When Slate Auto, a start-up, unveiled a roughly $25,000 electric pickup truck last month, social media lit up with comments. Many people saw the no-frills vehicle, with an easy-to-repair body and nostalgic hand crank windows, as a refreshing antidote to today’s overstuffed and increasingly unaffordable cars.

How unaffordable? Average monthly payments on new cars have soared to $739 in March from $537 in January 2019, according to Cox Automotive. The average new car costs $47,400, with electric models around $59,200. High interest rates, now around 9.4 percent for a 72-month loan, have made cars even more of a financial stretch.

“Prices and interest rates are both high and stuck,” said Mark Schirmer, director of industry insights for Cox Automotive. “If you haven’t been in the market since 2018, it’s got to be shocking what a car costs.”

President Trump’s tariffs of 25 percent on imported cars and parts have consumers scrambling to buy before prices rise even more. Cars that cost less than $30,000 are especially vulnerable — nearly 80 percent of those are subject to tariffs. They include consumer staples like the American-made Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, which rely on imported parts. Supplies of budget models are expected to shrink, and automakers may stop importing certain models entirely.

Enter Slate, a company based in the Detroit suburbs backed by venture capital firms and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder.

Chris Barman, a former Fiat Chrysler engineer and Slate’s chief executive, said the Slate Truck was expressly designed to ease sticker shock, although it won’t be available until late 2026. The company plans to produce the pint-size truck at a retrofitted printing plant in Indiana, with a capacity for 150,000 a year.

True to its name, the truck is designed to be a blank slate to which buyers can add more than 100 accessories, like power windows and heated seats, as their budgets allow or needs change. There is no built-in stereo or touch-screen display, but there are docks for phones or tablets, saving money and avoiding the digital obsolescence that often plagues auto entertainment and navigation systems.

“We think hardworking Americans are looking for good value for the money,” Ms. Barman said in a recent interview.

That message appealed to Liv Leigh, 41, who hopped inside a Slate Truck during its public debut at the Long Beach Airport in California in April. Ms. Leigh, a biomedical designer and electric-car enthusiast, paid $50 to reserve a Slate.

She watched the company’s employees transform the two-seat pickup into a five-passenger sport utility vehicle in about one hour, with a clever conversion kit aimed at do-it-yourself owners. Ms. Leigh appreciated the truck’s tidy size, shorter than a Civic, and its modest 150-mile range.

“I love the idea of an absolute base, beater truck, where I can stick a dog or muddy bikes or plywood in back,” Ms. Leigh said. “I don’t need a giant vehicle to haul stuff.”

Ms. Barman said efficient design and production were key to the company’s promised low prices. The truck’s gray plastic-composite body panels eliminate any need for a steel body-stamping plant or paint shop, which can cost automakers many millions of dollars.

Where a Ford Model T, an egalitarian car of another age, famously came only in black, Slate offers vinyl body wraps in 13 colors, for an extra $500. Buyers can also opt for a larger, factory-installed battery with a 240-mile range.

“That all keeps costs down, but also feeds into giving customers freedom of choice,” Ms. Barman said. “They can outfit the vehicle the way they want it, not the way a manufacturer has designed it.”

Slate hopes that a U.S.-based supply chain, including batteries made by SK On, a South Korean company, will make the pickup eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit. Republican lawmakers on Monday released a budget bill that would eliminate that incentive and dismantle other Biden-era climate and energy policies.

That all depends on Slate’s successfully navigating a treacherous path for electric vehicle start-ups. Several young automakers, including Fisker, Nikola and Canoo, have sought bankruptcy protection and shut down.

With or without subsidies, Slate has a viable business plan, Ms. Barman said.

The company hopes to price its truck in the mid-$20,000s before government incentives, which would undercut the Nissan Leaf, which is the most affordable electric car at $29,300 but no longer eligible for tax credits. Chevrolet plans to offer a redesigned Bolt S.U.V. by year end for roughly $30,000. The General Motors brand intends the Bolt to qualify for the tax credit, dropping its effective price to roughly $22,500.

Erin Keating, the executive analyst of Cox Automotive, praised the Slate Truck’s ingenuity. But she said a pickup with two seats, short range and a bare-bones interior might not appeal to American car buyers who have grown accustom to having many tech and creature comforts.

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to crack the affordability crisis, but I don’t see this as a massive volume seller,” Ms. Keating said. “Ultimately, this is an extremely small E.V. with almost nothing in it, in a market with a growing number of affordable choices with much longer range.”

The Ford Maverick is a potential rival that may argue for or against Slate’s prospects. That compact pickup is two feet longer than the Slate. It seats five passengers and offers many more features. A hybrid version can reach 40 miles per gallon and travel more than 500 miles on a full tank.

