that much with your Slate, you could choose to use only the modules necessary for daily driving. A single one should suffice for what most American drivers need – around 40 miles (64 km) a day. With a lower weight, the Slate BEVs should offer more range.

These vehicles have other compromises, such as a length of 174.6 inches (4.43 meters). Although that is enough for an entry-level electric SUV, it does not work as well for a pickup truck. The bed is only 60 inches (1.5 meters) long and 50 inches (1.27 m) wide.

The Fiat Strada, currently the best-selling vehicle for sale in Brazil, is almost the same length (176 inches, or 4.47 meters) but has a reasonably larger bed. It is 67.7 inches (1.72 m) long and 53.5 inches (1.36 m) wide. It also offers room behind the only seat row available, something the Slate compensates for with its frunk.

The Strada costs R$ 111,990, equivalent to $19,705 at the current exchange rate without tax incentives, and with a minimum range of 304 miles (489 km) and a maximum range of 502 miles (808 km). Surprisingly, it can also be carbon neutral when it burns ethanol.

If the Slate pickup truck were longer, with a bigger bed, it would have to deal with a bigger battery pack and, consequently, with higher costs. If it were conceived to use battery module swapping from the very beginning, that would not be a problem.

There's still time for Slate to consider such a change, but I doubt it will make it. It depends on creating a battery module swapping network. Again, Bezos could help with that by investing in Ample or any other American startup with a similar idea.

At the same time, choosing to follow this path would give Slate the same sort of edge Tesla had when it started its Supercharging network. Place battery module swapping stations in the main American cities and roads just to get it started, and you may end up with a reliable network in a few years. NIO has built more than 3,200 swapping stations since 2018. That would be innovative and mind-blowing. Promising that while following the same old BEV recipe with little tweaks is just more of the same.