Slate opens its first showroom in Chicago for its budget electric pickup

Slate Auto has opened its first physical showroom, the Slate Experience Center at 1053 W. Grant Ave in Chicago, where prospective buyers can see the truck in person and take test drives. The announcement came on Thursday.

The startup has broken with its direct-to-consumer peers by skipping a network of company-owned service centers, instead partnering with RepairPal to vet independent repair shops. A physical presence for viewing and driving the truck is a different bet: a way to make an unfamiliar product tangible before the first deliveries.

The company says the center exists so customers can judge the truck's size, interior space and build quality for themselves, and see options and accessories on display. Test drives are available from the location. A Slate spokesperson declined to say whether more locations are planned, or how quickly they might open.

A cheap EV with a physical footprint

The Slate Truck is due on sale by the end of 2026 at $26,400 including the destination fee, which would make it the cheapest electric vehicle on sale in the United States. For that money buyers get a small two-door pickup with 205 miles of range from an LFP battery and a deliberately basic interior.

Accessories change the formula: buyers can pay extra to switch the body to one of two five-seat SUV configurations, or fit the Open Air kit, which adds seats in the bed under a rollover bar for rear passengers.

The showroom matters because Slate is asking Americans to buy a vehicle from a brand with no track record, no dealer network and no owned service centers. Letting people sit in the truck, turn the crank windows and drive it is a low-cost answer to the trust problem every startup faces, and it stops short of the capital-heavy service model Rivian, Tesla and Lucid built.

Toyota is engineering the next-generation Corolla so it can be sold with four different powertrains: conventional petrol, full hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery-electric, depending on the market. The split comes from a new electrical architecture divided into four domains rather than the single centralized computer that rivals such as Tesla are pursuing.

According to a Nikkei Cross Tech report, Toyota will separate the car's electronics into driver-assist technology, cabin controls, body electronics and motion control, letting each system be tailored to the powertrain and feature set of the variant it serves.

The approach runs against the industry trend toward software-defined vehicles, where all controls and features sit on one hardware platform and wiring is greatly reduced. Toyota is instead betting that domain-specific electronics will let it build one compact car that can carry very different drivetrains without compromise.

Which engines and hybrids are planned

A traditional hybrid is the likeliest core variant, but the petrol, plug-in hybrid and fully electric versions would follow depending on market. In the United States, the expectation is combustion and hybrid Corolla sedans and hatchbacks. The current car offers a 169-horsepower 2.0-litre four-cylinder and a 1.8-litre hybrid.

Toyota has already confirmed a new family of 1.5- and 2.0-litre inline-four engines, and the smaller unit is the likely candidate for the compact model. The company claims these engines will be lighter and more efficient than today's units.

When it arrives and what it looks like

Toyota teased the next Corolla a year ago with a radical concept featuring 21-inch wheels, a descending beltline and frameless doors. The production car is not expected to look that dramatic, but the concept signals the direction.

The current, twelfth-generation Corolla dates to 2018 and is nearly a decade old, so a replacement is due. The thirteenth-generation car is likely to be revealed sometime next year, with the US model possibly reaching showrooms as a 2028 example.

Pricing has not been announced, and neither has an Australian launch: the sourcing so far covers the architecture and the US market outlook, so local availability and cost will have to wait for Toyota's own announcements. What the domain split does promise is flexibility. If hybrid demand softens in some regions while it stays strong in others, Toyota can adjust the Corolla's powertrain mix per market without redesigning the car, which is exactly the position a high-volume nameplate wants to be in.