Slate Auto confirms where it’ll build its $20,000 Truck

Since Slate Auto came retired of stealth mode past week, the net has been abuzz with speculation astir the finer details of the ultra-barebones electrical Truck, which is acceptable to outgo conscionable $20,000 erstwhile it enters accumulation adjacent twelvemonth — assuming our federal EV incentives are inactive successful spot by then.

One of those questions was wherever Slate volition physique the thing, with a TechCrunch study suggesting a mill successful Indiana. Today we tin officially corroborate the details. Slate Auto volition retrofit an existing 1.4 cardinal quadrate ft mill successful Warsaw, Indiana, wherever the institution plans to yet nutrient 150,000 Trucks annually.

If you missed each the excitement past week, Slate’s Truck is simply a radically simplified EV with 150 miles of range, a barebones instrumentality that could beryllium considered a minimum viable car. It has nary touchscreen, nary radio, nary powerfulness windows, and nary paint. 

Those were immoderate of the concessions required to marque an EV that inexpensively successful the United States, but immoderate of those seeming compromises alteration a uniquely streamlined accumulation workflow.

Because the Truck doesn’t person paint, Slate Auto’s mill doesn’t request an costly overgarment shop. (Mercedes-Benz precocious spent a reported $1 cardinal gathering a caller one.) And, due to the fact that the assemblage panels are made of a signifier of plastic, that mill tin skip the monolithic presses typically utilized to stamp metallic assemblage panels into shape.

Slate volition physique retired their accumulation hub astatine the erstwhile R.R. Donnelly installation successful Warsaw, Indiana, a printing property that was erstwhile liable for stuffing your mailbox with catalog pulp from retailers. It shuttered successful September of 2023, putting implicit 500 radical retired of work.

When it reopens adjacent year, Jeff Jablansky, Slate Auto’s caput of nationalist relations and communications, says the program is to employment 2,000 radical astatine the facility. Slate wouldn’t corroborate the full concern the facility’s retrofit volition require, oregon the presumption of Slate’s usage of the property, lone that renovations volition outgo successful the hundreds of millions of dollars.

All that volition request to beryllium completed earlier the Truck tin statesman production, which is presently scheduled for Q4 of 2026. 

At 1.4 cardinal quadrate feet, Slate’s installation is astir one-quarter the size of Tesla’s Fremont Factory, which presently produces astir 650,000 vehicles per year. Again, Slate hopes to nutrient upwards of 150,000 Trucks annually astatine this facility, an yearly accumulation complaint that took Tesla much than 5 years to execute successful Fremont. Given its simplified manufacturing process, Slate volition surely beryllium hoping to determination much quickly.

Slate is committed to not lone manufacturing the Truck successful the U.S. but to utilizing home suppliers arsenic well. “The conveyance is designed, engineered, and manufactured successful the U.S., with the bulk of our proviso concatenation based successful the U.S.” Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s Chief Commercial Officer, told america up of the Truck’s debut. As planetary commercialized wars lone escalate, that’s looking similar a dependable move.