Slate broke onto America’s automotive scene earlier this year, emerging from stealth mode operations to become one of the most talked-about brands in 2025. It plans to manufacture and sell a budget-friendly electric truck that can be converted to an SUV, among other configurations.
The company’s commitment to American manufacturing is strong, and they’re laying more than just cornerstones as they work to bring the truck to market.
Newsweek caught up with Slate CEO Chris Barman at the company’s Warsaw, Indiana, manufacturing facility for an update on where the company stands today, and the next challenges it’s facing.
“We’re continuing to do our development work with the company. We’ve crashed our impact vehicles; we’ve correlated our models,” Barman told Newsweek.
The company is working hard, moving toward production, “locking in our designs, starting to do that hand off from engineering to manufacturing,” she continued.
Slate
That means that there have been design tweaks to the vehicle, many of which remain unseen on prototypes that have been circulated at brand and model discovery events, called Slate to State, that are being hosted throughout the country.
The mission of those events is to get the truck in front of people who are interested in it, those who are already reservation holders and to introduce the company and truck to people who have never heard of Slate. They are allowing the company to increase brand awareness and show off the customization capabilities of the model via a series of unique, for-the-moment wraps.
Much of Slate’s design and engineering work has been done virtually. Now that beta test vehicles have been created, the company will use those to validate ride quality, handling, braking, thermodynamics, aerodynamics and sound insulation calibrations and engineering.
The company’s first physical prototypes, so-called alpha models, were created using existing vehicles from other automakers that had their powertrain and other bits and bobs ripped out and replaced by early versions of Slate’s.
Now that the beta models are out, the company is working to prove out the virtual development work that has been done over the last several years. “Then we can continue to work with our simulation and modeling in order to have confidence as we kick off the tooling of the manufacturing facility,” Barman said.
The company’s Warsaw plant site is in the midst of an extensive renovation. “We’re looking to have our equipment set in place by the end of the year, so that early next year we can start building our next phase of the properties that we’ll use to verify the design of the vehicle,” the CEO shared.
Next, Slate will create development validation vehicles. “We’ll build those, and through building those, we learn more about our build process and how to make sure we’re building a quality vehicle,” Barman said.
“It’s also where we’re verifying the design again, physically, before we would go into production. We’ll do a lot of testing with those as well. We’ll go back and confirm safety testing. We’ll go and do our EPA testing to make sure that, you know, we qualify for EPA certification. We’ll look at everything that we’ve done. Is it right? Ergonomically? Are we meeting our quality objectives?”
Looking ahead to 2026, Barman said, “We just need to make sure that we’re putting out a quality product by the end of the year.” The plan still is to go into production by the end of 2026.
Before that, there is demolition to be done at the Warsaw site. “We’re not really constructing anything new. We’re working within the walls that we have today,” she explained.
In its former life, as a printing plant, workers and machines dealt with highly flammable chemicals. Because of that, thick fire walls were installed throughout the plant’s buildings. “Those are walls that are going to be coming down. And what’s great about this facility is it has the structure that we can do that,” Barman said.
Demolition isn’t fully complete, but the components of future manufacturing have already started to arrive in Warsaw. As a startup, Slate (and Barman) are very conscious of how much it’s costing to get the plant ready for production.
She said: “We’re very opportunistic. We are looking to see what’s on the market that might be gently used, that we can have, as long as it meets our criteria, that we know that’s going to perform well. And then we look for other partners where we may have to have it designed for us and bespoke. We first look to see where we have partners here in the U.S. And for the most part, we’re working with U.S. companies in order to design our equipment.”
As progress continues to be made on the site, Barman is seeing the fruits of years of labor come to life. “Slate is real, and we are coming,” she said.
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