I’m starting a new section here: EVs. The reason is personal — I hold reservations on two of the most unusual electric vehicles in America, the Slate truck and the Aptera solar car, and both are finally approaching the moment where reservations turn into delivery dates. Every week I’ll post an update on each: what’s new, what the companies are actually saying, and — the part that matters — whether the delivery dates moved. This is the first one, and it comes at a genuinely interesting moment for both.
Slate: production starts this month
The Slate is the bare-bones electric pickup backed by Jeff Bezos: two seats, rear-wheel drive, one unpainted gray composite body you customize with wraps and accessories, no touchscreen, no radio. The price is $24,950 plus a $1,450 destination charge — $26,400 out the door. The sub-$20,000 figure from the launch announcement assumed the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which was eliminated on September 30, 2025; the $24,950 is the real number now. Specs are modest on purpose: a single motor, an LFP battery, and a company-projected 205 miles of range (still a projection, not a final EPA rating).
The news: production begins this month, November 2026, at Slate’s plant in Warsaw, Indiana. That date comes from tire supplier Kenda, whose October 28 press release says its EV tire launches on the truck “when the vehicle enters production in November 2026” — the clearest public timeline Slate has given. First deliveries are expected in December, with most trucks shipping in 2027; Slate told some preorder customers as early as September that they could see vehicles in December. Slate says it has taken more than 180,000 reservations at $50 each, and the order book is now open with a $300 deposit. The company raised a $650 million Series C in April, opened its first showroom in October (in Tesla’s former Chicago store), and has been handing the truck to journalists — including former Top Gear host James May, who called it “unburdensome.” For reservation holders, the next milestone is simple: do the first customer trucks actually roll in December?
Aptera: first 40 cars by year-end, deliveries early 2027
The Aptera is the other end of the spectrum: a two-seat, three-wheel solar electric car from Carlsbad, California, so efficient it targets 100 watt-hours per mile — about a quarter of a typical EV — with solar panels that testing firm TÜV Rheinland measured delivering 4.23 kWh to the battery on a July day in Southern California. The Launch Edition’s target price is $40,000.
The news: on October 1, Aptera sharply cut the money it says it needs — about $25 million to reach the start of production, down from $40–45 million, and roughly $115 million for its full plan, down from $180–205 million — crediting its partnership with Launch Design of Shanghai. The plan: begin building the first 40 production vehicles by the end of 2026, with customer deliveries in early 2027. Note the slip — Aptera had pointed to 2026 deliveries for most of this year. Production components have been arriving in Carlsbad and builds are underway. The honest caveat, and it’s a real one: Aptera’s own quarterly filing showed $10.1 million in cash at the end of June against roughly $2 million a month in spending, with a going-concern warning, and its shares (Nasdaq: SEV) fell about 15 percent on the October announcement. Everything in the timeline carries the company’s own qualifier — subject to timely financing. As a reservation holder, I read that as: the cars are closer than they’ve ever been, and the money is still the risk.
What I’m watching
For Slate: confirmation that production actually started in Warsaw, and whether the first deliveries land in December as signaled. For Aptera: whether the first 40 builds are completed by year-end, and any financing announcement that funds the ramp. Both companies report again soon — and this update will be here every week to track it. The Ford Fathom, the other affordable EV truck on the horizon, gets its own post in this section today as well.
Sources: Kenda Tire press release via PR Newswire (October 28, 2026); Business Insider, “We Know When Slate Plans to Build Its $25K Truck” (November 5, 2026); CarGurus, “2027 Slate Truck Pricing, Specs, and Release Date”; Aptera Motors press release via GlobeNewswire, “Aptera Significantly Reduces Estimated Capital Requirements for Production” (October 1, 2026); Engadget (November 1, 2026); Electrek reporting via The Cooldown (October 8, 2026).
Photo: The Aptera solar EV with its door open. Photo by ApteraMotorsMedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
