The EV-only companies build much better EVs than companies that also build ICE cars. It took Tesla to get EVs going in the US.

It will be interesting to see if Slate's little electric pickup truck really ships at the promised price point. They're advertising and taking pre-orders. Delivery dates are vague. "Q4 2026" probably means "a few demo units". Maybe in 2027.

Incidentally, the Donut Labs solid-state battery appears to have been a scam.[1] They were supposed to ship electric motorcycles with it in Q1 2026, and we're almost into Q3. "$25 million raised from 1,300+ small investors", says Electrek. Their "solid state" battery seems to be an ordinary pouch type lithium-ion battery, no better than a good lithium-ion battery.

CATL's CEO says that they're at level 4 (Component/breadboard validation in lab) of 9 in terms of technology maturity. That's worse than expected at this point. There are lots of announcements of "breakthroughs", and at least two test vehicles on the road (Mercedes and Ducati), but nobody has volume manufacturing working yet.

[1] https://electrek.co/2026/06/08/donut-lab-solid-state-battery...

[2] https://electrek.co/2026/06/25/catl-solid-state-battery-leve...

>It took Tesla to get EVs going in the US.

Tesla also helped shape the Chinese EV industry the same way how the first iPhone shaped all the other smartphone platforms.