Slate Auto made waves when it broke cover last year. Now it’s go time.
The Jeff Bezos-backed electric-vehicle startup plans to start making its customizable, “mid-$20,000” electric pickup by the end of 2026. That means its factory in Warsaw, Indiana, is taking shape. It’s busy testing things and gearing up to build its next batch of prototypes. And Slate is laying the groundwork for actually selling and servicing vehicles.
In other words, 2026 is Slate’s biggest year yet. I sat down with CEO Chris Barman last week to discuss where the company is right now, where it’s going and—maybe, just maybe—learn a bit about that final price.
The Slate SUV kit will cost around $5,000, CEO Chris Barman has said.
Photo by: Slate
We talked about the benefits of having no infotainment screen, competition with China, the case for buying a Slate truck instead of a more fully featured EV, how Slate vehicles will hold their value over time and more. Before heading up Slate, Barman held leadership roles at Chrysler, Eaton and, most recently, IT company HCL Technologies.
You can check out some highlights from our interview here and here. I hope you enjoy our full conversation below, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tim Levin: First off, I’d love a status update on where things stand right now with the vehicle and the factory. Where are things 10 or 11 months out from production?
Chris Barman: We’re really excited about where we’re at right now.
From a vehicle development perspective and accessory development, we’re nearing the end of our tooling. So we’re actually starting to see parts that we’ll build and put together and make into our vehicles. In the spring, is when we’ll actually start to build our next prototypes.
So things are starting to come together. We’re seeing some of those sub-assemblies that we can put together to test them in advance of then getting them into the full vehicle. So, doing as much advanced work as we can to get confidence in the designs.
Slate aims to start churning out trucks at its Indiana factory by the end of the year.
Photo by: Kevin Williams/InsideEVs
From the factory perspective, super excited with all the transformation that’s happening. So I’ve been there twice already this year, just to see how things are progressing. And it’s amazing, week to week.
At the forefront of what we’re putting in is our body shop. That’s where we’ll build the body structures, and it takes a little bit longer for us to get all of that in place and start to be operational. The majority of that equipment is in, and we’re starting to power them up and get them moving and all of that.
Our e-coat line—the structure’s in, the outline of the ovens are in, and we’re continuing to progress on that. Our general assembly—we’re at the point where all the floors are there and a lot of the equipment is actually delivered, but we just haven’t started to place it on the floor yet, and that’ll be happening over the next few weeks.
So [I’m] really excited about where we’re at. It’s exciting because you can see it coming together. Like, everything we’ve been working on virtually for so long—and we’ve done the alpha prototypes and beta prototypes—but now it’s the real thing.
Obviously, the big question is what the price will end up being. Do you all know in your head what the price is going to be? Or are you still figuring it out?
We’re still having discussions on that. We’re still working really closely with our suppliers to see what opportunities we have to continue to bring costs down, to see what we can do to pass along to the customer before we announce final pricing. So next week, we’re actually doing a supplier session at Warsaw, so our suppliers are going to come there and spend a full day with us.
Slate’s truck doesn’t have a radio or infotainment screen. Accessories can be added on later.
Photo by: Slate
In part, we want to make sure we’re fully aligned on execution between now and the end of the year. We want to hear what they need from us, what they may not be clear on, and what we haven’t shared with them on expectations. We want to share, from our side, what our whole timing plan is and what we need to see at each phase.
But a big part of that is going to be talking about: Are there more opportunities for cost reduction? And the way we’re looking at that is we want to pass it on to the customer.
You’ve mentioned the cost of one of the key accessories, which is the SUV kit, at around $5,000. The other one that I think people are going to be most interested in is the bigger battery pack. I don’t know what your research says, but I feel like the most popular configuration is probably going to be the big battery and SUV. What can you tell me about the cost of that extra battery?
Yeah, that we’re still working on. Still working on that.
Do you think that’s going to be the most popular configuration?
We’re seeing a lot of interest in the SUV, for sure. I think everybody’s going to look at how they use it, how much they drive every day, their access to charging, and then make a personal decision on what works for them.
Let’s talk about competing in the small crossover space. If you add on the larger battery pack and the SUV kit, we’re talking about, I’m ballparking, a price somewhere in the low to mid $30,000s. Why should somebody buy a Slate at that price instead of a Chevy Bolt, or a Nissan Leaf, or any number of these well-priced crossovers coming out that have all the features people want already installed?
I think those vehicles have a number of features. I don’t know that everybody wants what’s in the packages that are being offered.
So what’s unique about our proposition is we build the fundamental platform, and then an individual can decide how they want to accessorize it or change it, what meets their needs, be really thoughtful about where they’re spending their dollars, and can also change it over the life of the vehicle. It’s not static in one way.
