BMW I3 Pickup Conversion Beats Slate Truck To Market For $10K
While Slate Auto keeps teasing a cheap electric pickup that still hasn’t reached a single driveway, a Tennessee-based YouTuber and former Lockheed Martin engineer, Michael Pick just built one himself from a used BMW i3 REX. He bought a high-mileage 2017 i3 sight unseen at auction, carved off the back half of its carbon fiber body, and welded in a working truck bed, all for under $10,000.
The total build landed a couple grand under that budget, roughly a third of what Slate Auto has promised for its base truck. Unlike Slate’s pickup, Pick’s i3 conversion is already running, already hauling, and already on YouTube.
A Carbon Fiber City Car Becomes A Working Trucklet
The i3’s passenger cell is a carbon fiber monocoque, an unusual choice for a small BMW in 2014 and still rare outside supercars today. Pick planned his cut lines before removing the rear hatch, part of the roof, the rear seats, and the curtain airbags, then cut through the shell with a circular saw and hacksaws.
A fabricated steel frame ties the new cab wall to the rest of the structure, bolted and bonded with structural adhesive to the i3’s high-strength steel roof and aluminum floor. Underneath, the i3’s Drive Module, an aluminum skateboard chassis carrying the battery and running gear, gave him something solid to build onto, even after the Life Module above it lost its back half.
Plywood, Epoxy, And A Bed That Has To Come Off
The REX’s small two-cylinder range extender sits where the rear seats used to be, so Pick made the bed removable to keep it serviceable. The bed itself is plywood sealed with penetrating epoxy and finished in bedliner, with extra care on the cabin-to-bed seam since the car’s core electronics live directly below.
Aluminum tie-down rails and a detachable tailgate net handle cargo duty, while the taillights moved into custom housings because the stock lenses were too big for the new opening. BMW’s firmware gets fussy about missing locks, data connections, and sensors, so Pick kept most of the i3’s original electronics intact and working as designed.
Why This Beats The Slate Right Now
Slate has promised a sub-$30,000 compact electric truck with a stripped-down spec sheet, but it still isn’t shipping. Pick’s i3 pickup reportedly carries more standard equipment than Slate’s truck is expected to offer at launch, including a 12.3-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay. It’s good for roughly 100 miles on battery alone, and total range climbs past 340 miles with the range extender topped off.
The tiny bed, modest payload, and hacked-up carbon fiber monocoque make this far from a refined daily hauler. As a proof of concept, though, it makes a blunt point: enthusiasts willing to pick up a sawzall don’t have to wait on a startup’s roadmap to get a cheap EV truck when they can just build one.
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