Ford sold 131,000 Mavericks last year, suggesting there is strong demand for small, energy-efficient trucks. The company has raised the starting price of the hybrid version of the truck by $4,200 since 2024, to $28,150, including an increase last week that Ford Motor acknowledged was partly a response to tariffs on the truck, which is assembled in Mexico. The company said it was not passing on the full cost of the tariffs to customers and would offer all of its cars for the same price it sells them to employees until early July.

As much as any vehicle category, America’s pickup trucks epitomize how cars have changed over the last several decades, mostly by becoming bigger, more powerful and a lot more expensive. Some lavish pickups can cost as much as large European luxury sedans. Electric trucks from Tesla, Rivian and Ford range from $70,000 to more than $100,000.

Ms. Barman sees a market opening for entry-level truck fans, families shopping for a second car, empty nesters, and businesses such as landscapers, contractors and delivery workers. The company expects to sell many trucks to people who otherwise would buy a used car, the average price of which is $26,000.

One big challenge for Slate, or other companies hoping to sell more affordable cars, is that despite what they say they want, many Americans don’t seem to buy such cars.

Ms. Keating noted that roughly two dozen models on the market start at less than $25,000. All are small cars or S.U.V.s, including the market’s lowest-price car, the $18,300 Nissan Versa.

Nearly every midsize family sedan starts at less than $30,000, including the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Hyundai Sonata. But many Americans have rejected those cars in favor of bigger vehicles. S.U.V.s, pickups and minivans now account for more than 80 percent of the market.

Mr. Trump’s trade policies remain a wild card. Analysts expect tariffs will add thousands of dollars to the prices of new cars and drive up the demand and prices for used cars.

Americans bought 1.5 million new cars in April, 400,000 more than in April 2024. But analysts said people were buying now to avoid being raked over later. Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist at Cox Automotive, said new-car inventories had fallen to their lowest levels in two years, suggesting that prices could rise as dealers run out of cars made before tariffs took effect. S&P Global Mobility, another research firm, has lowered its forecast for new-car sales and now expects them to fall 4 percent this year.

For people seeking safe harbor in a financial storm, electric cars are a smart choice, Ms. Keating said. Between government and automaker incentives, new electric cars were discounted by 13.3 percent on average in March, a nearly $8,000 savings.

Ms. Leigh recently leased a Chevrolet Equinox for two years, paying $5,500 upfront, which works out to a monthly payment of $230. The electric S.U.V. has a 319-mile driving range. “Some people don’t realize how many incentives are out there,” she said.

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Netflix spent over $275 million to make “The Electric State,” a sci-fi action adventure film starring Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt and a slew of sentient robots. Had it opened in theaters, instead of on its service as it did on March 14, the film would almost certainly be declared a giant disappointment.

Reviews have been dismal. And though the movie debuted at No. 1 on the streaming giant’s weekly chart of most-watched movies, it had far fewer views (25.2 million) than other expensive features, including “The Gray Man” (41.2 million), which was made by the same directors, the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo.

But there was little hand-wringing inside Netflix this week. No marketing chief was blamed. No production executive packed up her office.

Instead, the movie demonstrates how different Netflix is from the traditional studios — and how easily the company can spend so much for a middling result without Wall Street’s noticing. (Its stock is up slightly this week.)

Truth is, no one piece of content moves the needle at Netflix in either direction. “Squid Game 2” was the most-watched title in the company’s most recent engagement report, with 87 million views, but it accounted for only 0.7 percent of total viewing. Rather, the $18 billion that the company spends each year on movies and shows is meant to reach a worldwide audience with different tastes and interests. The budget for “The Electric State” represents 1.5 percent of what the company will spend on content this year.

“It’s comical to me that Hollywood and the press obsess over Netflix’s mistakes while they have one of the most viral global hits in ‘Adolescence’ right now at a nothing budget,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with Lightshed Partners. He was referring to a distressing — and zeitgeisty — four-part series about a teenage boy accused of murder that has generated 24.3 million views.

“It’s all about a portfolio approach to content,” Mr. Greenfield added.

Both Netflix and the Russo brothers declined to comment for this article.

Supposedly, quality is now king at Netflix. “With more than 700 million people watching, we can’t just be one thing. We need to be the best version of everything,” Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said at an event in January showcasing the company’s 2025 lineup.

And more recently, she said that she’d greenlight “The Electric State” all over again. (Among reviewers, the film has a 15 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Among the public, it has a 73 percent positive rating.)

Netflix acquired “The Electric State” in 2022 after Universal balked at the reported $200 million price tag. Those costs ballooned in part because of the amount of special effects involved and the extensive upfront bonuses paid to the film’s stars and directors.

That kind of spending on a big-budget, little-known piece of intellectual property may be more rare in Netflix’s future. The company’s new film chief, Dan Lin, is cutting costs where he can, though still spending lavishly on highly coveted projects. He plunked down a healthy chunk for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” and tried to land Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” by offering $150 million. (He lost out to Warner Bros., which offered to give the film, starring Margot Robbie, a wide theatrical release.)

