American cars are going gray. A Jeff Bezos-backed startup thinks it has a colorful solution.
Last year, 80.4% of new cars were either white, black, gray, or silver, according to an iSeeCars study. Trucks were even more monochrome: 83.5% were one of those four shades.
So, on Thursday, Slate — the no-frills EV truck company that’s nearing the first deliveries of its $24,950 pickup — announced a partnership with crayon-maker Crayola. The collab will offer a color package starting at $1,549.99, including a full vehicle wrap, three exterior decals, an interior air vent clip-on, and a key fob cap.
There are five crayon-inspired options for the little pickup truck: fern green, jersey tomato red-orange, dandelion yellow, razzmatazz pink, and cerulean blue.
“Crayola is an iconic company that people grew up with,” Jeff Jablansky, Slate’s head of public relations, told Business Insider. “We’re the first automaker they’ve partnered with.”
It’s a loud bet from a company whose base truck starts as a deliberately blank slate.
To keep costs down, Slate’s Warsaw, Indiana, plant skips one of the most expensive parts of traditional automaking: the paint shop. Instead, every truck rolls off the line in gray. Customers who want a different look can add a Slate-produced wrap after they buy the vehicle.
The Crayola package is Slate’s splashiest color option so far — and one of its priciest. Slate’s standard full-body wraps start around $500, making the Crayola bundle about three times more expensive. Customers who combine the Crayola colors and Slate’s SUV kits will also have to pay an additional $300 to cover the second-row caps.
And, apparently, a lot of people wanted new colors.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret: We didn’t start with a lot of color options,” Tisha Johnson, Slate’s head of design, told Business Insider. “We just didn’t think customers would want a lot of colors, but we realized that wasn’t true.”
Slate told Business Insider that customers have designed more than 10 million trucks on its build-your-own website, where potential shoppers can customize a truck to their own liking. The company said most users have been playing with colors — and choosing lots of non-gray options.
A few subtle changes
Slate is still making some adjustments to its truck.
Business Insider first got an in-person sneak peek of the Slate Truck in March, and the production model has picked up a handful of tweaks since then — and the company has noticed the changes are under close watch by internet obsessives.
The biggest update is on the driver’s side door. Johnson said product studies found it was more ergonomic for drivers to operate the button-filled key fob with their right hand and open the door with their left. Earlier pre-production versions had a right-hand-dominant design.
In the back, the center high-mounted stop light has moved from the roof to the tailgate, just above the black door handle. The “Slate” emblem is now raised from the body panels, too, so the badge will still show even if a customer covers the truck in a wrap.
And then there’s the thud.
The doors now have much more sound deadening than the pre-production models Business Insider saw in March. The physical latches grab with a more substantial clunk.
Slate says it has been tracking the public’s responses to the tweaks. The handle, light, and emblem changes have been live on the company’s build-your-own website since about March, and Johnson said a few hawk-eyed fans have already spotted them on Reddit.
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