Slate Auto

The anti-Cybertruck: Bezos-backed Slate unveils a bare-bones EV truck under $20,000

With a much lower potential price tag, the move puts pressure on Tesla to finally make its own low-cost car.

4/25/25 9:19AM

Last night Slate Auto, the stealth EV startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, formally unveiled a bare-bones, customizable electric pickup that’s supposed to cost less than $20,000 after federal credits when it rolls out at the end of 2026. (InsideEVs has a lot of details here.) Tesla’s cheapest model, the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 after credits, costs about 75% more.

The Slate truck is sort of the opposite of Tesla’s latest new model, the Cybertruck, which after a price reduction now starts at about $70,000, or more than three Slate trucks. For one, it’s minuscule in comparison to the Cybertruck’s huge footprint, with a total length of 174.6 inches versus the Cybertruck’s 223 inches. Unlike the Cybertruck, the Slate truck has no infotainment, its windows are hand-cranked and it definitely doesn’t claim to drive itself. It’s also a lot less powerful and a lot less showy.

Slate Auto’s price point makes it cheaper than any electric vehicle in the US. It also would make it cheaper than most gas vehicles, with the average cost of new vehicles in the US hovering around $50,000.

Tesla investors have long clamored for an affordable model — something the company promised and then walked back. Tesla scrapped the company’s long-awaited $25,000 model last year after deciding to go forward with the self-driving, steering-wheel-less Cybercab instead.

As a concession, the company said it would offer lower-cost versions of existing models. Despite reporting to the contrary, Tesla said during its latest earnings report that the company is still on track to release those models in the first half of this year. It didn’t specify a price but did say that producing these models on existing manufacturing lines “will result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected.”

Of course, a lot can happen between now and late next year. And while both Slate and Tesla are assembled it the US, it’s likely both will be subject to tariffs on imported parts.

Like Tesla, we’ll believe Slate’s affordable mass-market vehicle, when customers can actually buy it.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5