Netflix is still doing plenty of business with the Russo brothers, too. Over the years, the pair have given the company some of its biggest hits, including “Gray Man” and the “Extraction” franchise. The Russos’ production company, AGBO, is set to begin filming “The Whisper Man,” a crime thriller starring Robert De Niro, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan, this year, and an “Extraction” television series is also in the works. (They are also responsible for Disney’s high-grossing “Avengers” films and are lined up to direct the next two.)

“The Electric State” hit the streaming service just as Hollywood seems to be undergoing an identity crisis. Moviegoers say they want original ideas. But the public keeps rejecting them. Last week, two original stories — “Novocaine,” starring Jack Quaid, and “Black Bag,” starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender — headlined the slowest moviegoing weekend of 2025.

Even franchise fare like “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Paddington in Peru” isn’t matching the grosses of its predecessors. Hollywood was hopeful that 2025 would be the year the box office would come roaring back to its prepandemic levels, but so far it’s trailing 2024 by 5 percent and 2019 by 38 percent.

Peter Newman, a film producer and professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said “The Electric State” and Netflix’s approach to content relied more on analytics than overall taste, a factor that contributed to the disparity between the critics’ reviews and the audience reception of the movie.

“One could make the case that they have dumbed down the audience to such an extent that that’s what they want,” Mr. Newman said. “Maybe they want McDonald’s instead of Peter Luger.”

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Mercedes-Benz said on Thursday that the latest version of its least expensive sedan would be available first as an all-electric car and then as a hybrid. And the company will no longer sell a gasoline-only version of the car.

That’s a big break from how Mercedes and other established carmakers have typically operated. Until recently, most automakers adapted vehicles designed for fossil fuels to be powered by batteries. The Mercedes sedan, the CLA, which the company unveiled in Rome with the rapper will.i.am, is an example of how at least some established carmakers are developing electric cars first, then adapting them for customers who still want a gasoline engine.

The CLA, the first of more than two dozen Mercedes vehicles that will use the same basic technology, is a sign that many global carmakers are placing a priority on electric vehicles even as Republicans in the United States try to roll back Biden-era legislation that was intended to promote battery technology.

Yet faced with uncertain demand for electric vehicles and unpredictable government policies, Mercedes is tempering its bets by offering hybrids, which pair traditional gasoline engines with relatively small batteries and electric motors.

“If the world is not dominant electric by 2030, we as Mercedes-Benz, as an established manufacturer, we cannot walk away from a significant part of our revenues,” Ola Källenius, the chief executive of Mercedes, said in an interview in Rome. “So indeed, you could call it a hedge.”

Mercedes did not disclose a price for the new CLA, but said it would be affordable for owners of the current version, which starts at $45,000 in the United States. Eventually some of the components from the car will be used in sport utility vehicles and a station wagon.

The company decided to introduce the all-electric CLA first in the belief that advances in technology are tackling the reasons that people hesitate to buy electric cars, including inadequate driving range between charges and time to refuel.

“We have addressed all that with the new CLA,” Markus Schäfer, a member of the Mercedes management board responsible for technology, said during a meeting with reporters.

Some versions of the CLA can travel almost 500 miles between charges, and when using high-voltage chargers can add more than 200 miles of range in 10 minutes. The hybrid version will get most of its power from a gasoline engine but be able to travel short distances solely on battery power.

The United States, where the car will be available at the end of the year, is critical for Mercedes, which produces sport utility vehicles in Alabama. But China, where electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles account for more than half of new car sales, is the world’s largest auto market and increasingly sets the tone for the industry.

Like almost all foreign automakers, Mercedes has seen its sales fall in China as customers switch to electric vehicles built by domestic manufacturers like BYD.

Sales of electric vehicles rose 35 percent in China in January and February from a year earlier, according to Rho Motion, a research firm. That compares with increases of 20 percent in Europe and 20 percent in the United States and Canada. The figures include plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Sales growth in the United States has sped up this year, possibly because people are buying electric vehicles while they can still collect tax credits of up to $7,500, which Republican leaders in Congress have said they intend to abolish.

The new CLA illustrates the rapid progress carmakers are making in battery technology. It is the first vehicle sold by Mercedes with a battery in which some of the graphite has been replaced with silicon oxide. The switch helps increase the amount of energy the battery can hold, extending the car’s range.

The cars also show how artificial intelligence is infiltrating automobiles. Drivers can ask the car to find a charger that is near, say, a good Italian restaurant.

Among the apps in the vehicle’s digital dashboard is RAiDiO.FYI, created by will.i.am, who is a software entrepreneur in addition to leading the Black Eyed Peas.

The service uses artificial intelligence to let people to ask questions during programming, a kind of personalized call-in radio.

“You could ask: ‘Hey, so Rihanna has a makeup line I heard. Can you tell me where to buy it based on where I’m at right now? And does she have any products for my cocoa skin complexion?’” will.i.am said at the Mercedes event. “And it will guide you and tell you where it’s at.”

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