Slate has added a $30 "Screenless GPS" to the online store for its bare-bones electric pickup, InsideEVs reported. The company called it "the original navigation system." It has no boot time, no subscription fee, and, in Slate's tongue-in-cheek pitch, unlimited battery life and no chance of sending a driver left into a construction site, because it does not offer turn-by-turn directions. It is a book: Rand McNally's 2027 Road Atlas, sold in limited quantities. InsideEVs also noted, dryly, that it is compatible with every other vehicle on sale today.
The product is a stunt, but it fits what Slate is trying to do. The startup is betting that some buyers are tired of complicated modern cars and will accept a no-frills EV with unpainted composite body panels, manual windows, and no large infotainment screen. That also means no built-in navigation. The truck will come with a phone mount, so owners can keep using Google Maps or Apple Maps. The branded atlas is there, the company suggests, if it comes in handy.
"When it comes to tech, we believe you should use the devices and solutions you already know and love," Slate said Thursday, according to InsideEVs. "Not because we don't like tech, but because we believe you already have everything you need to get where you're going."
That minimal approach is what has kept the planned truck under $25,000, InsideEVs said. Buyers get a lithium iron phosphate battery, a bed, wheels, and fewer of the screens and subscriptions that have piled onto new vehicles. Extras can be as analog as the map, as digital as a phone, or as involved as an SUV kit with extra seats and a roof. Slate plans to deliver its first trucks later this year. The $30 atlas does not change the truck's hardware. It is a limited shop item that makes the company's no-screen bet literal, and a reminder that the vehicle itself is still not in customers' hands.
Few drivers will navigate a road trip with a paper atlas if their phone works. Slate is not seriously arguing otherwise. The verified news is smaller and clearer: the company is selling a $30 Rand McNally 2027 Road Atlas as a "Screenless GPS," in limited numbers, as it prepares to put a sub-$25,000, screen-free electric truck on the road later this year.
InsideEVs treated the listing as clearly tongue-in-cheek, while also arguing that it is consistent with a truck that has no factory navigation and a phone mount as the real way to get directions. The atlas will not tell anyone to turn left. It also will not require a software update. For a company that has not yet delivered its first customer trucks, a $30 shop item is marketing, not a product milestone, and the report is careful to keep those two things separate.