When the slate truck was announced, and later when the official MSRP number dropped, price was the main selling point: For just $24,950 you get a brand-new all-electric pickup truck, provided you don’t care about it being more than four wheels, two doors, and a bed. But as anyone who’s bought a new car knows, the destination fee is always lurking somewhere, waiting for you to hit the thousands mark, and Slate hasn’t announced it yet. We now know the fee is $1,450, bringing the truck’s MSRP to $26,400.
This pushes the slate truck over the magical $25,000 mark, and may make it feel unfairly close to other competitors like the Ford Maverick – especially considering that the Mave offers incredible luxuries like “power windows,” “a stereo,” and “door pockets.” Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find that the slate is still a bargain: Counting destination, the Maverick starts at $28,990, and other competing trucks only go up from there.
still the cheapest
actual destination charge increase The price difference between the Slate and the Maverick, as Ford’s $1,845 destination charge is higher than the Slate’s. The larger Ford Ranger also has a destination charge of $1,895, bringing the starting price to $34,445. Nissan’s destination charge on the Frontier is $1,745 for a base price of $33,895, and Toyota charges the same fee on the Tacoma for an even higher base price of $34,190. Chevy beats them all with a $2,095 destination charge in Colorado, which brings the starting price to $34,495.
The Slate is still the cheapest truck on the market, and the cheapest EV with a bed – the Silverado EV will last you more than twice as long. We know Ford is working on a Maverick-sized four-door electric truck that will start around $30,000, though it could top $32,000. Each automaker has its own destination fees, and most of them are higher than slate. How justified the difference in Maverick’s cost is depends on each individual buyer’s cross-shopping, but the destination fee probably won’t make or break a deal.
