Since Slate Auto came out of stealth mode last week, the internet has been abuzz with speculation about the finer details of the ultra-barebones electric Truck, which is set to cost just $20,000 when it enters production next year — assuming our federal EV incentives are still in place by then.
One of those questions was where Slate will build the thing, with a TechCrunch report suggesting a factory in Indiana. Today we can officially confirm the details. Slate Auto will retrofit an existing 1.4 million square foot factory in Warsaw, Indiana, where the company plans to eventually produce 150,000 Trucks annually.
If you missed all the excitement last week, Slate’s Truck is a radically simplified EV with 150 miles of range, a barebones machine that could be considered a minimum viable car. It has no touchscreen, no radio, no power windows, and no paint.
Slate Auto will retrofit an existing 1.4 million square foot factory in Warsaw, Indiana.
Those were some of the concessions required to make an EV that inexpensively in the United States, but some of those seeming compromises enable a uniquely streamlined production workflow.
Because the Truck doesn’t have paint, Slate Auto’s factory doesn’t need an expensive paint shop. (Mercedes-Benz recently spent a reported $1 billion building a new one.) And, because the body panels are made of a form of plastic, that factory can skip the massive presses typically used to stamp metal body panels into shape.
Slate will build out their production hub at the former R.R. Donnelly facility in Warsaw, Indiana, a printing press that was once responsible for stuffing your mailbox with catalog pulp from retailers. It shuttered in September of 2023, putting over 500 people out of work.
When it reopens next year, Jeff Jablansky, Slate Auto’s head of public relations and communications, says the plan is to employ 2,000 people at the facility. Slate wouldn’t confirm the total investment the facility’s retrofit will require, or the terms of Slate’s use of the property, only that renovations will cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
All that will need to be completed before the Truck can begin production, which is currently scheduled for Q4 of 2026.
At 1.4 million square feet, Slate’s facility is roughly one-quarter the size of Tesla’s Fremont Factory, which currently produces approximately 650,000 vehicles per year. Again, Slate hopes to produce upwards of 150,000 Trucks annually at this facility, an annual production rate that took Tesla more than five years to achieve in Fremont. Given its simplified manufacturing process, Slate will surely be hoping to move more quickly.
Slate is committed to not only manufacturing the Truck in the U.S. but to using domestic suppliers as well. “The vehicle is designed, engineered, and manufactured in the U.S., with the majority of our supply chain based in the U.S.” Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s Chief Commercial Officer, told us ahead of the Truck’s debut. As global trade wars only escalate, that’s looking like a sound move.