The Slate can be transformed into several different SUV configurations.
Photo by: Tim Levin/InsideEVs
We see an individual who could be young and single, and they buy the truck, and they have it for a few years, and they meet the love of their life, and they get married, and they start to have a family. And instead of having to go out and buy a whole new vehicle, for about $5,000, they can change it into an SUV, and it’s a family vehicle.
We think this is going to be very attractive for many individuals where affordability is important to them, so we’re giving them another option around that.
Let’s say you compare a base Chevy Equinox EV and a Slate at the same price. The Equinox may have more from the factory. Are you betting that people may be willing to spend a little extra on the Slate in order to have that customization opportunity down the road?
Absolutely, yeah. Because if you think about that Equinox today that has a screen, what we’ve done is we’ve decoupled from the consumer electronics cycle.
Slate’s CEO bets that people will be willing to pay for vast customization opportunities—even if the base price is similar to that of a more fully-featured vehicle.
Photo by: Slate
The way that we view this is that we want this to be a purchase that people are going to have for a long time and invest in. That screen and software at some point in the Equinox will become obsolete. In our vehicle, you can continue to only use your phone, you can change out your tablet.
If you want to bring in a different aftermarket radio later, it’s been developed to just plug and play and evolve over time. And that’s where we think it’s going to be really attractive to people to have that flexibility over time.
We’ve seen a lot of talk from automakers about over-the-air updates, and about things getting better and better over time. I don’t know necessarily that we’ve seen a ton of improvement. If you buy that Equinox EV, let’s say, your infotainment experience isn’t necessarily changing in the way that it would if you buy the latest tablet and put it in.
Yeah, you know, I think the consumer electronics industry is great at what they do, and that’s why people buy those products to use at home. And if they can more easily integrate it into the vehicle, why not?
I wanted to ask a fundamental question about the company. It’s called the Slate, or a Slate. Are there going to be other Slates? Are there going to be other body styles or sizes that follow this same blueprint?
We’re really focused on the vehicle we’re taking to market today. We aspire that there will be more in the future. But right now, we’re focused on the Blank Slate, the truck configuration that we’re offering today that can be modified into an SUV. And 2026 is important to us, and that’s what we’re staying focused on.
Are you thinking about competition from Chinese automakers, potentially either building in America or through some deal? Slate may not have to just compete with a Ford Maverick or a Chevy Equinox—it may have to compete with a BYD Seagull or some of these other vehicles.
The way that we’ve been thinking about it is, roughly 55 million vehicles are transacted every year, and about 15 are new, 40 of those are used. Our price point is targeted to be below the price point of the average used vehicle. So we’re compared most frequently to new vehicles. We think a large number of our buyers are going to be used vehicle buyers, and that’s a large pool that’s out there.
Slate customers will be able to connect their phone to the vehicle for basic infotainment functions like mapping and locating a charger.
Photo by: InsideEVs
If the Chinese enter the market, then obviously, people have choice, and they can consider them versus consider us. We see, though, that there’s a big population out there, and we like to think that the proposition that we will already have in the market will have taken a foothold. People will appreciate that it’s American-made, that we’ve re-industrialized a U.S. factory.
And they’ll love, again, our proposition of the extreme customization and personalization that you can do, which, to my knowledge, I don’t know that any Chinese manufacturer has anything like that to offer.
You mentioned the used market. All companies think about the depreciation of their vehicles—what happens once they go through that first lifecycle. How do you expect depreciation to go with the Slate? Because some parts of it may end up being totally new to that second buyer, or that second buyer can decide to make it new again. What are your thoughts on that?
We predict—but we’ll have to see—that it is a unique approach, and the fact that it isn’t always the same will allow it to hold its residual value over time as compared to others.
Think about somebody who buys it and they get the truck, or maybe they make it into an SUV, and they love Barbie and they make it Barbie pink. They wrap it in pink, and they make the inside pink, and they sell it to the used car dealer. Well, if it were a conventional vehicle and it were painted pink, he’s trying to sell a pink vehicle.
Yeah, it’s going to sit there for a long time.
That used car dealer can now advertise any one of hundreds or thousands of configurations, because he can just peel off the wrap and peel off those accessories and create what the next person wants. So, maybe it was pink in the fastback configuration, and somebody says, I’ve always wanted it fully blacked out, big wheels. Pull off all the pink, make it into black, you’ve now just sold it to somebody where it didn’t cost much to do that, to really turn that over quickly.
For the Slate owner, it’s probably a benefit as well. You’re assuming that it’s not going to depreciate the same way that another car would, right?
Exactly. And if you go back to, again, what we talked about: decoupling from the consumer electronics lifecycle. You can bring in a new tablet. It brings in new technology over time, in addition to being able to change around accessorization.
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